Free! Online Books, Poems, Short Stories - Read Print Library

Online Books, Poems, Short Stories - Read Print Library: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Hey look, you dropped your pocket.

Nah. It's just a poem.

Look up

into the whorl, into the star-fed sea

shell of an ear, a colossal cochlea,

home of the bell-bones

which tremble in weightlessness.

Out there

the sun sounds like a sandstorm,

Saturn’s rings crackle

and beyond the static God

runs a thumb along the lip of the universe

as if tuning a water glass—

Disturbing, whimsical, tragic, in your face. Art.

Mark Jenkins // Street Installations

R. H. W. Dillard, Blackbird

 

An interesting essay about writing.

R. H. W. Dillard, Blackbird

Because Mortal Coil was already taken.

I know why I'm here. But why are you here? For some reason you've stumbled into the spiral. So now that we're here together let's spin a story shall we?

I'll begin with my grandmother. She passed away over a year ago. But, this isn't about grief. She came to visit me. Yes, I know that sounds crazy but I don't care. I was about to fall asleep when I felt this overwhelming feeling of joy, a dizzy feeling. It wasn't coming from me because I had just been fretting over the dishes I decided to leave in the sink for the night, feeling guilty and a bit sorry for myself thinking about how bone tired I was taking care of the five kids, dog, and grandpa who lived with us at the time.

Then I heard/felt a snicker, or not a snicker, more of a snort-gufaw. I knew it was my grandmother, the same way you know from the smell wafting through the house in the morning that someone is up and about cooking bacon and eggs and putting on the coffee.

"What are you doing?" I asked aloud. My husband was sleeping.

"Practicing," she replied.

She didn't die that day. I later found out from my mother she had slipped into a diabetic coma and Frank (her husband) gave her a priesthood blessing and brought her back.

My Grandma Betty had been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all her life. One of the practices of the religion is a laying on of hands and anointing of consecrated oil for the healing of the sick.

Grandma Betty had been in a lot of pain, struggling with her health for quite some time. Before she died she told my mom she was tired of living and wanted to go on but,

"Every time I get ready to go, that dang Frank gives me a blessing and keeps me here."

When Frank was else-where, she passed away sitting up, reading a western, caught in the world of a Louis L'amour book.

I don't even know the title.

But I wonder what chapter, what line, what word it was that she crossed over with.