If I Threw a Party
Prose poetry from Kelli Lage
Today’s prose poem comes to us from Kelli Lage. Kelli is earning her degree in Secondary English Education and works as a substitute teacher. She is a poetry reader for Bracken Magazine and Best of the Net nominated poet. Lage's work has appeared in Maudlin House, The Lumiere Review, Welter Journal, and elsewhere. Website: www.KelliLage.com.
If I Threw A Party
I’d invite my therapist / coupled with my pen pal, dog, and lover boy / they’d arrive at seven o’clock on the dot / though I’d spend day’s entirety / fabricating my body slipping from their psyche / or a fever riser / them seeing my elbows behind every tree / but still not coming inside / when my doorbell rings I look down and realize / my body is a gown of silk I spewed during my years as an abandoned graveyard spider / my therapist brings irises of healing / I pretend to position them like contacts / my pen pal hand delivers my next letter / my dog howls like a prayer / my lover boy brings a drum rolling down a never ending hill / we’d watch Empire Records / and I’d evolve into my full ragged flannel form / knowing I should have bared my old eyeshadow the whole time / we sip atmosphere the way sunshine looks on a day you swear you’ve met before / I slither into a coma beyond daydreams / cherry colored finger pokes on a couch / that doesn’t quite capture grunge’s heat like the one in our first apartment / they’d stay all night, nursing me to sanity