My Cardboard Balcony

The Creeper On The Second Floor by Belinda Roddie I'm lifted from my bed by a hand I cannot see. The invisible fingers prod the dents and divots in my back, a textured mosaic across my skin. I am being guided to the window, where I see her dragging a scratched oar across the watery mouth of the canal. Just glancing at her is like receiving a vaccine for the first time. I am protected from all ills, the ache in my arm from the metaphorical needle subsiding quickly, with a warmth replacing the vacuum in my chest. The palm concealed from my sight presses hard into my shoulder, and I careen into the pane, the imprint of my cheek lingering, my shallow breaths fogging up the glass. She looks up briefly, her eyes widen, and she rows faster, faster, until she beats the current back and disappears from my view. I am only a simple soul yearning for more than a shadow to love me. I will keep watching her when I can, while my imaginary confidante gives me insight on ...

No OneWord update today. Happy Wednesday!

NOTE: This poem was actually written on March 31st, 2016. I decided to hold off on posting it until I had performed it in front of the high school English class I am co-teaching, as part of a unit they were doing that involved performance poetry. Enjoy. To The Tightrope Walkers by Belinda Roddie I am faithful to a personal balance. I am devoted to an equilibrium. A tightrope has been tied between two rough lips of a gorge, and placing one foot after the other, I straddle the tense bridge that connects me to the other side, and once I reach it, I carefully turn around and go back the way I came, and so it goes, forever. I am not an acrobat by any stretch of the imagination, but I still expect myself to keep steady so I don’t fall into the deep ravine below, where one current takes me one way, and another takes me the opposite direction. Angry rapids and jagged rocks eagerly wait for me to succumb to a seemingly inevitable plunge. An F and an M are carved into th...

"Well, this is a pain in the neck," Charlotte quipped sardonically as we sat cross-legged in her bedroom, eating chips and drinking her father's beer. "Either we get suspended or even expelled from school, or we end up wreaking havoc attempting to cover our tracks by silencing the principal. What a fucking dilemma!" "There's always kidnapping," Donald offered. "No, Donald. No kidnapping."

Auntie Allison had never minded the idea of being a domestic housewife. In fact, the concept of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of her children felt like a dream to her. Sure, many of her more feminist friends bugged her about the subject once she got married. The maid of honor at her wedding, Sheila, swore to remain single forever. She worked as a doctor at the local hospital. “Women should be empowered to do anything they want,” Auntie Allison said to me when I was visiting her, “and I wanted to be a mother.”

by Belinda Roddie Sad Lefty came to baseball hammered. Every game, without fail, he would stumble onto the field with the smell of cheap whiskey on his breath, the alcoholic cloud hovering over him like a swarm of hungry, sweaty gnats, eager to feast on him once he inevitable collapsed under the weight of a fly ball. His uniform stained and awkwardly lopsided on his gaunt, crooked frame. Many expected Lefty to be fat, a Babe Ruth of the twenty-first century, choking down hot dogs with beer serving as a solvent. He did not like eating. He preferred only the nectar of the gods, only the nectar was honey bourbon and the gods were scraggly white-haired gnomes behind a dirty counter, pouring booze with one hand and waving away belligerent patrons with the other. "I'll get to you. Just hold on." Sad Lefty, of course, did not play left field - he played center, or right when Webster's elbow acted up, and he couldn't hold his arm out long enough to make a catch. Nor was...

If you want to compete with everyone else, you're gonna have to shape up at least a little bit. Get your mile down to seven or eight minutes. Lift dumbbells that are heavier than ten pounds each. Punch something! Doesn't have to be a punching bag, either. Be ready to push yourself, but above all, be willing to fuck someone up if they cross you. It's time for you to stop being diplomatic and move to belligerence instead.