The Blue Marble
My sister stole a blue marble from a Chinese Checker’s game, glued it on the lid of a Popsicle-stick box, Made one-word-sheets of paper, tore them to pieces, stuffed better-day dreams inside. No one cares. Not one bit at all. Go mumble to yourself, look outside through bars, watch Soap Operas all day, make a gimp for your sister, but don’t open a locked door. When my sister said: “I’m going to kill myself.” Our father said: “I don’t give a fuck. Kill yourself. Get the fuck out of here.” How the knife got back in the drawer before she shimmied next to me in bed, I don’t know, but I died a hundred deaths.
Your Husband Said …
It didn’t happen when there was a tsunami in the Indian Ocean Waves went above 40 feet as this uncontrollable disaster became your wake of devastation Then you peed your pants became rigid, disconnected readied for an institution He prays you’ll recover forever, but it’ll happen again, he’ll give you more chances
The Human Condition
RIP Anthony Bourdain June 25, 1956 to June 8, 2018 It’s all about blood, organs, cruelty and decay; danger, risking the dark, going to bed with sweats, chills and vomits. He wanted it all: the cuts and burns on his hands and wrists, ghoulish kitchen humor, the free food, rigid nerve-shattering chaos; the sheer weirdness of kitchen life; a last stop for misfits, the dreamers, crackpots, refugees, and sociopaths; roasting bones, searing fish, and simmering liquids; the noise and clatter, the hiss and spray, flames, smoke and steam, he said it’s a life that grinds you down, you’d think chefs would kill one another with regularity; jam a boning knife into another cook’s rib cage, or brain him with a meat mallet, but not dry age.
Denise Sedman is an award-winning poet from the Detroit area. Recent work has been featured in San Pedro River Review, New Verse News, and Gravel Literary. She’s included in the 2017 feminist anthology Nasty Women Poets by Lost Horse Press.
*Originally published on June 5, 2019 in Culture/Obituaries