Cheryl Snell

Good Cry 

What else to call it? Peel 
each layer of onion
to get to the center eye, 
and it's your vision that blears.
Tears trill down pouched lids, 
all of it stinging and still. Squint hard 
at the proof of your doggedness,
the way it fills the sink with husks--each one 
slippery with juice, identical to the others--
unlike parts of your own skin, 
holding in its factories, your wrist pulsing blue, 
your chambered heart beating
everywhere at once. 


First Job 

I pull up at my brother's house, 
open the door to his son. All the way 
to the Acme, he answers my questions 
in monosyllables. I love the spiky sounds 
rooted in gurgles, gutturals now, staticky 
as the radio he builds and tears down again 
on the other side of the Keep Out sign. 

He slams the door, and the distance between us 
grows. I wish him good luck and he lifts his hand 
in a wave, but the movement stops at the wrist. 
He runs his fingers over his hair instead, as if 
to smooth a world filled with angles, the geometries 
of making and breaking, or the air he just parted, 
closing over his absence like skin.



Cheryl can be found at http://www.shivasarms.blogspot.com.