Michael Aaron Casares - One Poem

I am Franny Glass

I don’t know what to say.
I’m a tentative person.
Sometimes I just need to think and feel
to know inside. I need to dig myself a hole.
I need to tell you the truth. I am Franny Glass.
And she moves her head adrift one side;
it floats, a cloud of mourning.
Am I narcissistic? Do I over shine?
Did I forget my need to live, just as to survive,
is to thrive upon creativity?
And so I ask her if she believes in God,
and truly I say to you as a lie will make
the teeth decay she fears Him and
knows these things exist. So
there is a challenge issued from my
lips as I conversely converse with her,
but she is lost within her hazy eyes,
slightly catatonic, disconnected,
she doesn’t notice, doesn’t see beyond the thoughts inside
as she listens to what the voices tell her
and hides it away. But, I am Franny Glass, she’ll say
and turn and look the other way.
Was she listening? Did she hear?
I’ll say, “In God we should not fear,
because that isn’t who we are, that’s
not what He wants.” But she won’t know
how to respond, and sigh as if her soul shrank;
surrendered.

You know how fake these people
are and yet with them I feel the same.
She twiddles nervously, hand in hand,
her shoulders knotted; frustrated.

Where will she go? I wonder,
and, will she find her way?
Even caught up in her nauseous lost anxiety,
she’ll look you in the eye and say,
The truth is, I am Franny Glass.

Michael Aaron Casares lives in Austin, TX. He writes, paints and runs Virgogray Press. His epic prose poem, The Winter King, was just released by Shadow Archer Press. New work of his is forthcoming in Heavy Bear, Calloused Hands, The Stark Electric Space Anthology, The Clock-Wise Cat & Cuib. Nest. Nido.