Fairy Tale
They want to help name you
Applaud gestation not know you
Two parts now three of you
Ill-equipped with lullabies for you
twinkle-twinkle and all that
A tiny ocean to rock you
Want you
with wrinkles
with cooing
life
over there you
Bygone
Heat-treated Broken ballerina
Mute not dumb stunted demeanors
Infirmed with discontent without discernment
Interment after incident bristle and stunt
Celebrations over deliberations punitive
Love’s promise blood into rust
Dream new shoes into the pix
Dream reliable love into the pix
Foregone
Suffer fragments and fangs around you
seconds after dawn’s darkness
internal caldera magma into rage
lava into love life into blood
dreams into blood dreams
peace becomes predator
bored by time lose the quarrel
slain in season under yellow tarp
puncture punctuate.
About the Poem
So many US Republican-led State Legislatures are signing new anti-abortion laws. In NC we have a “Super-majority” of the neo-con party only because a female senator elected as a Democrat switched political affiliation.
About the Author
Sam Barbee has a new poetry collection, Apertures of Voluptuous Force (2022, Redhawk Publishing). He has three previous collections, including That Rain We Needed (2016, Press 53), a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016. Also, Uncommon Book of Prayer (2021, Main Street Rag), which chronicles family travels in England. His poems have appeared recently in Poetry South, Salvation South, Dead Mule School of Literature, and upcoming in Cave Wall and Streetlight Magazine, among others; plus online journals Ekfrastic Review, American Diversity Report, Grand Little Things, and Medusa’s Kitchen.