Linda Price

Part of Her

Nine pounds
and five ounces
of 46 chromosomes,
23 coming from your mother
my best friend.
Two blue eyes
that one chromosome
picked from
the 23 your mother
my best friend,
gave you and stuck
into that melon head,
right above your mother's,
my best friend's,
nose.

Holding you,
half of my best friend
in a baby boy pod,
I felt like
I was in Germany again.
Taking a piece of broken bottle
and gluing it to my own
painting of the street.
Feeling my own German
heritage at home.

What it must
feel like
to be a mother.
Holding part of yourself
in your own arms.
Staring into your own blue eyes,
into your own life,
and having a new one reflect
you
at the same time.
Some kind
of tree limb your mother,
my best friend,
accidentally broke off
a sycamore
and couldn't lay on the ground.




Smoking and Drinking

It's in my genes,
skipping generations
along with the blue eyes
my father could have given me.
Instead I have this hankering
to turn my lungs black
and die the way my grandfathers did.
Not on the World War Two battlefields
they (luckily) missed out on,
but the hospital bed sheets,
standard issue to save on cost.

It's the way I feel
coolly breathing in hot ash
while I sip coffee
and talk about my aspirations
to own my own bookstore
in downtown Cincinnati,
trying to feel complete.
It's about spending more time with her.

Three and a half years
of time wasted,
time spent not fucking around,
only to be redeemed
by a barmaid slut
who'll come to the first guy
decent looking.
Dim lighting and
heavy drinks
are the only things
some girl requires
as a prerequisite
for getting down.

Two and one fourth years
of thinking he was wasting
his time not fucking around
for me.
Pretending to be excited
instead of laughing at his fidelity.
Dim lighting and
heavy drinks
are the only things I require
to redeem myself.


Linda M. Price is a writer from Northern Kentucky. She graduated from Northern Kentucky University with a degree in English and a minor in Cinema Studies. She has been writing seriously for four years: poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. She has traveled to Europe on three different occasions and finds those periods are some of the most influential she has had.
 

Current Issue:
January 2013

Mandy Jo Angleberger
Natalie Carpentieri
Holly Day
James H. Duncan
Don Kloss
Kirby Light
Raina Masters
Linda Price

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