Trina Stolec / The Last Alleyway Reading / Cat's Impetuous Books and Stuff / Kent, Ohio

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Trina Stolec
Northwest Ohio

He Said If I Think Like My Poems,
I Need Serious Medication
Sometimes the nightmares frighten me.
But in the technical, clinical sense,
I am sane. I think.
I know right from wrong,
the golden rule and all that,
step careful around other toes
so as not to damage nerve endings.
Contrary to what some think,
I don’t want to
scar people for life,
but how can you control
a stray thought or image
that pops into your head?
Are you supposed to?
Maybe medication would help,
but in the technical, clinical sense
I know real from unreal,
at least from my perspective
which is all anyone knows
isn’t it?
And if I wake up in the morning,
count the cracks in my ceiling,
follow them down the wall –
see how they thicken
and narrow at points,
expand and contract,
like a lung,
like it used to breathe,
like the wall used to be alive
and by the act of living,
existing, being, breathing
it caused the cracks and gullies
that now threaten
to bring plaster on my head,
reveal the secrets
in the rafters.

But something made the wall
stop breathing,
so the plaster
would stay where it is. And no amount of medication will help that.

Sashquash, Superheroes, and Elephants on White Walls
You know I’m a bit
              “offbeat”.
I see Sashquash, superheroes, and elephants in the sky;
purple hats on bushes I don’t know the name of,
              but admire their choice of spring attire.
Your piano stool talks to me;
              tells me how careless and negligent you are
              when you get comfortable with a love.
                            You say, it lies.
                            You say, stools aren’t people.

Sashquash isn’t real unless you touch him.

I hear your need to possess
from your new stereo,
              new car,
              new house.
                            You paint all the walls white
                            to make them more “acceptable” to prospective buyers
                            you aren’t going to sell to.

Elephants aren’t supposed to fly.

You indulge my “offbeatness”,
but won’t let Sashquash, superheroes, and elephants fly
across your respectable white walls.
Don’t want them staring you in the face
as you sip your morning coffee,
skip the breakfast I don’t bring to you.

Superheroes fail you.

Comic books are for kids, you say.
                            You got old, you say.
                            I need to grow up, you say,
                                        let superheroes shatter on our hardwood floor,
                                        sweep them into the trash with the dead bush blooms.

Bushes can’t change their attire like people.

You think the elephants are pachyderm gray, but
they’re flash burn green.

White walls don’t make sense to me.

You can’t see Sashquash,
                            superheroes,
                            green elephants,
                            or the screaming maul on our bedroom ceiling
                                        that I talk to Joan of Arc about.