Friday 5 May 2023

2 Poems by Kellie Scott-Reed

Cherry

At the conclusion of a cold, dark winter,

And a wet spring,

In the produce section

Sit mealy apples, ragged oranges

Sadly waiting for purchase

And then-

there are miles of them.

The mouths of the plastic zip lock bags

heavy duty,

Bursting with the fruit of a tree

From Washington State.

Black/ red and overpriced.

Cherry season doesn’t come,

It explodes.


My hand shakes with the weight

As I lift the bag onto the conveyor.

I tell the cashier, when she scoffs

At the fifteen dollar ring-up

I’d pay a million a pound

If I had to.


The first bite, cold and hard from the fridge,

The puncture.

The firm skin between my front teeth,

The unexpected honey of the first pick,

Eruption!

I roll my eyes

And say,

“Oh. My. God”


Every. Single.Time.


You laugh, never tired of hearing me

In ecstasy,

No matter what the reason.


There, in a handful, is all of my joy.

And the pits are part of the fun.

I roll them around systematically

In my mouth

Wasting no meat,

Standing over a garbage can

That smells faintly of rotting vegetables

Spitting them out eventually.

We all move on

From the things that get in the way

Of sweetness.


And it comes too quickly,

The end of it all.



Fable

I’m running out of stories about him.

That feels like the worst thing

you can say about someone.

Such a short time collect them.

We’d see each other on the weekends.

Raised children at

each other’s homes.

And when you die young, and in such a way

that the mystery becomes the explanation.That’s what happens.

You become a fable.

The last line,

the most important thing in the world.


I recall now, glimpses of the day

but I could be remembering a reflection.

A little backward and confusing,

I still try to match my movements with the image.

What I told the officer, that

jangled and clumped his way into the living room,

still fresh in the terror;

Is that what happened?

Is it just the plot of the movie

I watched about the doting father

living a secret life

who disappeared one morning after

telling his wife he loved her?


The lessons learned:

don’t have money problems,

don’t have a marriage marred with strife,

don’t be too eager, don’t be too aloof.

What you’ve hid in your terror,

their fuel,

and to explain in the perfect words, your total innocence

Is all part of the total iviseration of the truth you believed.

Little red riding hood

her big trusting eyes.

The grandmother.

The Wolf

with his big fucking teeth..


So here is the last story:

They found him a day later

a corn field, shot in the head,

in the last desperate days of a wet, cold autumn,

the leaves so yellow, they glowed.

Twisting and twirling down,

with the breeze,

loosed from their mother

by the heavy cold rain drops; some were found in his hair.

No gun, no suspects; accept him.

Nine years later,

I think two things aloud:

Thank God they found him

and

What an odd thing to say.


Bionote

Kellie Scott-Reed songwriter, writer and AEIC of Roi Faineant Press. In spite of her cheerful disposition, she is fascinated with the dark side of humanity, and most of her written work is an investigation into her shadowy side.Her work can be found in Synchronized Chaos, Eratio Post Modern Poetry, Roi Faineant Press, music reviews at Punk Noir Magazine, and a piece in the anthology from OutCast/Anxiety presses, and Bullshit Lit in February 2023. Her songs can be found on iTunes and Spotify, under the band name Fivehead. The press can be located at roifaineantpress.com, where she conducts interviews with authors from all across the world.

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