Ready, Always

Outside
red dahlias drooped.

Inside he put the fan
in the window

she sliced lemons
drank sweet tea over ice.

“Is it too hot to make love?”
He leaned down

kissed the scar
next to her right breast.

When young she wore tight
white tee shirts pulling them closer.

Full of magic and ready
always ready.

When his hand brushed them
they blushed.

When he kissed them
they grew.

Some days he wondered
where he would be

without them
how he would live with what was left.

 

Her Persian Rug Is An Elegy She Tries to Write

Lush red wool
edged in green
Turkish horseman
at the border
unfurls
at night.

By morning
loose threads scatter.
One by one
she collects them
in a glass bowl

long ago holding
goldfish
won at a fair
when fairs
existed.

Now she weaves
lonely strands
into a mourning shawl
before the next invasion.

————————————————————————-

Chella Courington is a writer and teacher. With a Ph.D. in American and British Literature and an MFA in Poetry, she is the author of four poetry and three flash fiction chapbooks. Her poetry and stories appear in numerous anthologies and journals including SmokeLong Quarterly, Nano Fiction, The Los Angeles Review, and The Collagist. Her recent novella, The Somewhat Sad Tale of the Pitcher and the Crow, is available at Amazon. Reared in the Appalachian South, she now lives in Santa Barbara, CA with another writer and two cats but can still buck dance thirty minutes straight.