11.21.2006

anxiety rips

anxiety rips
the stomach walls,
wrenches
the heart,
a drop of molten metal,
into the open wound.

fear finds
a guttural sound
welling inside,
ballooning in the throat,
only to catch
against the back
of the tongue.

worry wills
the hand,
balled in a fist,
to seek the
yielding wall,
and crush itself
in a tangle
of bone and flesh
and splinters.

as if it would be relief
to shatter
a glass ornament
between the teeth,
tonguing the shards
of papery glass
crunching,
scraping,
against delicate enamel
no longer smooth.

as if it would be relief.

by: angela

3 comments:

cody said...

i appreciate the phrase "worry wills." the alliteration (is it alliteration?) gives it a lyrical quality.
i agree with your decision to end with one line set off from the other stanzas. it literally offers a the reader a kind of relief, however small or false it is.

cody said...

angst ridden stuff. i wonder if other people will be suprised to see this side of you. should tell people to check your stuff out now that it's posted and see.

Anonymous said...

hey thanks for the comments. yeah worry wills is an alliteration. and i actually didn't realize it kind of does a little parallel with wall halfway through as well, which i like. and i didn't even think about the "relief" of that last line...i'll just pretend i planned that.
by the way, i think i want to change "sucks down" in the first stanza to "wrenches." i kind of like the feeling that envokes and i think its more applicable to the idea of the heart. what do you think?