Chuka Susan Chesney

Runaway Blues

Does Momma know I jump rope behind trees?

she hunts for me

she’s got the whip

she wants to kick me in the hip

but I slip ’n slide to neighbor’s gate

if I’m not too late

I’ll hide and seek

She is moaning her eyes rolling like dice

I switchback trail

Spirograph through deer uphill

under sycamores like G.I. Jill

I shimmy the chimney incinerator

see View Master slides of houses below

I hear her shrill, her Gumby legs splayed

Barbie Doll wig unnaturally askew

The pool is powder

a Kool-Aid blue

lemon bush abuzz with creepy crawlers

I stay away until it’s cool as marbles

Then in obscurity I boomerang

stand on balcony see her wax lips

she speaks & spells Ephesians under solitary spot

her mirthful mood afloat in magic 8-ball

I tinker toy through basement she doesn’t know I’m here

lock the doorknob to my bedroom

now she’s jigsawing a puzzle

If I hear her bobby pin the keyhole

I’ll have time to slinky

out my open window

Chuka Susan Chesney has a BFA in Fashion Illustration from Art Center College of Design and an MAT from Occidental College. She is an artist, poet, curator, and editor. Her award-winning paintings and sculpture have been shown in galleries all over the country. Her poems have been published on three continents. "You Were a Pie So We Ate You", a book of Chesney's poems was the winner of the 2018 San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Chapbook Contest. In October 2018, Chesney curated the "I Pity da Poe" exhibition at the Hive Gallery in Downtown L.A. In November, Chesney hosted a poetry reading with Don Kingfisher Campbell at the YEAR ONE exhibition featuring Loren Philip and Tomoaki Shibata's collaborative art at Castelli Art Space in Mid City. Chesney's anthology of poetry and art "Lottery Blues", coedited by Ulrica Perkins will be published by Little Red Tree Publishing in 2019.

Comments

Kinnell's Book of Nightmares/Under the Maud Moon

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