by Ellaraine Lockie (California)
Source: Finishing Lines (2005)
Six months were the doctor's words
resounding from the phone
I needed a number
Choked it out of him
Telepathic telephone cord twist
His words wedge in my throat
As if the shrimp I'm eating
suddenly spawned bones
Or the phone cord ran amok
Wrapped itself around
the wrong neck
All the while
slithering the table surface
A cat size serving
of scampi licking the coils
While the patient paws
the reptilian twitch
Purring his priority status
Oblivious to the cancer
consuming his insides
As surely as he
nibbles a shrimp
And I vomit
the venomous words
--------------------
Historical Novel
by Ellaraine Lockie (California)
Source: Finishing Lines (2005)
I'm reading my nightly novel
When a word brings you
into blurred focus: bombastic
I look it up in Roget's Thesaurus
hoping alikeness will define
the fuzzy edges of a year's futility.
I find grandiloquent, magniloquent
inflated, verbose, padded, pretentious
All appropriate to your presence
I read on that pretentious
refers to language that is purposely
inflated in an effort to impress
And there you are
as real yet fraudulent
as rain on a full-moon night
Each word out of your mouth
a puffed-up drizzle that shrivels
the pages of the past.
------------------
Copyright (c) 2005 to Ellaraine Lockie.
Available in print edition.
--------------------
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Poet from California
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Ellaraine is a well-published and awarded poet who has received seven nominations for Pushcart Prizes and has three previous chapbooks:
1. Midlife Muses, (Poetry Forum) (winner of their 2000 chapbook contest)
2. Crossing the Center Line, (Sweet Annie Press)
3. Coloring Outside the Lines, (Plowman Press).
She also teaches school and community poetry workshops.
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