Poems By Megan Denese Mealor

Megan Denese Mealor resides in Jacksonville, Florida with her husband, son, and three cats. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and 2022 Best of the Net candidate, her writing has been featured in hundreds of literary journals worldwide, most recently Moot Point Magazine, The Writer's Workout: Tales From the Deep, and Digging Through the Fat.

A Pettable Flapper

At first, she was a canceled stamp,

a structured Gibson Girl lodged in peter pan collars,

bearing a wreath of shrapnel twirls,

goofy beneath the oyster skylights of Bergdorf.

She was raised by a nest egg cellar smeller

and a flat tire alarm clock in hobble skirts

in a fire extinguisher of a town

where the old daisies bumped gums

about the freshest cat's meow;

the young tomatoes chiseled lawn games

in rose white organdy, cream canvas Mary Janes;

and none of the apple knocker men

hid hollow walking cane popskull

procured from potato peels

and footprints of juniper oil.

But this can house bluenose canary

bobbed and bottled her pinched finger waves

with the boost of a dive barber.

She shook off the steel boning,

the tubular silhouettes,

the cramped geography.

Her unruly bones grew boyish and beaded

to the ragtime ghosts of novelty pianos:

shameless trailing scarves,

Chanel chain-trimmed tweed,

Art Deco mermaid plumage,

shunned breasts restricted with silk side laces.

Baby doll roadhouse eyes

evoked electric cures,

blushing violet getaway sticks

shimmying Dumb Dora to Jelly Roll Morton

---

Sky Parlor

My clawlike pleas for amnesty

are met only with the bestial blueprints

of a brooding ballroom Bluebeard

draped in coats crowing with falling skirts,

figured dark velvet, homespun frocks,

Hessian boots, white linen neck cloths.

My aspen timberwolf eyes

cascade to kneel in reverence

before the transient bridal moon,

haloed with lilac paper cranes,

a strolling Japanese garden blooming

with stone lanterns and Moss Temples.

I beg and beg and beg of you,

do not leave me up here

where the barefoot attic windows

cower with cloudless, classical people

in slim boardroom suits,

plum cigarette jeans curving

into cherry blossom thighs,

pink rose frosting Antoinette heels,

baby bangs, Totally Toffee hime hairdos.

As a decoy sentinel in the marigold window,

I picket gutsy shoulders candle-dancing,

all mutiny and construction and craving

against the unnaturally whitened sidewalk,

possessing the gravitas of zealous statesmen

in their zebra-Pegasus print scarves

and transparent block heels,

forty-dollar hand soap carried inside

Pride and Prejudice book clutches,

diamond lipstick in alligator Chanel.

I can hear their subtle whip hands

in the sandbar of my gut.

Just below my airless, sun-baked prison,

unshielded worship fashions a moon garden

of silver petunias and Maureen tulips,

Lace Cascade and stainless daffodils,

summer snowflakes, angel trumpets,

white bleeding hearts arching their slender backs,

elongating inner petals and pale green stems

like breakable snow globe ballerinas.

I trace the sweetgum tree in begrimed glass.

Camphor wood steamer trunks languish away,

gorged with Grandma's swirling windowpane skirts,

each one hemmed exactly eleven inches off the floor.

An untitled venom dilates me with adrenaline,

much like a Gaboon viper's distorted kiss,

crooked poison dripping Pollock free spirits

upon disorderly, unbottled last dances.

This venom delivers cataclysmic wallops

to downtown Nantucket skyline mermaids,

to the geological evolution of Arizona,

to a thousand-piece Matisse collection

dispensed by two jazzy Baltimorean sisters.

If time was a rotating thunderstorm,

it would deviate from the mean wind.

It would move left or move right,

spawning updraft supercell tornadoes,

nearly all using left hook echoes.