Two Poems

cigarette

you’re the second thing I was

glad to quit: the first one

was a plume of dying smoke,

attached to my stained hand.

you left those too,

the ashes of your bad habit

lining my dead potted plant.

I really tried with that

orchid they gave me.

It died in the L.A. glare,

moved to a too-small grave.

I was learning not to care.

You used it like an ashtray,

playing in flower hearts, and

poking at the broken parts.

But here’s the thing, I’m

flesh and blood—

and I’m still growing here.

You have been excised

and the rooms are quiet,

Bare. I think I love myself again.

I’m planting a whole garden now,

and you will not

get in.

the possible woman

Of symmetry only little:

A voice deep and unmuted.

She takes life and wrings it out

like rain in the wasteland,

snapping at each drop.

There is wildness and then there is

Her; a perfect anger and an

imperfect form,

scratching at the heels of the world.

Full belly lit by fires of future.

Where has she gone? I met her

only once, this possible girl.

She had the eye to name things and the

Heart to keep loving.

Large as the moon.

I met her once?

No, I was her once.

Let her be resurrected by our

witch invocations and

razored thorns,

pricking the soul so we can

rise in three days' time.

For we are the blood and the life:

and men must move for us.

Claire Pennock is a writer for a digital marketing agency in Los Angeles. She has a B.A. in Philosophy from Brigham Young University and has always loved writing and reading poetry.