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Elizabeth Morse
poetry
EDGES
​
Grief is a sharp-edged rock planted in a barren garden
The house is empty; the furniture is gone.
The roof lets the sky in now. The stairs will not hold.
The yard is overgrown, the garden lies in shadow.
After years and rain, the rock’s edges will be smooth.
HAZMAT
​
Blood is hazmat, containing lethal microbes.
Do not scrape the blood off the wood floor
with your nails. This is what Medea would do,
and you are not committing murder.
Anger is hazmat, the anger of eons,
put in special stone containers just
to be spirited away securely to another world.
Hazmat is always with us under different names.
Hazmat is the pieces of your soul
that look like either worms or hamburger,
depending on your perspective.
Hazmat is snippets of your unconscious.
.
Hazmat is expensive. Removal costs thousands,
requires special gear. If insurance doesn’t cover,
no one else will. Your home shouldn’t have hazmat
in the first place. What kind of person are you?
Hazmat is your most heinous acts, real or imagined.
All suicides and self-destructive impulses are hazmat.
They must be cleaned with masks and puffy white suits
Blood is hazmat: both life and death bring dangers.
NEVER AGAIN
​
I will never again stop listening to that gray voice
that tells me when to pull back from that carnival
I love to get lost in. Flamboyant purples and reds
of ferocious fun that ignite the white streets of dawn,
as I try to find my way home wearing only burn marks.
I will never again knock at the door of that place
I used to call home, where they don’t have to
take me in, never promised me anything. They just
say, Look at the time, See how late it is? Even if
it’s morning and I got there before breakfast.
I will never again long for a home that never was,
made only of sticks and stones in a forest.
Who did I think I was, Goldilocks? You’d better
get out of that chair, the witch said. It’s not yours.
I never ran so fast from the smell of baking gingerbread.
