Big legs, Asshole & The writing on the wall
by James Iredell
[ poetry - june 09 ]
Big legs
Breached out the birth canal massive legs first, her body normal as a body, a baby's body: skin and teeth. A shriek like the song of humpbacks. She grew, her legs expansive, exponential. Her legs were the trunks of redwoods. Her legs became Studebakers. She drove forward into redwoods. Everyone stared. What's wrong with that woman? Her legs became their own ecosystem: rains of bleach-blonde peach fuzz, clouds of cotton socks and landslides of darkened sweatpants. Custom shoes size 18 women's. Her crutch is her body, so normal, skin and teeth.
Asshole
He strutted down the street, which was more like an avenue, it was so wide. Skyscrapers scraped the edge of the sky far above the cars' roofs and the above this guy's faux-hawk. Below his loafers the sidewalk glittered with spit out wads of chewing gum. This guy never "walked.” He was an asshole.
The writing on the wall
lilts along, a feminine hand. Every e curls like a tongue, the word tongue, in fact, tastes the wall. The wall tastes the girl's hand. The hand, sweat-salted from wheelchair-pushing, grease-grimed from bridging glasses to her nose's bridge (that part of her nose was flat, just like a bridge, which makes this cliché an apt metaphor) was a road to her mind. Her eyes were holes that sucked in the world's light, the light mother-darkened by a mother with a voice as rough as the wall.
