Trish Saunders - One Poem

You Knew I Was Home, Ignoring the Bell

I would have invited you in but
there was a black dog looking
calmly at me in the mirror
after the doctor suggested I give up
chocolates and coffee --
the very things I wake up craving. Then

CNN confirmed for me the dread--
making news that a wild elephant
is slaughtered every 20 minutes. I say,
a wild elephant dies every 20 minutes to
satisfy demand from China according to
my television. The word "insatiable” was used.

I am beginning to despise you, 
ancient and beautiful land of scholars
and warriors and Wu Wei--think we don't know
your fabled herbal remedies include
powder from the black rhinoceros horn?
Your reply came quickly:
American buffaloes. Florida manatees. Hawaiian crows.

Yes, the door is invitingly open now,
the black dog
refuses to leave. 



Trish Saunders lives and writes in Seattle and Honolulu and (in her imagination) Paris, France during the 1920s. She’s been published in Off The Coast, Blast  Furnace Press, Dead Snakes,  Silver Birch Press.

Trish Saunders - One Poem

Life After Layoffs

 

There was no need to duck your head

when we saw you waitressing

in Waimanalo,

 

middle-aged and varicose-veined

working under the table for

tips so small they might be crumbs,

 

Just tell the driver,

I’ll pay next time,

take your seat on the bus.     

 

We, too, remember
glossy brown hair.

The beauty school will dye it for free on Tuesday.

 

 

 

Trish Saunders has published poems in Carcinogenic Poetry, Off the Coast Poetry Journal, Blast Furnace Press, and Vox Poetica; she has poems forthcoming in Seattle Poetry Bus. She lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Trish Saunders - Two Poems

Belief Systems

At 13, a terrifying and holy age,

I believed life offers tentacles for greatness

to everyone.

It doesn't.

I am older now than Bobby Kennedy, Gilda Radner,

Martin Luther King, John Lennon.

All my poor dead heroes--

why did I picture you as lanterns in the sky?

You are the blackness behind the stars.

Catalog of Obsolete Lonely Sounds

First, the old-fashioned dial tone,

zenith of nothingness.

Who invented that?  

the not-quite silent radio 

after Country K.A.R.L's

sign-off prayer.

blues singer fading to needle hiss

as the victrola winds down

in an empty room.

at the tone the time will be

three a.m.

exactly.

Trish Saunders worked as a journalist, technical editor, and caregiver for her parents before she began writing poems. She lives in Honolulu, Hawaii.