Deena Hardin

College Station, Texas
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Gargoyles and Grievances

With menacing gaping grins the monsters
gaze, transfixed, from atop high holy houses,
down on the world and its porcine inhabitants;
stony reminders of our transgressions, petrifying
us into submission and redemption.
Eh.

I have issues.
Guile and guilt have led me to say and do
too many things I shouldn't have.
Humor and education have led me astray,
beyond egregious superstitions that
frailties are cause for preternatural vengeance.
Publication of grievances will bring them
neither blessing nor sanctification,
so, then what?
Proceed at my own risk.

THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY

It has a soul, that house.
At midnight I have walked barefoot
on its peeling, warped porch,
like a geisha walks a client's back—
it warmed my skin and I knew desire.
There are hooks for a swing.
I have peered into its lacy windows
as lovers peer into each other's eyes,
seeing things, not all, but things desired.
Its graveled pathway from drive to back door
is like artery to heart, a way to transport
those who must go in, who must breathe
its musty air, throw open the windows,
let it heal and in turn be healed.
Cliché white picket fence
must be forgiven with a snicker.
Light burns in an upstairs window,
day and night, last sign of an occupant,
only sign of life left.
Its ceilings soar toward something like
heaven, perhaps the moment of clarity
before death.
Pine clapboard sags and rots in places,
tiny portals allow vermin in,
floors roll like oceans,
water has invaded here and there—
there is much to fear.
None of it matters.
I can ignore defects, like lovers often do.

LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR

Cook the salt, he thought—
not salt, eggs—and it's not even late,
or early, and he's not drunk, not yet,
done a few hours before,
a few hours from starting over.
Every day's so much the same it's hard to say,
hard to tell where one ends and another begins,
where dark meets light or vice versa.
Dark or light rum, that is the question,
or maybe run, maybe run is what he thinks,
run fast and far from the demon that is rum—
yes, maybe that's how the thought went.
The thought to feed at 2 a.m. was clear:
stave off the drink and clear the head for bed
so one might better serve the spirits next day.
In the night before the day there is the need,
sometimes oneiric, undeniable, for touch,
for a body to stroke, for flesh to knead like dough,
for hard questions to become soft answers.
He has faith, all right, but faith ebbs and flows,
low tide being almost always now,
that's what it is.
There must be a plan to get out,
zig and zag at the proper moments,
no regrets, lowest common denominator,
loose ends all tied—
forehead glistens like a hard-ridden racehorse
merely from the labor of contemplation.
When the eggs are done, salted, of course,
he eats, and forgets the plan.

GREAT IDEAS

Several of what could have been among the
century's great ideas escaped her while she
made her way to the machine; there it was

again, a white page unfilled and daunting,
taunting almost palpably in electric air.
What she saw where there should have been

great ideas instead were images of that visage
recently recaptured…hair turned grayer and
oddly reddish, eyes rimmed by spidery tracks

of broken vessels—evidence of rage addressed
and eloquently expressed to the dismay of pets
and passersby in his life, a life that swiped

chunks of her. Don't submit, he told her, but she
can't remember if it was because he was in the mix
or that, magnanimous, he feared she'd lose herself

in the process of writing and rejection. Which was it?
She could almost swear it had nothing to do with her.
How does one ignore the draw? Much is forgotten.

FORMS DIVINE

Sloughing off this mortal skin
may mean slipping into a form
more divine—if not like that of angels,

well, something less human.
The cloth men say there will be
no sorrow, no suspicion, no more misery,

that we will know nothing of earth
once crossed over. Will there be no joys
like those experienced in this life?

Yea, verily, joy incomprehensible after
shedding our humanity, trading flesh
for wings—but we will not recognize

each other as we do, they say.
How can there be joy not touching you
ever again, not seeing our children,

not patting their smelly heads nor
kissing their jellied faces, passing each
other only as divine worker bees

in the kingdom of God? God is under
no obligation to make it fit for me,
this I know. I dream heaven sometimes

and it seems all right; but it is more like
sleeping, the waking. I come up from it
wondering how to dream.