How I Got My Wings

public sculpture, buenos aires

How I Got My Wings

by Lisa Vihos

They began                                                   

as an annoying itch                          

between my shoulder blades                                   

running along the scapula                           

like poison ivy                                               

turned pins and needles                               

turned porcupine quills                                

instigating an irritation                    

so profound I had to drink                           

myself to sleep each night;                           

a half bottle of cabernet                               

per side. I was beside myself                        

with grief over a wide array                        

of losses over a long trail                              

of years and tears.                                        

Tears, I had shed                               

by the bucket.                                                           

But one day

the itch was gone.

I woke up with a feather

tickling my nose, realizing

my own wings caressed

my face like the hands

of a phantom lover

who wanted me blessed,

wanted to tease me awake

and surprise me

with a gift. The gift

to fly up out of the pain

at the drop of a hat

or the flap of a wing

like going airborne

in a dream.

~ first published in Seems

I Wanted To Grow Up

cover photo: stephan mazurek

I Wanted To Grow Up

by Lisa Vihos

I wanted to grow up to be a poet.

The burly, mountain-man kind of poet

with a thick beard and a wild look in my eye.

I would wear torn jeans and flannel shirts

with sleeves rolled up over thermal underwear.

I would not be a drunkard.

Every morning, I would rise before the sun

and make a pot of coffee, then, to work.

When words failed me, I’d split wood, take a bath.

Now and then, I would journey to small colleges

up and down the coast, reading and teaching

on dappled sunlit afternoons in ancient classrooms

that smell of dust and youth; the brawls of academia

unable to mar my poet’s wings. I’d be a paragon

of dedication to my craft.

I would revel in the great and small, the misfit

and the misbegotten. I would sift through words

like jelly beans, roll them across my tongue

and place them ever so gently in your ear

where they might work their way down into

your solar plexus, taking hold of your digestion.

My rugged good looks would light my way

and without knowing how, I’d generally end my day

with someone’s legs wrapped around my back.

But my loneliness would be deep

and wide as the ocean. No lover’s croon

could ever keep me still or match the call

of the Sirens waiting for me on the rocks.

Me, chained to my mast, drenched in their song,

words dripping from me like sweat.

~ first appeared in A Brief History of Mail (Pebblebrook Press)

Huck Forever

photoart: ralph murre

Huck Forever

by Lisa Vihos

He comes round to my place

time and again; but won’t stay long

a night or two at most, then gone.

Traveling light, he always finds me

in the dead of night, he always

brings a trinket—found or swiped—

remember, it’s the thought that counts.

You can’t pray a lie, he says. I know,

I tried. I tried to be civilized. He is afraid

of rattle snake skin and the new moon

over his left shoulder. But, he can catch

a catfish and fry it up in a lick; lay back

with his pipe and me for the longest hours

on a summer day. The boyish eyes that gaze

from his weary face bust my heart in half.

In sleep, he mouths the names of old ghosts:

Mary Jane, Tom, and Jim, always Jim. Awake,

he tells tales of floating down river on a raft

with a runaway slave, a duke, and a king;

dying more than once to take a new name,

with con men and preachers, all the same,

in a voice that melts butter. How he survives

in between times, I’ll never know, but I suppose

he has one like me every place he goes.

~ first appeared in Big Muddy