Three Poems by Christine Brandel

Christine Brandel

Christine Brandel

Christine Brandel is a writer and photographer. In 2013, she published her first collection, Tell This To Girls: The Panic Annie Poems, which the IndieReader described as a "well-crafted, heartbreakingly vivid set of poems, well worth a read by anyone whose heart can bear it." To balance that, she also writes a column on comedy for PopMatters and rants and raves through her character Agatha Whitt-Wellington (Miss) at Everyone Needs An Algonquin. More of her work can be found at clbwrites.com.

IF WE WERE THREE

Then the four of us
wouldn't be caught like cats under a tarp.
We'd be a triad of thin bodies,
boys' bodies, dropped upon one another
like match sticks. We could bend
and praise each other long ago.
We'd be three like you were
before I made us more.

 

 

 

THOUGHTS ON NEW YEAR'S DAY

As I locked up the garage, I pondered
the possibility of killing myself by lying
down beneath an icicle. It was a pretty
big one. I might have read a mystery once
where ice was the weapon and melted
so the murderer was never discovered.
It was perfect. If I placed myself precisely,
that icicle would plunge straight through
my heart and what happened next wouldn't
be my business. I was wearing my coat,
which I'd have to remove. I'd be cold
waiting for death. What if the ice didn't fall,
but dripped on me, over a day or week or two.
Just then I heard what I thought was a gun
shot, from up the road. The snow was white
and cold, holding my footsteps as I rushed inside.

 

 

 

SIXTEEN PIECES

Sixteen pieces of something
have fallen out of me
and onto the floor
across your path
and you watch me
on my knees
fumble to collect them
and press them into me again.
 
You tell me that you have seen me before
but I do not remember:
            I do not remember seeing you,
            I do not remember your telling me.
 
You leave
my house wiser.
I leave
your house having lost
 
sixteen pieces of something.
You do not know me
well enough for me
to have let this happen
at your feet.