Two Poems: "Different Pages" and "The Bee Trap"

By Kristy Webster

 

The Bee Trap

 

Some girls have eyes like invitations,

and some girls wear glasses and scarves,

walk with a whistle in their mouth,

 

Some girls leave the window cracked

open, they need more air always

more than the breeze will bring

and some people know this and

force their way through the last

space on her green earth guzzling

her oxygen so that she will have to

fight for the right to breathe the rest

of her life,

 

Some girls are bedbugs, people say

they’ll feed on you while you sleep,

some people say, Use soap and hot water,

others, Try an exorcist,

 

Some girls are tattoos on our veins,

Pain-sticks on heels,

 

Some girls are Holy Water in April

and trademarks by June,

 

Some girls are Hunger

and some people will say,

Let them eat cake.

 

Some girls are women, round and cool,

some people say they

should have stayed girls,

clay and water, pink and wishing,

 

Some girls that are women cook feasts

for girls who aren’t women yet, and some

girls will chew on their napkin and

break their teeth on bones,

 

Some girls becoming women will watch

and some people will ask how she does it,

how she contains the messy spills of her sex,

 

Some of those girls will scream inside

and pull out the drawers,

throw plates, show them

how messy it can get,

 

But most girls will smile,

and most people will say,

Those girls are the best,

the best girl to be.

 

 

 

 

 

Different Pages

There will always be beautiful women

in short skirts in plain view,

seen through glass, photos, the market,

the girl who drops her book in the library

revealing pages of her flesh story

she hadn’t counted on.

 

There will always be those women, those girls.

Myself, I look forward to the fading.

When I lean on my voice, or presence,

or grace, my experience, not my hair

or hips, when the gray takes over

and I hear a dog barking and the moon

is full and it is enough.

 

Those days, those nights my body

my undercover beauty satisfies me

and my age isn’t a sinking into

the ground, but a rising above my youth,

no longer seducing but courting Life.

 

There will always be those women.

I’ll watch your head turn towards

their obvious collection of space.

I’ smile when their beauty is something

that glows from their ribs so brightly,

their skin can’t suppress it,

that beauty is worth belonging to.

 

There will always be that girl

subjected to tailors,

doctors and magicians,

until she’s nothing but a doll

with soulless eyes, a limp brain,

a heart made of dust,

hands sewn palm to palm,

robbed of all gestures.

 

Those girls are both magic and misery.

So when my age deems me not wiser,

but comfortably aware that

my eyelashes are not traps,

but waves reaching out in front of me,

I will hold every girl and carry her to

the place where she can breathe.

 

__________________________________________________________

Kristy Webster is a writer, artist and mother of two. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University and her Bachelor’s Degree from the Evergreen State College where she majored in creative writing, visual arts, and feminist studies. Her work has appeared in several online journals such as The Molotov Cocktail, The Ginger Piglet, The Stone Hobo, Connotation Press, Abacot Journal, Thickjam, A Word With You Press, A Fly in Amber and in two print anthologies by GirlChildPress. She is the daughter of a Colombian immigrant and a Montana farmboy.  Website: www.kristywebster.com