“Fossilized Remains Of The Day”
The death of childhood robbed you of memories.
I told you your money’s no good in here.
I laughed as you tried to frame the sky
With aluminum pipe,
Then found you naked with the fan running.
Everything we owned was stapled to the sun.
Oh holy one, I see your soul strung up like a pinata from the orange tree.
Why did you lock me out of paradise and swim laps in her bed?
I wanted your dick on a stake.
I wanted you to marry Lorena Bobbit.
When you escaped
They celebrated your second coming.
The next day you washed our clothes in Jack, hanging them to dry
in the blue-violet-purple nuclear fallout.
Did the scars on my face give you direction?
Your dark eyes mask the jagged shards of self.
When you are parched, dry and rotting, there will be no water left
in the well of salvation.
They will bury your fossilized remains
Next to a yucca tree in the desert.
One word — unbridled! Fantastically dark and hard-hitting.
Sheree La Puma-Watson is a writer of short fiction, poetry, historical non-fiction and crime novels. She has published in most genres and has worked at the L.A. Weekly as a music editor alongside Mikal Gilmore, who later became the editor of Rolling Stone. She received her MFA in critical studies/writing, from The California Institute of the Arts, the school that Walt Disney founded. She has lived in England where she was active with the Women Writer’s of Cambridge, and she is currently writing a new book based on the L.A. punk music scene in the late 70′s.