Napoleon

For Jimmy R.J. LeBlond

In the end, his deep black coat touched white,
muzzle forlorn, peppered with old man eyebrows
that dipped and arched when you spoke to him;
they said volumes despite his blindness creeping
in around slow deaf ears. His right hip gave him
a slight limp, nails clattering against linoleum
in fits and starts. He lay at my Pop’s feet
chest rising with ease, his breath no less faithful
than his heart, moaning in canine dreams;
back leg twitching wild.

I wondered from across the room
if he was off somewhere in his youth
walking the Appalachian Trail with Pop after Viet Nam;
or taking the canoe’s helm down the mighty Mississippi
in the heart of summer; or drenched with rain,
tired from long treks on broken highways
standing guard while his best friend
lay in his bedroll in the dark night’s ditch.

Napoleon cried out harshly, legs wracked the air
as if in seizure. My Pop’s face sank deeply,
shoulders slumping almost imperceptibly, knowing
someday this old man would have to go down
by his hand, that suffering in this way was never an option
for the only man that understood him.
He reached down placing his hand on the dog’s chest,

“Face,” he said softly.

The dog’s shutter eased back to dreaming,
seizure exiting with a whimper and then still
into even breathing, in to what we had always known.
It was the first time I saw my father cry.

Aleathia Drehmer 2009

Winning poem in contest held by Organic Glass 3/09

The Plague of Frogs

Dime size frogs construct
pyramids at my doorstep, hundreds
clamoring to be the triumphant piece,
the eye to the heavens.

This breathing swarm comes
to me in the shallow hours of the morning
after night rains soak the bog,
and drive them to dry.

They make me vigilant
about my giant steps, wary
of crushing their tiny bodies
into blotted stains, red and brown,
toothpick bones splayed out
in post-mortem viewing.

My daughter will hear the dirge
from the water, and crouch down
close to the earth,
inspecting death is her proclivity,
wrapping her mind around its permanence, her art.

The hollow of my heart
wants to alleviate the guilt
of creating a sadness
that will strike its mark
upon her face somewhere
between home and grandfather’s house,
producing tears of crocodile proportions,
viable stains I cannot undo.

Aleathia Drehmer 2007

Published by Full of Crow 2/09

Two sides of the coin

Box elder bugs crawling on the armchair,
tiny black legs tap Morse code in response
to the tamper and grind at the front of the café,
while large-bodied women cackle around
the high pitched trill of the thin.

Two lovers study French across laptops;
she dressed as a pirate and he with her hat
akimbo across his well shaped head;
Old women revisit the darkness that lives
in their youth, finding some shelter in each other.

In the bathroom, noises slip through the walls
and ceiling, under the cracks in the door, up through
the toilet as a vibration, a tremble that drives me
until I am consumed completely as Hyde took Jekyll,
and only traces of the original remain.

The second side of me emerges.
The face that hides under manners,
gaiety and social ebulliences. I emerge transformed
into the universe just as it was before. No one
takes notice. I am invisible, imperceptible, intangible.

Forces beyond any of our control, catches the door wide.
I step into the wind and disappear.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Full of Crow 2/09

An Anchor Around Your Free Thoughts

We walk hand in hand
on the forest trail,
I can feel your thoughts
pulsating through your bony fingers
interlaced between mine,
amassing joy at the touch
of something pure.

There are tortuous moments of silence
chiseling our bodies apart
as they navigate the uneven ground,
toes stepping over rising roots
that look like grandmother’s arms,
stones erupting, pushing away the layers
of lost life making homes
for tiny legged potato beetles.

Your fingers unravel from mine,
your arm twisting taut behind you,
shoulder blade cutting through your flesh
as you move forward three steps
ahead, my shyness an anchor
around your free thoughts,
and as your hand breaks from mine
I am showered with the vision
of skin stranding into silk ribbons
hung on the hooks of your desire.

You find a sharp stick,
hold it to your eyes for inspection,
lips moving silently, your mind circumnavigating
a world I cannot see. You begin
writing our poem into the moist earth,
with its hidden fears, its death, its seed of life,
its fragility, with sweeping arcs
and dominating angles, standing
at first and then falling close
to the words you cannot
take with you.

Aleathia Drehmer 2007

Published by Full of Crow 2/09

Stewart Street

We sit on the front porch
of your three-story apartment building,
the wooden planks unkempt with edges splintering
and nails driven up through rotted holes
leaving empty spaces.

You smoke your non-filtered cigarette,
though not the same brand I remember
from childhood, the smell less aromatic.
It is somehow stale and crumbling like the moments
passing slowly between our shoulders.

Both of us watch my child, with her sun lightened,
blonde streaks curling around her face. She is cherubic
and fresh sitting in the grass digging for treasure
in the dark earth with an old stick,
looking up at us with untamed innocence.

I think about all the things I want to say
that I won’t ever have the courage to,
or be able to find words good enough
to bear the weight of their meanings. So
we talk about poems and seasonable weather

and lean only close enough to hear each other.
You turn your head to tell me something important
and I am lost in the sunset reflected off your glasses,
heart beating faster than it should,
unsure of where we go from here.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by 13 Miles from Cleveland 2/09

Standing amongst the recycling

In tendrils of cigarette smoke, listening to night sounds--
crickets and moon birds, we hear the rustling leaves moved by winds
in far off storms, the candle flickering as you leave it.

Sweet, delicate memories wan in the youth you somehow
try to dispel under the guise of advancing age
and a fortitude we cannot be sure we really have.

You talk about love that never takes its grace, how the waiting over
a decade for its return to soften heartbreak’s edges doesn’t come.
You understand he can never be the man to make us whole.

And in this silence, we face each other briefly,
drunk and with the knowledge that the tragedies witnessed
in our collective lives could have never been, that we might not

have had to spend them dreaming or wanting or waiting
for an easiness to find its way to the lines on our faces,
into the creases of our quiet, longing moments.

The pans clank in the kitchen with familiar sounds,
you mumbling to yourself like the old days, trying to busy notions
from your mind; to strike out those sad remembrances you know

need putting back in the cabinet. I stand here small and alone,
watch the light dance off the Windex bottle, wishing I could
wipe away the past without leaving evident streaks of knowing.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Rusty Truck Zine 1/09

Instead of Fireworks

She twirls on the grass with arms out,
a human helicopter waiting to take flight
in a dress the color of latent spring,
feet bare and lost in the long blades.

Her toothless grin pulls open the clouded sky
as she tumbles to the ground, dizzy and laughing
like a child should, despite burdens
too big for her narrow shoulders.

She lies there in misted, summer rain
with apple cheeks and unfiltered giggles
rising up to where the rockets would be,
if the night would only show her face.

We get caught smiling at one another
watching her coil the long, plastic snake
into the antiquated birdbath standing
crooked beneath your living room window.

Her fingers run over the edges of its Italian design,
crevices inhabited with algae and rainwater,
trying to grasp the tail without making ripples,
trying to catch one of us off guard.

I gasp when she snaps the snake, sprays us with water.
Her smile is a devilish infection as she looks for your approval
and you laugh like you didn’t remember joy existed—
head back, eyes closed
laughing.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Rusty Truck Zine 1/09

Casaubon and Amparo

One day, she plants a great tree
in the image of man, culled
tiny brown seeds taken from cored bounties
leftover, pies baked and eaten warm.

She moves fingers through rich soil,
spayed earth moist and gathering
under nails; places each polished hope, gingerly.

Nestled in the corner, guarded by old
weathered legs, crossed keepers of the rains
and snows and sun-dappled summers.
Starling's golden tritons between blacktop brambles
all gorging till beaks come away
berry-stained and full.

She waters his roots with her purple can,
speaks to him in kind
while trimming long blades with shears,
laughing at herself, to him,
and blushes cheeks into apples.

She drips ruby nectar down his throat
stolen from the hummer's bell feeder
when his branches begin, buds curling out,
and iridescent bodies swirl around her,
new northern lights.

When he comes to her strong and constant,
she lies beneath him, rusty fingers reach
to touch her face, gold tears floating
in the brush of reality.

And she reads him volumes of Poe and Pound,
questions the universe and space, knowing
he won't ever answer her the truth,
but attempt every time.

He is there when seasons turn,
their heart growing, in him and he never
pushes her back or away,
and she will smile,
one day.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Shoots and Vines 12/08

The Silenced Fan

It is the crest of 5am
when rough-throated garbles
of the rooster’s crow weakly
filter up through a minted dawn
on the day of the Lord.

Sparrows call the light no one else can see,
tell relatives on the crisp pointed maples
and heady oaks about the slithering bounty,
silver trails lead from a nocturnal feeding
on the tender folded flowers in the bean patch.

House finches and mourning doves heed the tale,
twitter then coo in swirled feathers, the dawn
lighting iridescent wings that hover over
fat, homeless snails inching their getaway
by the nights last true moments.

Across the yard where new highway construction has halted,
shadowed machines on the banks
lumber as ancient beasts, iron dinosaurs
with heads rising above red-tipped leaves
chilled by the solemn beginning of autumn’s breath.

The rooster calls again and brings notice
to the shimmer through the blinds, a burning white disc
whose beams trick the old cock
into dreams laced with coming dawn
and cracked corn spread around the dirt.

My fingers split the dusty slats to see the moon smile,
hear her whisper your name like a mantra
until it finds its way between the fan blades
gently turning as if lifted by wind. It coaxes me
to the shelter of quilted covers
where warm child limbs
ease me back to sleep.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by The Poetry Warrior, Issue 3, 2/09

Balance

There is a hole in her bathing suit,
a small window of skin, a great oval
of downy hairs and nerves perfectly encased
in tropical wanderings
as she reclines over a red and pink striped towel
as if it were a plump tongue
rolled out to taste the essence of summer.

It is evening and the sun has taken its leave
towards the West, setting on great men
left behind in the wake of changing tides,
while I lie here soaked in my favorite potion of azure skies
with clouds shearing each other,
above and below the belt, in real time.

The sound of her breath is even and sweet
against the early night, filled with bird chatter
and airplanes writing their sorrows into the blue
like scars, keeps me in a state of flux. The soft
lapping of pool water against the tiles
and the last of the day’s sun moving across the white fence,
seal me into a haunting peacefulness.

This moment is viable. I watch the world
do what it always does regardless of my existence,
despite my flesh laid out on the ground as an offering
to false gods of abundance and grace. I could suffer
in this sliver of time gladly, as it is somehow
more perfect than all the rest.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by The Poetry Warrior, Issue 3, 2/09

I am not one

I become painfully aware

of this solitary existence

as the crust of three-day old snow

crunches underfoot, the sound

in decibels, almost deafening.

Boots invade the criss-cross markings

pledged by rabbits, bits of fur and excrement

strewn on a trail not meant for humans.

Today, I am not one, but brethren

of the hare, seekers of green.

Fallen Sumac berries burst up

under light snow, red confetti

for eating in lean, gray months,

pawed and nuzzled with ears pricked

and pink eyes frightened wide.

The mind succumbs to darkness,

its thick shroud pulled close to mouth,

covering steam created by inner workings.
Fires dampen easily

if not for chilled bone friction

that keeps legs moving.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Gloom Cupboard 2/09 Issue 77

Flowers for Everyone

the bartender
feeds her manhattans,
only chargers her
for every other one
making it easier on them all.

the more lubricated she gets
the farther her shirt slides
off her shoulder,
drunken body leaning
in a drunken boat
and it reveals
a tattooed ring of daisies
around her left breast.

she can't see much more
than the faint, blurred smiles
wolves licking their sharp teeth.

they want to open her up
like a flower, their mouths
stinging her like bees
touching her secrets, roughly.
they want to fill her
with the seeds of their fathers
and watch her wilt

with the poison.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published By Opium Poetry 1/09

Marcy

i walked into my secret lover's
room without knocking,
found marcy there shooting up
junk between her toes, toenails
dark purple like bruises,
bags under her eyes
and forehead glistening with sweat.

a single drop rolled down her chest
until it hit the wire of her black bra
and absorbed.

i think to myself
god, she has great tits for a junkie.

and i am jealous
over those breasts
over her dainty heroin fix
over the fact

that she still has him in public.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published By Opium Poetry 1/09

Chew

Like buskers, we linger on the streets
telling false fortunes and charming snakes
of their cigarettes. We are filthy
on the inside with regrets
that get no forbearance.

In hand, we crack stolen pop-shit music into shards;
pieces of Warrant and Madonna and Hootie
become deadly Chinese stars in our grip.

Passersby unaware we are building
a shed of blood, stringing victims
from its shoddy framework in the back alley,
draining them like gutted pigs.

I plan on drowning you, by request,
in the contents of their discontent,
plan on hearing you scream for an end
as I keep releasing your head
above the bloodline of society.

But first, let us chew
the theory of relativity
between our teeth and bitch
about how bitter it tastes.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published By Apoetelephone 2/09 (Audio poem)

I once dreamed of Bob Dylan

In a treehouse, one walled
and built from looking glass,
the old man spoke to me; leaves
colored like immanent death

drifted and swirled, their reflection
a knowing torture, and he said blankly,
“You must walk the highway
to get to the by-way.”

I blinked twice, flashing sea stones
at his face (like cracked, dried mud in noon sun)
as he pointed to the lines on mine
that had not been written yet.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Lit Up Magazine 11/08

Vulpes

You must be open to everything, he tells me
as I walk out onto the porch to count stars
and burn lungs with the sweet south.

There is a great silence in noise
watching blue screened television through blinds,
and absorbing the hum of garage door lights
making a mirage on wet pavement. Rain trickles,
as if slow moving rivers, into the grate.

Water dripping from the wood beneath my feet
vibrates like the inner sanctum of a clokkemaker,
the gears in my head constructing time stealers.

I hear 18 wheels on the wet curves, air in brakes
signaling the solemn fact that these small towns
go ghost on Sunday’s at six. All that is left
are the strangers gliding over tangles of highway,
silver-backed foxes low slung in hunt.

With nimble fingers, even in the damp coming winter,
I tell him sadly, but with conviction,
There are no stars tonight, no stars.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by LitteraTour 12/08 (Translated into Portuguese)

Black Seas

Regression happens with age,
bodies morph into sharp, geometric
renditions of flesh with insipid harsh angles.

Her face engulfed by the caverns her sockets make,
muddied pools empty and still
with no flickering fire cast about the walls.

The skin stretched over her face looks waxy
and I beckon the notion to call Madame Tussaud,
but this woman lacks singular importance in the world,
one old leaf ready to be blown about
and put back to the earth. No accolades for her bravery.

I sit here in the dark watching her breath hover,
the vapor shaped in the image of Gabriel,
and I let the room escape me.

Her collarbone creates a valley
that could hold the Black Sea, her mind lost
somewhere between youth and release,
and I want to touch the sweat collecting there.
Her salted life seeping up from her center
as if a spring of ground water.

My fingers reach out silently
as she opens her eyes in one, small moment
of lucidity to ask me,

“Am I still alive?”

Her face alight in that second
showing me the heartbreak of lovers, meals cooked,
children swaddled, and presents given with knowing.

“Yes,” I tell her, “yes.”

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Heroin Love Songs 11/08

Try as he may to keep them

Brambles both red and black begin
their reach to birth, entangled with
briar and her fresh face that is always
accompanied by some sting of pain.

The long hibernation of life,
a shallow breathing in winter,
gives up with arms spread wide,
chest open and unprotected to the sun.

There is a great deception in the new
tenderness of May with her skies the color
of summer, and stoic white cloud plateaus
I could climb if not so out of reach. The air
remains stiff enough to bite noses carnelian.

Old father makes his last attempts
to keep his daughters three
inside his hovel; to keep them from
shedding layer upon layer
revealing shoulders and knees

and lips to the wayward souls
of the men of summer, but they
disregard his pleas and warning
laying but a gentle kiss on his cheek.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

The map to the road of happiness

Streets suddenly are lined with trees
burgeoning leaves in yellow-green, while
the cherry and crabapple send pink promises,
like tiny baby fingers, into the road.

Around us there is music lifting
from windows rolled all the way down, the heat
carries portions of songs from the lips of drivers;
fingers tap the roof as heads bob to the beat.

Driving out of town, the season’s change
gets marked with signs of orange, their
directional nature reassuring that order
is once again restored with the rise of Mercury.

The river low and green banked, pulls alongside
the town that has settled into its curves. Willows
begin to weep, and fathers stand with toes in the water
showing sons how to cast out and reel in.

We pull to the side of the road for ice cream,
the olds stand scattered in their early afternoon
glory, leaning on canes in lines for sweet creams
in flavors of their youth. This is one more summer

added to the decades; time allowing them green
leaves for just a short while longer, and giving them
another chance to smile at their lovers while playfully
catching drips that slide down cake cones.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08

In the moments of waiting

The river is at its banks, willing
spring with sheer force and for the first
time, I can see the hills lit up
in the pallid end of winter’s grip;

clouds hang lazy in a pink-tinged
yellow sunset lighting up
spires of churches and dusty
smokestacks, factories in full blaze.

Mangled branches pierce the horizon
pushing fingertips of new green, a promise
of life to bring us a much needed bounty
if only we could wait that long.

Aleathia Drehmer 2008

Published by Kendra Steiner Editions 5/08