apocalyptic dreams comfort us
show an end to credit card debt, to war,
the confusion with our day-to-day ordinary lives
too wearily responsible to suicide
we ask God to end it for us.
the gleam in a Bible salesman’s eye
offers a glimpse of a Heaven waiting
just past the mushroom clouds
blooming on the horizon.
she walked into the bedroom and saw
what was left of her little girl
the child that smiled and cried so easily
grown into a dead woman
bound and gagged on a bed.
she never said a thing
when she saw the nipple rings
making round indentations through
her t-shirts, the tongue ring at 18
she had hoped it was a phase,
she never said a thing
as the girl wasted away, strung out at 22
she kept getting better. They talked all the time
but not about that.
and now, here is a mother
pulling leather bondage gear off her dead daughter
removing the bits of metal from her breasts
from her lips
pulling a flannel nightgown over soft, still-warm hair
covering the body
before calling the police.
if it hadn’t been for the new shopping mall
they never would have found the bodies.
six skeletons, strung with dried skin
tied to trees in the heart of the forest.
after the bodies were identified
as coming from good, upscale families
that still lived in town, naming
some of the new roads leading to the shopping mall
after the dead girls
seemed like a good idea.
after further consideration, though
they decided to just give the girls
a really nice funeral.
Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota who teaches needlepoint classes for the Minneapolis school district and writing classes at The Loft Literary Center. Her poetry has recently appeared in The Worcester Review, Broken Pencil, and Slipstream, and she is the recipient of the 2011 Sam Ragan Poetry Prize from Barton College. Her published books include Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar All-in-One for Dummies, Walking Twin Cities, and Notenlesen für Dummies Das Pocketbuch.