My Cardboard Balcony

Son Of Kings by Belinda Roddie David, David, please come home some day. Your father's sick and dying, and the nights are very cold. You took away the fire in a box when you departed. Now you watch the world grow dark while your name repeats on the wind: David, David, David. David, David, you are the son of kings. But they lost their crowns and also their heads in wars long ago. Your brothers fight for bread, every crumb sticking to their teeth, while they screech your name like wounded beasts: David, David, David. David, David, you are always welcome here. I'll make you your favorite soup, and we'll eat for an extra two. Your father's singing philosophy to cope with his impending doom, while in the room, we wipe his face after he cries, and we sing him a humble lullaby, called, "David, David, David."

We flew over rooftops and found gold coins buried in the mouths of petrified gods. We sank into streams and grew music in fresh soil, listening to each growing stalk sing. We thought about invading Heaven and taking over the paradise, but we were too tired after such a long, fun day. We settled on drinking a bottle of wine each, while the trains rolled over our toes.

Old Haunts by Belinda Roddie Mangy hair, loose lips, smile held together by base clips from a microscope. You take my hands and try to warm them, but there's no circulation in your fingers. Because you are bones, and your jaw dangles in a perpetual expression of shock and awe. Undress me when it's midnight, and you will see the skin wrinkling like a dying pumpkin. I lost the magic long ago, before the clock struck its last tableau. Cold sheets, cold pillow, dead willows out in the courtyard. I kiss your skull and feel your brain pulse beneath it. Tender is the hour.

I didn't have much disposable income, as about ninety percent of the money I made went to rent, utilities, and basic food and clothing needs. Therefore, I was floored to find a beautiful red velvet jacket on display in the local thrift shop - gold embroidery, black buttons, only ten bucks. I could feel like a freaking king in this and still be able to afford dinner.

Brewing by Belinda Roddie Come, take this pretty blue towel and clean the rain from my face. Hold me against your chest and let me breathe in your pulse, your syllables, your poetry. Make a dent in the stubborn steel that wraps around my words like barbed wire. They have imprisoned themselves within their own paranoid barricade, and I cannot coax them out. You stick the needle into my tapestry and leave threaded hearts in gold embroidery. I'm stimulated by kisses, even when the spoon stirs the hot soup in my cold brain. I think the world ought to be melted like hot cocoa into a cup, something that we can sip on from the comforts of our bedroom: Traveling without the fare, or the slow flight through drunken time zones. I think I will marry you one day, but only when you have at least one gray hair, to remind me that we're mortal, and the dust collecting between our toes is the spirits of our ancestors sleeping. Come, wipe t...

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"Easy now. Keep a good grip on her. Atta girl." "Steady now...steady..." They lowered the limp body onto the deck of the boat. Waterlogged, gray-faced, wide-eyed. It was clear that the seaswept child was dead. Chelsey knelt down beside the corpse and made a lugubrious sign of the cross.