A Literary Arts Journal
Linda M Crate
3
poems
images:
"drawing, lemons and lemon blossoms in a basket,
18th century" - artist unknown
"the practical hotel steward" - John Tellman
above Public Domain
"photo of welded wire frame sculpture of dog,
implying the energy, life force or aura surrounding
the animal" - Donna Fleming
above Creative Commons
Linda M Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has five published chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017), and splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), and one micro-chapbook Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018).
Links:
https://twitter.com/thysilverdoe
of lemons & moons
the moon
sips
on my lips
leaves a lingering kiss
of silver
upon my flesh
and an endless love
of the sea
he is my father
loving and unloving—
the moon
falls upon my hair
as i'm sleeping
reminding me no matter
my age
i am always
his child
as much as i hate that idea
being a grown woman
and life waggles a finger at me
causing me some childish
slight of tongue or deed
i can only laugh
sometimes life's lemons are
wake up calls—
sometimes a lemon goes in the water
and sometimes the water goes in the lemon
a wildness that never sleeps
the dog
was calmed
by my presence
i have that aura
i've noticed
but when my mind is
as a wave
none seem capable of calming me
i have to retreat to myself
ground my wings lest they fly into the sun
and i become a second-hand
icarus in a world that doesn't want
wax wings—
sometimes music, sometimes books
other times nature
only these things seem capable of offering me
the calm i ask for when the
match of my ailment is struck—
i calm others
as part of me is always in the hearth of the storm
a wildness in me that never sleeps
no matter how many times
i try to put it to bed
even i have limits
you appeared out of nowhere
"is there really no coffee, hello?"
yes, this place is hell
because of people like you
always insisting that their wants
or needs
are greater than everything needing done
in this store which gives far too few employees
too many tasks to accomplish in eight hours—
"hello?" you snarl again
as i've already left my post to help you
"is there really no coffee?"
you demand—
i check the coffee pot
realizing that we're out of coffee
and i apologize for the inconvenience as i make fresh
whilst you make some snarky comment about
that being "my job" like we don't have anything else to do
on a night where we're understaffed
i killed you with kindness
and you apologized
telling me you felt terrible because i'm a really nice person
probably the only thing that kept my anger from
biting you—
low wage workers
shouldn't be your punching bags
we're only trying to get our jobs accomplished
as best we can whilst waiting upon
customer after customer
i try to be a good, kind person but
even i have my limits—
sometimes my patience doesn’t shine through