Danielle Blasko, a Detroit native currently enjoying a freelance writing life on an east coast beach, is a low-residency MFA student at the University of New Orleans. Her poetry has appeared in AIM Magazine, Qarrtsiluni, Ellipsis 2009, and Moose & Pussy Magazine. Lately, she's been reviewing poetry books and writing a monthly fashion blog for Eidia Lush shoe company.
Three Poems (August 20, 2010. Issue 20.)
My First Encounter with a Few Good Ole Boys
You say the snakes round here
ain’t got no danger.
You even get close enough
to pry open their mouths
with forefinger and thumb,
but you tell me that you
shoot them in the backs of their
pink, fleshy throats anyway.
In Today’s News: A Blow Up Doll Stands in for Groom
People come here
to watch people.
I watch people watching
other people. A man
with smooth, black skin
wears vintage-green leather,
peers out from gold, round frames
at two girls who want to be
“alternative,” but shop at the mall,
tote gold-sequined purses,
drink caramel macchiatos.
We make eye contact,
him and I. And aware
that we've been caught
we quickly turn away.
Free Coffeeshop News
I pick a stool near the window with parking lot view to enjoy a frozen yogurt parfait. The boy who delivers Free Coffeeshop News enters to switch out the papers in the stand next to my seat, creating one of those badly timed awkward moments, and being that people think themselves so clever, breaks the silence with a rhetorical is that for me? I smile and remain silent. When I catch him watching me get into my fuel-efficient midsize car, license plate unchanged, bumper sticker that reads Stop Bitching, Start a Revolution, I know exactly what he’s thinking before he shakes his head and calls me a damn Yankee.
Five Poems (June 20, 2010. Issue 18.)
For My Mother
I remember you went after him with a butcher knife.
Before that, you were pacing back and forth in the kitchen,
Slamming beer after beer waiting for your husband to come home.
When he finally stumbled into the house I don’t know what time it was
Nor whether I tucked Markie in (though I’m sure I did).
I don’t remember the accusations you screamed at him
With the butcher knife lying on the countertop behind you:
One that came from those 80’s sets
With wooden brown handles and three brass dots on each side.
Earlier that night you threw all of his clothes out on the lawn.
He was angry and said something like,
“Just because you’re a whore doesn’t mean I was cheating on you.”
You staggered into the kitchen while I sat on the staircase trembling,
Then ran back into the living room, knife in hand.
I don’t remember whether the stairs were carpeted or hardwood but
I peeled myself from where I was perched, screaming, “Stop!”
You dropped the knife. I picked up a clock radio off an end table,
Held it high above my head and hurled it to the floor.
It shattered like a mirror.
A distinctly haunting silence made me think the attention was now on me.
He hauled off and punched you in the face.
You fell flat on your back.
I don’t know if he told me to get the ice or if I knew to do that on my own.
You managed to tell him to get the fuck away from you.
I knelt beside you and held a leaking sandwich back to your broken nose.
I don’t remember the bleeding but both of your shirts were splattered with blood.
This is when my little brother stepped out from his bedroom,
Rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.
You wouldn’t let me call the police.
I only wanted to call Grandma and Papa anyway.
I waited on the porch in my pajamas with Markie sleeping in my lap.
When my grandparents pulled up to the house they asked your husband to leave
For the night. We spent the rest of the night at their house.
Maybe we went to school in the morning.
My First Love
In the basement, on my heavy-waving waterbed,
we chattered noisily in pubescent, girlish high pitches
about friends turned foe, boys and how mean they could be.
One boy said you were a bad kisser, so I kissed you
just to see if it was true. And it was, so we tried it again:
my sealed uneven lips pressed firmly against your dollish, slack smirk.
Your closed eyes kept mine wide as you caressed
my tongue with your own in the way a cat drinks its morning milk.
Later, when no one was home, curiosity flourished as I alone floated atop the waves:
knees angled opposite and up, toes curled over the hard,
wooden frame. You knelt on the pink-carpeted cement, moving
one acrylic-nailed finger into me like a hook in the mouth of a fish.
poem to my cervix
twice they have taken a piece of you from us
punched a hole through you like a sheet of paper
the second time a larger tissue sample was required
it stuck deep in the groove of the shining steel tool
watching the nurse bang bang bang the hard tool on the edge of the plastic cup the color drained slow from my cheeks
as the strangely-spotted part of us sank to the bottom in the clearest of liquids
To Liz in the Psych Ward at Oakwood Hospital in Dearborn, MI
I.
You’ve always been disturbingly striking, not Brady beautiful
but Baudelaire’s beautiful, which is better.
It could just as easily have been me in your place.
Back in the shadow dominated days, fantasies of white padded walls
cropped up like dandelions.
An extended stay in the psych ward would have given me an excuse
to act the part of that creature who lurks in the wing of the stage
behind the proscenium curtain.
Surely you’re facing your own beast now.
Last time we talked, we spoke of fulfilling the shadow side
through ritual.
How are we to tell the difference between
healthy and unhealthy ritual given the myth that dominates our time?
Perhaps we could write this off as sacrificial. Blood shed
is blood shed.
The difference between dagger and scissors
is only a matter of taste.
One time you told me your last name, Cowan, was cursed
by a gypsy in some war and that you believed it was true.
Just remember as you work to get free, to tame the brazen beast
that the best thing about a curse is that it can be broken.
II.
You say they’ve got you on four different meds: Ativan, Klonopin, Zoloft and Abilify.
You think what you need is Zoloft and Weed,
which you’ve been asking for
(since medically it’s legal there),
but they claim they can’t give it to you.
People have been passing out in the hallways
from heavy medication doses,
not you, not in the hallway anyway.
You have more class than that, and experience.
Thinking of you still stuck in that shiny floor shithole,
struggling to stay afloat among the real crazies
shouting obscenities at you, has sent me
searching for my own set of prescriptions.
Some crotchety old black woman won’t leave you alone you tell me,
continues to call you an old bitch to which you respond,
“I’m the youngest bitch in here.” It makes me laugh to think she called
your hair skanky, tried to make you move while waiting in line for meds.
And to think she believes she owns the hospital!
Even funnier, that you took the time to correct her.
As you work to find the balance riding that psyche seesaw, remember to keep
both feet firmly planted on either side of the fulcrum as to avoid snapping.
To tilt toward Shadow is to self-destruct in scrutinizing the Self.
Tipping the balance too far right, to be all Ego, equally errant.
Your release depends on your ability to straddle the teeter-totter
center steadily like standing on a surfboard on cement.
III.
Not to express guilt,
my newfound muse, but
for just a moment the thought
crossed my mind that perhaps
if the books would’ve shipped sooner,
this might have played out differently.
Just a simple gesture of kindness
might have made you rethink
picking up the pair of scissors,
which my brother described
as coming out of nowhere,
and stabbing yourself repeatedly
in the blue-thin forearm skin.
IV.
The prolonged
psychiatric parade
has finally reached
its peak, the point
where peace is achieved
or pretended
convincingly enough.
Speaking of points,
it has occurred to me
that the breaking point
of the human psyche
is like the boiling point
of liquid: just when things
seem to be heating up,
the pot boils over.
Epistle of a Bastard Girl
It is dead but whole the flower you gave me
With the note attached signed cleverly
Forget-Me-Not like the flower that held it.
It is dead but whole the life that you gave me
With the certificate of birth unsigned cleverly
So that you unlike the flower might forget me.
Counting the petals for the first time I count seven
Forget me, forget-me-not, plucking each one until
seven are one under the heel of my unforgiving foot.
Table of Contents
Two Poems (April 20, 2010. Issue 16.)
This is the Oral & Anal Sex Generation
Two girls pool their lunch money
for flavored lattes in a bookstore café.
They categorize themselves as
“girls-who-dress-preppy but aren’t preppies,”
and I want to stand up and tell them that
some people might label them “poseurs.”
Instead, I shake my head, sip my latte and continue
to listen to the whispers about so-and-so
fucking so-and-so right in the ass
and to the detailed description
of the blow-job given at lunch.
Bookstore People Watching
They loiter near the magazines
in capes and chain-linked pants.
One of them says, "Chuck Norris's
dick is so big he can suck it himself."
"But if anyone ever raped me," the
lone girl says, "I would kill them if
I didn't want them to. Wouldn't I?
Don't you think I would?"
"If there's nuclear
war, we're going to get zombies."