April Lindner Poems

What if this house were every house
we'd inhabited, lost friends
to startle us from the doorway,
each broken dish seamlessly mended,
...

This collision of teeth, of tongues and lips,
is like feeling for the door
in a strange room, blindfolded.
...

Cold as a slap, this indigo sea,
where we clamber on blonde-fringed rocks,
where someone's tarted up the fishing shacks
with red paint and artful nets.
...

The worst for him was his friend turned wolf,
and the blood that splattered as he ran. The worst
for us: the hospital, his upper lip tugged back
...

The burnt church up the street yawns to the sky,
its empty windows edged in soot, its portals
boarded up and slathered with graffiti,
...

Hard as a fist, with a brain's ripe heft,
it waits, vivid as Christmas on the branch,
enticing birds to eat and scatter seed.
Hedge Apple, Osage Orange, green as sin,
...

Like refugees, they ran off empty handed,
forsaking heirloom china, cutlery,
leaving behind their hands, their tongues and teeth.
...

Though his taste buds were dying and every meal
made him grimace and wonder out loud
why we were such lousy cooks, he kept on
...

Turn the knob. The burner ticks
then exhales flame in a swift up burst,
its dim roar like the surf. Your kitchen burns white,
...