On Viewing The Liffey At Midnight With The Ghost Of Modigliani
If only he would push her in
Filthy water always runs
backwards
And it’s going, it’s going
it’s gone
gone
Oh yes he knew
how to paint them
All blue and black
Discordant Adagio
I am a bit overwhelmed with suicide bombers and harp seals
clubbed and dog meat eating festivals and women stoned to
death for falling in love with the “wrong” man with homeless
veterans….or homeless anyone for that matter, kittens taped
into a box and thrown on the side of the road my family thinks
me a nut with my
hippie clothes and
library of beat poets
At least I am not that woman who locked her kids in the trunk
of her car so she could go shopping
The Not Bright Future (Currently On Hold)
They will not admit us so we remain abandoned
and unclaimed
We’ll go ask the Church of Saint
John Coltrane to take us to the river
of Babylon once removed or some other river or stream we don’t care
Campfires to dance around in a mummified haze of indifference
Spines tingling, nail beds raw
Yes we will fit in
We have to
Overworked Medical Examiner's Assistant
We are always shorthanded here in this
cold, dated building of tile and
sterile stainless
Made for function not visual harmony
Daily I see the unnecessary cruelties inflicted by one being onto another
Often for no reason at all
than the a rumpled twenty
The so-called “natural” deaths much fewer
I photograph mottled bruises and gaping wounds and pilfer
the blood from the cadavers
Not so meticulous tissue sectioning and the spending
of much time moving my work around, in and out and
around the fridge where some
unwanted bones stay for years
From the long window I see the park outside
Birdsong permeates these walls as formaldehyde
does my violent, intimate tasks
Life goes on amongst all these mortal cells in
slow decay
Last fall they cut the tall golden spruce down
Diseased, they said
Dead trees felled, dead
bodies incised
Tara Lynn Hawk is a poet and writer whose work has appeared in Occulum, Uut, Spelk, Spilling Cocoa, Ant-Heroin Chic, Social Justice Poetry, etc. Forthcoming In Idle Ink and Midnight Lane. Her first chapbook, The Dead, is available on Smashwords. "taralynnhawk.com"
