Michelle Bitting
Stash
Behold this body’s library
stacked with proof:
my sins, high and hot, how
they paper the skyline. I read once
that Civil War dolls,
X-rayed for signs
of smuggling drugs across
enemy lines revealed pits
for stuffing opiates: morphine,
enough residue sap to make
a mockery of pain. To this
I can relate: there were days
that begged nothing more
than a mannequin’s smile,
my innards snuggled by
inhibitors, warm blankies
swaddling my synapses. Sometimes
the question lingered: whether to smoke,
snort or swallow myself,
decisions dictated by leaky
faucets in the ghost towns
of my cranium. When autumn drops,
bearing gusts from Santa Ana,
you can bet there will be fire.
More often now I donate
to the bedroom, your museum
of desire, that blue-veined
fullness dangled in my face,
flesh of wild orchids, pain
transposed to a more lyrical
key. Like Johann Sebastian
on the banks of the Rhine,
letting notes fill the rivers
of his hands, then turning back
to compose the world,
map the road
aright with song, so
we could keep time
like this, getting high.
Brother Blues
William Faulkner Bitting 1961-1995
There’s no stopping
this rain, my heart
shaken, dumbstruck leaves
swirled down, memory
flushed to the ground
and my throat damned, again.
Let it loose
sing the trees
but I can’t go there, Brother,
my mind won’t go there, Brother.
It’s enough I carried your
picture around town
all hours, today, my satchel
heavy, ghost in the bag.
I carried you like water,
a wounded rain—
you took the pills, you took
yourself away.
Bio
Michelle Bitting has work published or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, Narrative, River Styx, Crab Orchard Review, Passages North, Poemeleon, diode, and others. Poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. In 2007, Thomas Lux chose her full-length manuscript, Good Friday Kiss, as the winner of the DeNovo First Book Award and C & R Press published it in 2008. Her latest manuscript, Notes to the Beloved, won the Sacramento Poetry Center Book Prize and will be published in early 2012. Recently, she was a finalist for the Poets & Writers California Exchange contest and Rona Jaffe Foundation Awards. Michelle has taught poetry in the U.C.L.A. Extension Writer’s Program, at Twin Towers prison with a grant from Poets & Writers Magazine and is proud to be an active California Poet in the Schools. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Pacific University, Oregon. Visit her at: www.michellebitting.com