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Language:
English
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Published:
2024-12-09
Updated:
2025-06-16
Words:
416
Chapters:
4/?
Comments:
6
Kudos:
7
Hits:
36

Texas

Summary:

a little descriptive poetry,
a love letter to my home state, family, etc :)

Chapter 1: Texas

Chapter Text

The Texas drawl is lazy and
sprawled,
“Come on over y’all.”
Caramel words and oil rig eyes
that cast gentle old-school judgment.
Wide smiles are given easily as
peachy cheeks are
pinched and pulled.

The sickly sugar-sweet of the Southwest
is a sticky smooth
molasses, easy to get trapped.

Mosquitoes buzz through barbed wire
as the tall grass scratches
bare shins and
humidity presses in.

Southern hospitality
begins with an open,
friendly face.
Half compliments are
delivered honestly,
pecan pies offered and baked.

The mellow pull of the crickets’ lull
Calls you for a minute more,
asks that you stay,
sit a spell,
Listen to those cicadas
thrum their gentle drum
And the women walk the rhythm of
their cowboy-boot sashay.

Chapter 2: Modern Antiquity

Summary:

it's funny how you can know someone so well, you can spend your whole life looking up to them, but still there is this vastness of experience that separates you.

Notes:

if you've seen my other work, "Modern Antiquity," this is the same poem. I just wanted to combine them because I'm planning on expanding this collection.

Chapter Text

My small hand clasped his large weather-worn palms.
He clean-pressed his dress shirt, starched his collar.
At every stranger he would tip his head and say, “Howdy,”
and I'd think of him as a remnant made living
of some foreign time.
Like the sun blaring down on this High Noon,
My own Davy Crockett, complete with washboards,
ice boxes, and
Howdy Doody crackling on antenna TV.
He’d drawl, “Settle down, peanut gallery.”
And I, audience of one, would laugh and laugh,
witness to his modern antiquity,
amazed that all of time, held so carefully between our hands,
stretched out to infinity.

Chapter 3: Cicada Shells

Summary:

something about memory + time = decay

Notes:

tw for insect imagery and hoarding

a little on the creepier side ? (pun intended)

Chapter Text

He doesn’t call it clutter.
But the not-clutter covers the walls,
And we carve narrow paths through each room
Like ants in their pile,
Burrowed and burdened by
His magpie collection.

He has insulated our home with
coin jars and cicada shells;
Cardboard containers and plastic cups,
Mounds of books piled high above my head;
Stacks which grew as I did.

The entirety of his experience
is tucked away,
cracking and sagging the attic floor---
my bedroom ceiling.
We crawl carefully around
his delicate columns
as we dare not disturb his cave;
turned creeping insects in clutter’s wake.

Chapter 4: Breath

Summary:

does anyone else count seconds to find the distance of lightning strikes?

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

In the breath between the strike and the thunder,
While the world is still illuminated in yellow white light
I am made weightless in anticipation,
Pulling seconds tenderly from the air in the night.

In this state of suspension,
The world is captured in nature’s camera flash;
Every muscle is tensed to listen
as I parse distance from the length seconds last.

But such anticipation only heightens the shock
of the sky’s hand cracking into the dirt;
And with every rupture borne from the heavens,
The length of my breath forms the split of the earth.

Notes:

bonus points if u catch the intended meaning!! i think this one is a little more subtle