high school days

(written for LSP's "Ode to the Female Poet" competition")

My biggest poetic influence is Kristy Bowen, a master of surrealist and urban-gothic poetry. If anyone has read a lot of my work the influence is obvious. Here are two links to her poems:

http://www.kettlebluereview.com/#!kristy-bowen/c1857

http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/house-strays

I would like to offer a poem attempted in the style of her own.

high school days

I’ll tell you how it really was. All pipe organs
and rotting door knobs. We planted all the tulips
then dismembered them while chimney sweep girls
clamored on the roof. Dead roses robbed us of
speech. Even your cologne haunted the ashes.
That beautiful pink lace where my wrists burn
from the leaden cuffs. I'll give classification
to the hunger inside me while yearning drips
from the red faucet of my mouth. I was only in it
for the money when the car tires became top hats.
The claw foot tub kissed with grime and lipstick,
the house writhing with dust. My ache fell from
a sky of umbrellas while white finches danced
beneath my hemline. I knew death was gilded and
seductive when I licked the track marks on your
arms. The way they tasted so gray, so gray. Like
bell towers, or your shirt buttons twisting
beneath my teeth. You reach hard for my breasts
but I tuck them back in, back in, the way I tuck
back words in my mouth. How the cemetery swells
upon the hill. We’ll go climbing the railing
and scuffing our shoes on headstones. Your logic
simple. No kiss on my mouth, no cum in my hand,
no crime.