Five Poems
by Lauren Arienzale
seasonal
small mercies come in the shape of
october ending and an email reply
on sunday morning. you say there’s
just not a good enough story to tell
and mean it, too. it boils down to the
rotation of the earth, all there is to it.
you chased the ambition until it chased
you and now – you only want to go back
home.
the lumpy blue couch and the apple
orchard and the sunset behind the
mountains. the quiet and the gentle
and the slow, nothing more.
they can watch every wisp of potential
dissolve into the forest if they’re still
desperate for an ending. ordinary was
never a dirty word, expect when they
threw you in mud just to see if you’d
sink or swim. and it might even feel
cruel if there was a feeling left to be
had. you’re trapped until you aren’t.
you’re dirt beneath their feet until
you pick up and walk away, potential
be damned.
a cautionary tale in three parts
I
it’s mid-afternoon
we’re sitting in the british countryside
almost twenty and halfway through
twenty six
more similar than different.
II
i tell you stories of autumn and
you put on a brave face, anyway
you show me watercolor paint strokes
and your newly shaved head –
you speak in poetry because lately
it all feels a bit lighter and you’re
not afraid. not anymore.
III
i’m not afraid, either,
except when i am
all our favorite people are
swimming and drowning
all at once.
they spend summers skinny dipping in dorset
they come home to chaos and joy and tragedy
and it all just repeats.
in memory of my grandmother’s side table
i dragged your side table
out to the trash today.
it broke over a year ago,
if we’re being honest. and
you had too many side tables
anyway, if we’re pointing out
the obvious, so there’s no reason
to feel sorry for one lost. but you are
no longer living, you can no longer beg
to hold onto what held you.
do you remember how it used to confuse me?
yes, it’s still about the table. it was blue and it
sat in your kitchen, dusty and covered in god
knows what kind of trash or decay or long held
memory that tumbled out of you like wildfire.
it had rows and rows of fake wooden knobs,
with fake wooden drawers. a decoration or
decoy, who knows. my little hands
could never really understand.
and it would be another decade, maybe
more, before i realized the top lid opened
to reveal a hollow underbelly. no knobs or
compartments needed. just hollow. just empty.
well, anyway, the hinges kept breaking.
and i had too many tables.
and i am so full of memories, i could never be hollow.
and you were so full of memories, it was all you ever knew.
cardinal
the day you died, it was summer and sunny.
the rest of the world was just as broken down
as our family and for once, it wasn’t a comfort
to see the collective shedding of decency
the day you died, my mother woke me in my
childhood bedroom and i barely knew what to say
expected is different that happening, i suppose
the day you died, the rest of the family shared
in something i could not. the rest of the family
held each other while i held my own arms. my father
explained away the colored hair and tattoos, as though
absolving himself from his own daughter
the day you died i went home to play video games.
twenty one and twelve sat side by side that night
and i couldn’t tell them apart.
rewilding/dewilding
i am watching the tree in my backyard
being sized up and assessed
for death
she’s leaning on the roof
of our apartment building
and kisses the bedroom windows
with branches of pine needles
she grew too tall over decades
and became too strong for attempts
at straightening her limbs,
her most wild and vibrant pieces
we’ve only know each other
for three years or so,
but really?
we’ve known each others fates for centuries
by sunset
she will be a stump of what once was
and i will practice shrinking my untamed pieces
BIO: Lauren Arienzale is a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology, former organic farmer, and poet. She is the author of the poetry collection, Mud Pie. Her work has also appeared in Scapegoat Review, The Closed Eye Open, A Plate of Pandemic, Assignment Literary Magazine, and others. Check out her website: laurenarienzale.com