Two Poems from Natalie Homer

Original image via Morguefile

8 Hot New Tips Guaranteed To Make Your Summer Sizzle

1. The honeysuckle will bloom limp yellow hands.
Hold the flower and pinch / just above the calyx.
Pinch hard enough to break through the petal,
but not all the way to the insides.
………..You’ll see what I mean.
 
2. Mix things up by imagining someone else
spraying poison up the chimney, knocking egg sacs down.
 
3. Try keeping your clothes on / as you walk into the river.
It will be uncomfortable going in / and again, coming out.
 
4. The dryer will sing in the basement. Don’t be afraid
to roll the lint into a ball / the color of a storm.
 
5. Leave the lights on.
I mean all of them.
I mean the bulb in the refrigerator.
I mean Ursa Minor
and the oxidized sconce on the corner of the garage / scratched / and full of bugs.
 
6. Brush your teeth. Stare at the enamel / basin.
Wonder if the dead russet rat, soggy and fat, was a dream.
 
7. Use your hands / bare / to collect worms when they drown up from the ground.
 
8. Collect also / the first branch that brushes against your hat.
Put it in your bag like it’s something worth saving.
Better yet, plant it in the ground. See what it has to give.

— ∞ —

A Woman Cop, the Driver Says Into His Phone

Burnt summer in full swing
with its scorched weeds that crack the concrete.
Show me
the Queen Anne’s Lace, clover, and chicory.
Gather them in a bouquet,
nail them by their stems
.to the pantry wall in the basement
to dry through the ashen winter.
The petals wane into dusty pastels,
dry,
……….yes
brittle,
……….yes                  but still beautiful
in their way.
What have you got to prove?               They said.
I said
whiskey, watered down.
I said red and blue, my own independence day parade
with its metallic flashes
and powdery cracks of flame.
.

.
Natalie Homer is an MFA candidate at West Virginia University. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Salamander, The Lascaux Review, Sierra Nevada Review, and others.