Resolutions
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Slapdashed to rear windows like fat rats
belching in gutter spaces and
backwater animosities searching for
spellbound rooms, to call my own my own,
and revel in the caustic sense
of fine rebuttals that are but vicious
and native to your insular worlds,
pink to crimson daffodils
as the summer suns go naked and blue,
haywire at the nuances of the lazy, fey
writhing eventides that we were holding
our spasms together to go on merrily,
bursting upon the seas and
the seven heavens of crystal sorrows
ruptured nightfalls and hazy, sloth
collapsing memories

***

Another Winter

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If you think you can speak to me
I can speak to you
speechless and dumb:
speak to me, my
love, my silly fancy, do speak to
me like soundless
waters breaking on the rocks of
yesteryears like
whispers, like fragrances
like nonchalance — don”t
you know and can”t you see
and won”t you care what
ever happens to my folly
my images, my inanity?
Still you paint you honey faces across
bitter and acrid
tea cups as I start collecting my
soul around, the bits
and pieces of shrieks and laughter,
from the myriad
bedrooms of my dark and doubtful sins”¦
O! I say, don’t bla bla around our frozen
pastures, my
naked, bleeding ecstasy — don’t let’s
bleat around again
in pain, don’t let’s lock horns in
mutual, horny memories

***

Linda C. Straub

previously printed in
Cat Fancy September 1999

Kitten

He pauses like a semicolon,
lies down beside her
in a period of rest,
an apostrophe of possession.
The morning brings
question of sustenance,
exclamation of triumph;
then, the bath,
a series of tongued dashes
across silken fur.

first published here 6/15/02:

Spotless

Her paws poke through
the laundry basket;
furred handles wrap
around my arms.
Brighter than bleached whites,
softer than plush towels,
she lies neatly folded
upon clean clothes.

Linda C. Straub has been publishing poetry since January 1997. Her work (approximately 80 poems in 25 zines) has appeared in a
variety of zines, including Writer’s Journal, Cat Fancy, Parnassus Literary Journal, Poetry Motel, PoetryMagazine.com,
Harrisburg Review, Midwest Poetry Review,etc
***

Unbending Time

Last night
I saw what the Future was like
If Time bent
And let me slink
Into its folds.

I saw a man
Intransigent
Glacial
Glowering at me.
This iciness seeped

Into my bones.
This indifference to my pain.
He had taken me
To bandage a wound.
To provide comfort.

But my sacrifice
Lacked sincerity
And I heaved up
Words of perdition
As my soul

Slumped into submission.
I woke up
Smeared with the Present.
Drenched with sweat.
And grateful for the lineality

And irreversibility
Of Time.