Spotlight on Constance Bradley
Intake Interview 95
Liver spots quiver, dotting
purple pigeons:
bare fingers of grime.
Bruised by multiple
sclerosis, mother's mistakes,
bowels idling
routine, expectant blows
of November's chronic embrace.
Seeking shelter, jelly
predictably jarred,
she's near completed
simple paper
work. Steadfast,
persisting
(seems 55 years by
indentured mouth)
through slur of love-soaked seconds.
Minute and
one half alone
signing her name.
Dropping dampened
composition again, unwitting scribe.
Flicker invisible, unwilling
shiver. Hesitance lowered,
standard cautionary tale tucked:
A three-day drunk
who cashed her
state disability;
made the well
of her life
force his
sickly midnight
watering hole.
Who thrust
her into trashday curb,
unwelcome open gash,
string-choked
finger of reality.
One spare
ribbed Wal-Mart jacket
stretched like a sheet across
a scaffold,
all but collapsed.
Like my legs,
at keen
likeness yet between them.
Matted, fake-fur collar
around 40-year
old face.
About Constance Bradley: Tension in my current projects is effected primarily by
psychological and oligarchic constructs. I am also intrigued by
mnemonic work. I recently earned my B.A. from The Evergreen
State College and my work has appeared at PoeticVoices.com and
BSNN.net, and in Lucid Moon and Slightly West.
