The Locksmith

There is a box
where none of this exists.
But don’t just turn around,
you wouldn’t resist That sound will seem
Left unfinished, undrawn, undug, undream,
Nothing Upside down looking
For the ground
Well it’s unbound; unseen

Listen, if you are still alive; before the night arrives
it’s time you knew; once it comes
it will leave you,
With me unlocked.

Pulling a plastic key out of your pocket-
It’s not to this.

Harmony Riedman  is a student at UC Berkeley in California, and would appreciate feedback on her poetry at harmonyriedman@hotmail.com.

Blood Filled Boots

Her rust red rake
Scrapes sullenly across the soil
She listlessly looks around the loose leaves
And gives up, gives into
her fear of what was
underneath her lost toes she rips out the last remaining roots
revealing a ravaged axe man; she silently slips her feet into his blood filled boots

the scream-spattered overalls
could pass for painter’s pants
a razor sharp blade
merely a brush

she pretends she is simply
cutting open a thick can of corroded paint
never mind the choking and coughing

a coaxing finger of a stranger
her hand has a mind of its own
it curls
around a core of candy apple children
smothering their helium hopes with a suffocating smear a comatose coating of steel

Stuffing her sore throat
with foliage, she got away a ghostly gasp
from behind she takes his blood covered blade
and instead of his vocal chords
cuts her feet out of his
blood filled boot

choosing to again walk beneath an alabaster sky

on that late October night