Tonight I believe I will share with you a few poems from my new collection Crossroads, which debuted earlier this year from Seraphmera Books. Enjoy!


“Admitting Failure”


There is an impossibly loud
Crushing sound that begins,
Ricocheting around your skull,
Iron filing shrapnel full of
Bitterness and regret and anger
That ignites with a gunpowder blue
Brilliance dazzling you into
Mute silence for a split second,
A moment long enough,
Profound enough
For you to hear the atoms of your
Dreams splitting,
Incinerating beneath heat,
The line of fire leading back
To your heart;
You hear your breath heavy
And whistling in your throat,
Your lungs too tired to draw
Another pitiful pocket of air,
And then you are blinded,
Blinded by the demolition of
The road you were on,
The path you’ve been plowing
Down for so many years
Because the Muses told you to trust,
Because the Fates are cruel,
And because everyone insists
That one should follow their
Passions against all odds
Because it is the only aspect of
Life that makes it truly worth living…
And they have not lied,
But lacked the ability of foresight,
And premonition
Of courtly advisement and mentoring,
Of precaution,
And prevention
Of life’s many poisoned barbs
That twist from the vines
Obscuring the path
You were once treading
Not so lightly upon…


“Winter Mornings”


On cold winter mornings,
An hour before the
School bell rang for
First period,
Her mother would gently
Wake her with whispered
Encouragements to rise
And ready herself for the day.
In a haze she would pull herself
From her warm bedcovers and stumble
Blindly to the bathroom
Where her mother had laid
Out her clothes for the day
Next to the wall heater
So they would not
Chill her delicate nerves.


As a child,
I would awake to the sound
Of wind howling against the plastic
Sheeting stapled over my bedroom
Window to keep out the cold,
And the desperate sorrow
Of my mother cussing
My father’s memory
As she hauled wood from
The frozen pile outside
To feed the salvaged
Cast iron claw-foot wood stove
Used to heat the old farmhouse
Where we lived.
5am came early to our frozen limbs
As we huddled around black metal,
In what served as our dining room,
Wrapped in old moth-eaten
Mexican blankets,
Praying for enough heat to
Dress ourselves by.


Perhaps this explains why
When faced with the smallest
Of life’s obstacles now
She crumbles like
Dust from a butterfly’s wing,
Whereas I usually shiver and shrug,
Knowing just how much worse
It can always be.


Crossroads is available for purchase through this website, the Seraphmera Books site or Amazon. Copies are also available through your local book retailer by request.

Tags: Crossroads, Gabrielle Faust, poetry

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