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Claire T. Feild

The June Featured Poet is Claire T. Feild

Please feel free to email Claire at: ctillandsia@gmail.com

claire

THE WELL WATER

Since we were children, we have
examined the well water’s
potential for blackness.

When the water is especially dark,
we immediately leave the
scene, calling out to the sun
to be our friend.

As we pour marshmallows on top
of the especially black water,
we are happy because we
think of the regular-sized
marshmallows as innocent
ghosts who evaporate in
the blackness for a lark.

But when we see deep magenta
red eyes in the black water,
we realize the truth: we are
being watched by something
that has experienced a
spiritual death.

We do not go to the well anymore
because we are afraid our
children will learn our steps
by heart—and experience
far worse than we ever did.     

GIMMICK

She is the queen of the artifice,
her playing tricks on
everyone she can invite
into her web of confusion.

Since her stratagems are mean,
others try to hide from
her, even if they have to
stay in a cave for hours.

There is a group of people weary
with the perpetrator, and
they have set a time and
meeting to decide how to
stop her hot in her tracks.

The trick they decide to play on
her is place her in a casket
and close the top.

After they commit this horrible
deed, they realize that
ugliness does not answer
to ugliness.

Therefore, they remove her from
her crypt, and she asks them
for forgiveness.

Life is restored to normalcy in the
small town where they all
live, plan, and work for
justice for all.             

ARCHAIC

The woman sitting in the rocking chair
is grouchy because when kids
pass her on the road before her,
she yells obscenities at them.

Since she has always been testy, people
have avoided her, jumping into
bushes when they see her firing
up her hatefulness.

Because she thinks about the roaring
1920s and how the dancers these
days look stupid, she blends with
the archaic.

Her boobs underdeveloped, she hates
the women who strut big-busted
on what she calls her road.

A sorcerer is her boyfriend, his magic
tricks entertaining her for hours.

After he falls on the grass of her front
yard, the heat taking him over,
she fixes him a grand dinner
so that he can regain his courage
for devising tricks.

When will she touch the up-to-date?
It will be the day she wants to
dress up for the fiend that
moves to her town.

Claire T. Feild has taught English in middle school, high school, community college, and university settings.  She has had 542 poems published in 140 print journals and anthologies such as, Ghostlight; The Carolina Quarterly; The Horror Zine Magazine; The Path; Space and Time Magazine; TheTulane Review; Literature Today; Spillway;and Folio.Her books are Mississippi Delta Women in Prism; Southern Women: The 1950s: A Delta Vigil, which is about her growing up white and female in the Mississippi Delta; and Mississippi Delta Memories.