Angry

She’s living like a gloss-painted wall

Planted, strong, inscrutable, slick

Behind the wall, she tussles with explosion,

as it jigs and punches in her open-fingered fist.

Occasionally, she roars, and is indignant

at how the air diminishes the flood

of sound to nothing, so that silence is her censor

and nothing may be said, nothing heard.

Sometimes she takes a deep and sudden bite

from her own forearm; or almost kills her girls;

or smacks her head against the steering wheel

and giggles at the horn’s small howl.

Once she was so needy that she sought

respite in church—although God wasn’t hers—

and there she wrote down words so harsh they vanished

as she turned each page.  They couldn’t be endured.

On better days she’s bramble-torn, her arms

and legs ooze, hot with superficial wounds.

She knows, on days like these, to let the cool breeze

cool the skin, the blood, the head, the mood.