Paperweight Poetry

You scold me when I forget to clean up You curse me when the house has a flood You dam me because you fall from the pool by my feet But don't you see you're slipping in a puddle of my blood? -anna sluder

Sleep wake Her legs gnarled within themselves like a twisted tree trunk in the middle of the hallway at school Sleep wake And people whirl by like leaves caught in a vortex of hurricanes Sleep wake So the lovers carve their names into her stomach, sap oozing out Sleep wak So the rednecks pockmark her with bullets for target practice Sleep wa So the popular girls crack her arms, climbing her to get ahead, Sleep w So the jocks chop and carry her for weight training before the football game Sleep And the geeks slice her into thin paper to carry the heft of their equations Sleep Sleep -anna sluder

in the broth of morning light of the morning sun the facade of night ebbs away as the stars gnaw upon their lips stretch and crane their necks to see and to stay but they drop like bullet shells clanking to the ground, those stars, and the sky thrusts its torch onward to the battlefield and the broth of morning light of morning sun stirs and broils with the fallen souls of thousands of stars. -anna sluder