My Boss

My boss watches me like a drone,           
When all day he talks to his phone.
Hot with his temper
Words like a splinter
He wishes he was Al Capone.

by Dena McKinnon

Listen

Do you listen...
To the bitter cold, the days in the calendar grown old...
Bleak blizzards glisten against crystal snow, do you know...
That freezing flurries have no hurry when the flannel's fleece has a peace...
Ice crystals, ice skating, ice hockey, ice fishing...insulation...
When the polar pullover runs out of heat and pine cones the only thing to eat....
Worship the furnace for the fire before you retire can chase away death...
Melted mittens, bony kittens sipping ice cream on a dream of sun shines...
Minds frigid freezer frosty chills that only a ratchety radiator kills...

Do you hear...
The sound of frostbit fingers, snapping and breaking in water warm...
Can be no swarm when the hive's frozen, sleeping bees by the dozen...

Can you taste...
Winters warning knocking at the knob cakes cushioning the blow...
Footprints in the snow...
Or angels dusted with a glistening throw...
Frozen solid like the solstice cometh to charm...
Do as you will but do no harm....
Alarmed by the lack of senses....
And fences...
Do you feel the season?

The Red Door

THE RED DOOR
Under my shoes, a skin of blue crushed carpet.
Mildew vines wrap around my ankles as I ascend.

Fifty two steps to the red door.
A knot forms in my throat like a root clogging a septic line.
And I can see it. The red door.
With each step it grows closer.
I swallow hard. And grab the handrail for support. 
Hard metal as cold as death but even it ends at the red door. 
The walls grow closer. And closer. 
Peel like sunburned flesh speckling my frantic footpath. 
I close mine eyes but still see it. The red door.
Etched forever in my etch-a-sketch brain cells.
Screaming in silence as I near the red door. 
One step. Then another. 

Moldy arms reach up, curl around my Mary Jane shoes. 
I fight for my footing, my feet like lead weights.
Waiting for what's behind the red door. 
I gasp. 
But continue up the holy mountain of mold and peeling paint.
Feeling faint.
The red door takes my breath. 
My bosom's heart pounds tenderizing any love I left behind.
A rind only fit for hog slop.
A riding crop and things that hurt can't curtail the anguish.
Anxiety like a branding iron against my hand that runs along the rail.
The red door pulsing. Hungry. 
My hand burns so bad I go alone.
Six more steps to go. 
My eyes fight a stare but it glares at me that red door. 
For why my feet won't work, my muscles jerk. 
Panic consumes me.
Five steps.
Its glow turns the stairwell into fiery coals.
Four not sure I can go more. 
Obedience is a virtue for this weakened vestibule. 
Three steps to the red door. 
It burns. 
With pain. 
Stained. 
God couldn't even fix. White as snow wouldn't go...
Behind the red door. 
Two more and my breathing stops. Like a clock. 
Time in a bottle if only I could hit the throttle and bolt back down. 
But it waits like a clown. A jack in the box counting on golden locks to flock inside. 
Plant a seed in a pot of dirt. Soiled laundry no quandary.
For red is the color of blood and fire. 
Wire raps around my wrists.
Pulls me up one more step and I stand before it.
The red door summons. 
And I've come to serve like a subpoena.  
Every Thursday at four. I show up at the red door. 
And can't hardly breathe. 
I'd rather die than live this lie. 
I hold my breath against will.
Turn as blue as the moldy crushed carpet.
And then it opens. 
The red door looked so much better than what I see now. 
His black cloak. 
White clergy collar. 
'Open your eyes dear girl' he says with a smirk. 
I do so as told. Enter the fold. 
And it closes. 
Eating me. 
Swallowing me. 
Killing me more and more....
The Red Door. 

.
by dena mckinnon                                      

HIS VOICE

I miss, like a kiss from the sunshine shining against an Emerald City, minus the monkeys, what a pity I have not heard HIS voice.

Listen. Is it calling or am I falling to a level of liquidity that liquefies my existence. It is just my perception? An exception? A reflection of what I need...want...bleed. 

Am I the subject, the agent and not double 'o' seven but the doer of action or passive attraction. A verb zombie in a float pod of isolation on vacation because I cannot stand the lack of HIS voice over the rainbow one flew mighty high like a mezzo-soprano and hit the wall of exhaustion! 

Rolled into fetal like a flower before it petals out creating a bed of blossom am I just a possum  hanging from the tree of tranquility fading into vegetation? The forest doesn't call it consumes me. I send a feather on the winds of the weather to lick his larynx and part his lips if only he would utter I'm lost in the gutter without HIS voice. 

-dena mckinnon

Transduction

Stimuli tickle my corpuscles boundlessly bouncing against walls of jagged glass...Shards like shackles penetrate Persephone's antidote of abduction and not into the haul of fame or haul of shame but the bride of the underworld where worms and whippets vie for some sort of value when there is none to perceive in a world of trepidation teasing time with forboding not floating in a sea of fear where sharks are movie stars full of teeth like daggers that shred the haggard souls of sadists consuming the latest lysogenic cycles like the wheels of a bicycle they turn into a frenzy of falcons that swarm like bees around their boxes into  homologous transduction with viral vectors stay clear of Hector who corrodes like a vector stamped with a watermark of stain no darker than blood from the bosom of babes we draw an ace of spades and the DNA is laid across the table like chips of the lucky clucks the woodchuck whose teeth are hacksaws of stolen yard tools, the cells scream out from every direction. Chlorophyl, make you feel blessed for the transduction instruction... God my words suck tonight. The end.