Wrought & Found

Original poetry and found images

–By Mia Sara

Close Shave

Not all fun and games anymore, no shivers up the spine,
goose-fleshed and expectant, matching thrill for thrill,
not candy floss cyclones after hopping off the carousel,
a little lick of sweet to mask the taste of the bitter pill.

The cheerful slap of creation does not prepare you for
this sucker punch, these shackles, and this twisted rope
around your throat, balancing tiptoe on a two-legged stool,
counting sheep as your kid plays hide-and-seek with dope.

Emergency room, center ring, the high wire act, no nets,
just a plastic chair in triage and your teetering adolescent.
Hostage heart, you’ll break your own neck from flailing
with open arms to cushion the inevitable descent.

What a gimmick, the mewling mass of them, terrorists,
an invention of a sickening century, a radical indulgence
beyond the whinge and wean and the tying of shoelaces,
brainless milk-fed veal, or, teenager, in common parlance.

To think I ever held this staggering boy, god made flesh,
swaddled in soft cotton, mouthing the shapes for love,
rock, tree, spoon, mother, son, against his peachy check,
calling up, word by word, what his world was made of.

Guess I should have kept my trap shut, lips sealed, breath
held, eyes closed, so he’d never have picked up the habit
of speaking, to have saved my sorry ears from his curses,
and my swollen tongue from the constant need to bite it.

***
Mia Sara is an actress and poet living in Los Angeles. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in poemmemoirstory, Pembroke Magazine, The Write Room, PANK, Cultural Weekly, The Kit Kat Review, Forge, The Dirty Napkin, St. Ann’s Review, among others. For more please visit: http://wheretofindmiasara.tumblr.com/