ISSUE SIX: “A Crazed God Lectures Her Offspring” by Ronda Piszk Broatch

A Crazed God Lectures Her Offspring

Who dances at a burial anymore with an ordinary
bottle of Jack? Who falls all microscopic into moss
and bosses her progeny in their segmented loneliness?

Shimmy shimmy, sugar, your wolfish charms got
nothing on the moonlight. Breasts pucker as the elbow
tries to kiss its twin, and no one says anything

about the chocolate tarts in the room. Madness
is a strapless dress at a noon funeral, is trying not to fall
into the fresh-dug hole beneath the stretcher bars

holding the coffin. When your life goes sidelined
and one dimensional, don’t come running to me with your
scissors open like that, your mouth full of sand.

Even the tardigrade knows what heartbreak looks like
as it whizzes past earth’s edge on its way to the moon.

RONDA PISZK BROATCH

Poet and photographer Ronda Piszk Broatch is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press, 2015). Broatch is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant, and her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart prize. Her journal publications include Blackbird, Diagram, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and Public Radio KUOW’s “All Things Considered,” among others.   

Headshot: Ronda Piszk Broatch

Photo Credit: Staff