My first attempt to walk outside the cave @shannonbryns-blog - Tumblr Blog

Their story

lillian lafrance wants to ride a motorcycle

1.

lillian lafrance has a baby who grips her jacket from cali to vegas. who shivers in his leather chaps. who always smiles with milk dripping down his chin.

2.

lillian lafrance guns it with black frazzle hair dark lipstick jodphur blurs at thirty miles per hour. wide eyes and circus peanuts for dinner with wood slats shaking on the track.

3.

lillian lafrance had a holy crate for a bed of sawdust. a rough paper elephant. it was the thrill that made her take to the circus.

4.

lillian lafrance’s son does sixty with her name tattooed to his bicep. he kisses his motorcycle at night and dreams the edge of the wooden wall.

#Mugshots museum

Sycamore Temple

Noah sags under bags of iron ore,

drags hewn logs through the sand.

The dreams are getting stormier and

he hears a flood coming wherever he goes.

Noah measures sycamores with a rope,

long and straight trunks, foot after foot.

At the base of the oldest tree in the forest

he finds a knot that is sad and beautiful.

Noah kneels on the springy moss,

feels the rough knot with his fingertips

and stands, raising an axe. He lets it fall.

Noah now sees that the trees

were just filled with water,

waiting to burst.

#Outside the Cave

Sheep City Kids

We spray our skinny legs with bug spray

and run from the porch to the cold grass.

Dusk means the sheep have gone to bed

and the bats come out, velvet wings flapping.

We play soccer-frisbee ball and toss baby cousins

in wheelbarrows and tumble them out in the hay.

We fall down, a sweaty pile of arms and legs,

a pink human knot that kids make and break.

The grownups tell us stories around the fire

about an evil man who hunts sheep.

We try to catch him in the corners of our eyes

as we look over our shoulders into the night.

#Mugshots museum

Joining the Brotherhood

He rolls up his sleeves,

trudges bare-handed

to the beehive tree,

shakes the trunk again. His body a magnet,

the ferrous bees

migrate dark on his

arms and legs.

His veins buzz and pop

with boredom because

they have done this

many times before.

The man looks up from the dirt;

the tree is a waving string.

A hot egg struggles

to hatch in his mind.

#Outside the Cave

A White-Sheeted Bed

1.

When embalming the dead, one’s hands

must be clean and gloved to wash

and powder the skin of the deceased

before they wear a black suit or white dress,

before they can be kissed and cried over.

2.

We sweat and walk to the shoreside

when the tide’s out; your hand swings next

to mine in metronomic time, and always

I want you to kiss me on the rope swing, or

in clouds of guano under the bat bridge.

3.

My heart folds its corners tightly,

quietly and neatly like the starch sheets

my mother yanks and tucks with firm

fingertips she uses when scrubbing a child,

which is how I see you at this moment,

a dirty child, or maybe a white-sheeted bed.

#Outside the Cave

When you told me you got drunk

the mirror broke

in the parlor

of my imaginary house

and all the shards

of glass

swept themselves into the garbage.

Good Samaritan

There was that one time,

and I can’t tell anyone about it

except for you, God, when I

saw a sauce-covered Carl’s Jr. wrapper

on the ground and I almost picked it up

but then I thought of E coli.

#Dance City

At the Ranch in Vernal, Utah

You can spread patience like butter.

but if you don’t have any, the moment

will be dry and everyone will choke.

I poke my stick at the crumbly anthill

between me and the sagebrush that

gags us on its spicy, sharp soap smell.

The rancher man chews on old-timey

stories about his four sons birthing

steaming calves in clouds of hay dust.

I’ve counted three hundred and forty two

twitchy brown ants piling grains of sand like

my pants that pick up grit from the wind.

Rancher man you must feed us your flannel shirt

for dinner because it’s been two and a half

hours longer than the one hour you promised.

And us college kids have sharp hunger that

cuts your ranch into pieces that we devour

with the small, twitchy brown ants.

#Outside the Cave

A Girl Named Charity

Charity suffereth long, and is kind,

except when the neighbor lady stops by

for five minutes and stays a whole hour

talking about crocheted nativity scenes.

And Charity envieth not, and is not puffed up,

except when her crush talks to the stilleto-

heel girl who walks past the boys, hips

swaying like palm trees in the breeze.

Charity seeketh not her own, and is not easily provoked,

except when the boss expects her to roll out sugar cookies

and stand at the register at the same time, warping the space-

time continuum in Stephen Hawking style.

And Charity thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity

but rejoiceth in the truth, except when she realizes that she doesn’t have

$150 to spend on that dress, even though the sales woman assured her

that her career and love life would shrivel and die without it.

Despite difficulties, Charity hopeth all things and endureth all things.

Well, almost all things. Charity refuses to endure football games.

#Dance City

Dear Insomnia,

You are only the worried brainchild of

seven hundred dollar plane tickets to

Nashville, a city of alligator

skin boots and honky tonk piano songs

about men with glasses who swoon when they

picture lush kisses on the windy lake

and the vicious queen bee who feasts on

midnight smoked turkey breast and dry, frigid

poems about zero-sum games of love.

And yet, you drain all of my bathtubs, and make me

weep and fall on two knees on blue carpet.

#Outside the Cave

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My first attempt to walk outside the cave