pam-mentations.com

I wrote these unpublished poems about two decades ago. Where did the time go? Booting up my old computer felt like cracking open a time capsule.

– Pam Lindsay

The Scream

Everybody ducked
well, not ducked so much as cringed,
squatted a little,
not as sharp and shallow as a flinch,
more like a startle, but with curiousity,
reacting to the scream,
not a cliché scream,
not a high-pitched scream,
not a blood curdling scream,
more like someone opened a window
and shook out an old sheet,
just had enough and belted it out,
and so many people blushed,
not because they were ruffled,
not because they were afraid,
so many people worried they had let one loose,
that scream that always caught itself
somewhere around the heart,
the one that got swallowed day after day
as the treadmill began,
and maybe today it escaped,
and the thought left them thrilled
but sheepish,

and it changed the way they walked
for the rest of the day.

Fashionably Late

The anniversary of my death
was commemorated with a fold-out
section in a fashion magazine.
My breasts were bound with a pink chiffon scarf tied
in an enormous bow between my slender shoulders
My lips, wet and cherry red, floated
like a lotus on the etiolate image of my face,
and on the pages that trailed behind the glossy picture
laid the story of how I found
a way to slake the pressure to be beautiful at any cost
“She had grit,” described the words,
defending any question of my courage
“There was no note,” the article proclaimed,
omitting any reference to the blood-stained contract on my table
and in conclusion solemn words declared, “she had a promising career.”

I traced, with ghostly fingers, the tribute
pressed like a leaf in Volume Six, Issue Forty-One
and only now I saw I was so young,
too late to undo what had been done,
in a single act of blind defiance
I’d bound myself and my life’s promise
     to a casket lined with pink chiffon. 

Wind Affair

I can feel but cannot touch
the fickle air,
molesting me at will,
finding personal places to explore,

strong and urgent,

soft and gentle,
  like a lover 
  blowing in my ear,

seducing with its warmth,
abusing as it coldly lashes out,

then departs
with no memory
of who I am 
or what we shared