To a Childhood Friend

We draped the windows

With your Little Mermaid

Covers and made sandwiches

And lemonade and popped

In Aladdin into the VHS.

 

The light burned through

In pinks and blues, the room

Seeming like a magic cave

With a magic box pulsing

With lights, colors, and songs.

 

I noticed your Barbies under

The bed like the girls in Juarez

Lying like mannequins dreaming

Of dresses in the cold dessert night.

 

Your Victorian stamps of fat

Girls getting scratched by cats

And crying their fat oil-based

Tears onto their tea and scones.

 

Today I thought of you as I drove by

Your house, your window like a puzzle

Missing a piece, or like your Ouija board

And its missing planchette we never did find. 

Author's Note

image from http://browse.deviantart.com/photography/?q=ouija%20board#/ds9dxm

Reviews

[Alessander]

geez, I was gonna review this piece, then I noticed a ouiji board ad lol it seems that the ads on this site are word sensitive - hmmmm...that gives me a lot of devious ideas...anyhow, the details of this poem are very "concrete" and well chosen - I know it's hard to choose which details of all our memories go into the poem, and I think all the "facts" that you inserted work on both the literal and figurative level.

I esp like the allusion to the Juarez Women who have gone missing, "mysteriously" and the comparison of how they are like mannuqiuns dreaming of dresses, while those decadent fat-cat women of society (uhhh hm, real house wives of...) seem so absurd.

You wrap it up nicely with the childhood adventure of playing the ouijiboard, with it's otherworldly, naughty, and deathly undertones -

the brother I thought disrupted the flow of the poem, but i can trace the puzzle/game word association - still, i'm not sure if I would include him in this particular piece.

One of you better works, imo. Kinda reminds me of "ouijiboard" by Morriessey, but that song was much more sentimental, like he always lol