Color and Crashing

Eyes, windows, metaphors; don’t you close your curtains when you see a terrible scene?
A car crash makes the shutters bounce. The paint’s peeling off my eyelids.
Shut the glass on my soul. The outside screams are inaudible yet my windows are witnesses.
Polish me perfectly. I have cried my last can; color-coded yet clear.

Morose Memories

Bully beating, bloodthirsty, bandit sticking sticks, tossing stones.
Gathered crowd chatters, snapping proof of altercation.
Lies are not far. Contained are they in jars.
Revealed like secrets whispered on a cool night, broken glass, footsteps blight.

Wooly

The wool upon my head is like a helmet.
It keeps out the evils of the world.
And yet sometimes the evils find a way to seep in,
the sprouting of nightmares, troubling yet ordinary.
I shave and regrow.

Glass Person

Your see-through body shimmers in the sun but you are so fragile.
I hugged you so tight you broke and punctured me.

I did not cry.
Instead I bled tears.

Pieces of you became in parts of me.
Now I shine as well.

Round

The roundness,
to be covered with big clothes to hide the fat,
your rotundness belongs to you.
Visual violation not deserved, “No one needs to see this.”
Return home, shed the skin and shower.
Then you study yourself in the mirror.
What you see isn’t what you want.
So you break the mirror and pick up a shard.
Cut away the layers.
You think this is logical.
Make the onion cry.
You think this is logical.
Then you pause, the shard so close to your skin.
You drop it to the floor and take yourself back into the kitchen.
“I’m okay,” you say.
For the moment, you’re correct.

Rickey Rivers Jr was born and raised in Alabama. He is a writer and cancer survivor. His poetry has appeared in Former Cactus, the Ginger Collect, Vamp Cat Magazine, and is forthcoming in Mojave Heart Review, Royal Rose Magazine and a Twist in Time Magazine (among other publications).

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