In a world of wires
You have tried to show me
how to balance my soul as I sway
between buildings,
to swing upside down and fling
myself toward my family,
to grip tight and release,
my hands becoming sails in the wind,
to see the maze as a ropes course,
You standing as my safety net below.
By Heidi Turner
How would I know how far I’ve come
if not for you stretching to step in my footprints;
How would I know how much journey remains
if not for you asking what’s past the mountains,
And would you know you’d someday pass me
if I was not silent, and invented an answer?
By Heidi Turner
Things are rarely silent between us;
breath comes in quarter note rests
until measures’ fullness fills us,
the refrain at last repeated
by a lonesome violin:
“I love you, I love you,”
and the song begins again.
By Heidi Turner
The trouble with the void
is not that it looks back
at me, but that I can paint
over it in shades of scheduled crises,
forgotten Sabbaths, old wasp nests,
and the last few disposable straws;
I use these to build stick men that
guard the nothingness, the space
life so generously gave to me,
a cosmic shelf to fill with meaning,
a concert hall to fill with light.
It hasn’t rained lately,
not in years, not since forever,
and now we’ve all forgotten
the very first rider who rode off
into the sunset searching for poison
that, nowadays, we take with a smile.
We hold each other’s arms and necks,
your fingers are stiff, still cold,
when you turn my head to face you,
and they warm when she grips your shoulder,
and we laugh off the knowledge:
there is no cure.
You brush your feather duster hands
across my face in such a way
that I don’t mind sitting still a while longer,
careful, stationary, restful, decaying,
alone here on your favorite shelf.
By Heidi Turner
Problem?
Problem.
Problem.
Problem?
Problem!
Problem?
Places.
By Heidi Turner
Nobody special,
nothing to see here,
only ordinary reformed into art,
myself in your eyes,
following your observations,
understood in poems I didn’t write,
seen and see-through in decades passing,
my deepest form traced out
with a pencil whose eraser
is lost to time.
By Heidi Turner
Against known nobodies,
business forgotten,
broken kaleidoscope
zephyrs dust foundling Justice,
bequeathing normalcy.
By Heidi Turner
We were sure
we were good for each other
and the blame lies in the photos now:
the way you are so clearly comfortable
occupying a frame that contains me,
the last vestige of us that pops up
near Christmas, an alternate universe
that only exists as a spark
in the hard drive.
By Heidi Turner
Strawberry Chapstick tastes like the Midwest
mixed with the body heat of the middle seat:
the same record playing over again,
high harmony, high melody, low violin;
I drift in and out of consciousness,
the taste of my own lips foreign
as America.
By Heidi Turner
The trouble with magic
is that it looks like sleight-of-hand,
the way it weaves a tapestry
in the space between genius and madness;
that it is imperceptible when the spell
is at its strongest, that music never-ending
is only audible when silence (impossibly) falls.
By Heidi Turner
Once or twice
The Lion of Judah disguised Himself
as a housecat
to remind me that shattered lamps
and shredded plants
don’t stop the sun from shining,
that minor fires
do not constitute an emergency;
an open door,
held until He stays or leaves,
will finally let
the quiet Breath of wind
get inside.
By Heidi Turner
We could form a music group
or craft empty-glass metaphors,
build analogies out of playing cards,
understand the narrative we cannot exit.
We could throw rocks into the ocean
and question the nature of our liquid planet.
We could lose ourselves in panic
or slay the monsters in the labyrinth,
we could say yes to the high road
and regret the strength that carries us,
Or, windblown wishes of the past, we could say
nothing at all, do nothing but hold hands.
By Heidi Turner
One by one, the cords release,
strands of twine
unraveling themselves;
moment by moment
I cling to the air,
raising fists in supplication.
By Heidi Turner
When I think the cliff is far away
out of sight
beyond every possible horizon
it is then
that I find
I am walking backward
through the air
already descending
By Heidi Turner
Rain falls daily, still unexpected
in my home town, into open
windows, slanting in through doors;
it rises from between kitchen tiles, floods
the empty spaces within myself,
left as they are—dusty shelves
that used to hold daydreams long evaporated
in the moonlight
and wind.
By Heidi Turner
You’re at the edge of every story I write,
in the lines even I can’t understand,
you are the song I sing to myself
that whispers that silence alone rings true,
and you are the edge of the story itself,
the blade that could cut me in two,
I know you are the melody of my overture,
the word I haven’t learned to speak,
the pages turning after the reader is through.
By Heidi Turner
Crush it together, that feeling of apathy
with the fear of unknowns,
sweet wisps of remembered magic
floating above the water and oil
let questions rise, covered in sleepless night linen,
evening after evening, until the bitter herbs
dissolve beneath your tongue,
until the warmth of the fire is forgotten
in its very constancy, and place your hopes
into the open black mouth of the heat,
you’ll know it when you smell it:
the honey-flavored scrolls
we write in the ritual abandoning of ourselves.
By Heidi Turner
All along the edges
shadows rise, cast by
the light I deny and invite
to myself, when I hide from myself,
encased in iron-clad and rusted hope,
the memory of safety
and the ecstasy of dodged despair
that, on so many days,
kept me safe from myself.
