I can think of worse things.
It’s windy in your head, she says,
but I like the soughing in my mind.
Thoughts blow through me like clouds.
Words loft like plastic bags, swirling
along my shoreline, then settling.
My sister’s having a baby,
I need to buy more vanilla milk,
breeze through me like a samoon.
Does my dead son climb trees in heaven?
The squall in my head
knocks down memory lines,
fractures and uproots grief,
wrenches time from its hinges.
Tranquility is overrated,
stillness weak.
I dive, tumble, then soar on my gritty, muscular wind.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 20, Issue 3.
Chanel Brenner is the author of Vanilla Milk: a memoir told in poems, (Silver Birch Press, 2014), which was a finalist for the 2016 Independent Book Awards and honorable mention in the 2014 Eric Hoffer awards. Her poems have appeared in New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, Rattle, Muzzle Magazine, Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Spry Literary Journal, Barrow Street, Salamander, and others. Her poem, “July 28th, 2012” won first prize in The Write Place At the Write Time’s contest, judged by Ellen Bass.
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