Dumpster Fire Press is proud to present the first release of 2021…
STRANDS OF STRUGGLE by Brenda Christie, a strong and unique voice who takes the reader into a variety of places both tragedy and triumphant…there’s so much here difficult to put into words from a language and realm older than words and Christie delivers on that through her own person journey exposing the inner depths of being and what it means to express one’s soul she’ll take you through a multitude of highs and lows going inside and out…
While I cannot do poet’s work justice, perhaps one just needs to let the work speak for itself…
14 Days
There is a hush,
that pulls apart
the moon and spreads like laziness.
A starvation,
for touch hides in a locket
of words kept hidden from civilization.
You shake,
the whisper that screams down
the throat and burns in the hands of church.
Her breath,
swallowed the tongues of her
ancestors. To end grief is to save a life.
The coo of a song,
blooms bent across the hydrangeas scent,
but sleeps with sorrow and wakes the mourning.
She fenced mirth,
molting into gardens of twisted stars,
pulling skies into our robotic exoskeleton,
with metal jaws wide,
chomping on the shedding light, stretched
outward, dangled in branches of leftover constellations.
As hooded darkness looms,
hiding isolation into our pockets, sewn, and
unraveling into ourselves,
with grey strands plucked,
leaving roots opened to rise in graves of suns,
beating on tongues of hurling storms, soaking in murky waters.
Her clothes hung,
like a taco hangover, slumped against the core
of her heart, wrapped in a collapsing cloud of freckles.
She is all the colours at once. At full brightness.
She is years of decades,
slow walks of shapes; slow walks of shadows.
Dark creaks of silence; contactless tiles
like thorns,
folding in, towards the spine,
to form a circle that clips on the outside in.
Earth tilts our heads,
as we bow for greed and power to the inevitable.
It gives so much and takes away more.
She is the fingers,
stroking the core of society.
Telling her, what she can and cannot do.
The bony fish,
whispering down the curves of isolation, reflecting
light against the walls that bare the cracks of her teeth.
A tightened knot loosens each time a breath is taken in moonlight.
Like a leash of foxes,
living underground, burrowed deep in thought, she is
hungry for thirst to fall on the tongues of the forest.
The world erupts,
and dwindles into shattering shards of cold stones,
dipping her panicked feet into burning sparks of twilight.
Wings spread like freedom,
holding spines of chapters with words thrown into
the wind of clouds, caressing new births of sky.
Hands deep,
wide in clay. Touching the silk of porcelain on grey skin
with pale fingers falling into the sky with eyes wired shut.
One day,
the bloom of warmth, will grow stems of gardens, scattering
speckles of scented light turning on its head.
Freedom, sprung tulips, dipped in a summer dream of marmalade.
In the skull,
behind the bones, she resides.
Telling stories of echoes filling her lungs.
Her past,
a lone star. Bent backwards. How lovely, was her vision that turned full,
in clothes of sorrow.
I will follow,
where she bleeds. Absorbing the stitch of wounds on lips that whisper in graves.
How lovely it is, to look so far away and be visible.
2021 has officially begun for DFP and it is an honor to present to such a captivating and romantic (in the true sense of the word )collection of poetry. I humbly thank, Brenda for entrusting me with her work and look forward to any future contributions she makes in the world of words.
“Brenda Christie’s ‘STRANDS of STRUGGLE’ unravels the intricacies of love, mystery, animal rights, activism, victims of crime, natural disaster, bullying, and the year, 2020, which has masked the world in fear. Brenda’s inspiration came from songwriters like Gordon Downie, whose poetic lyrics are forever carved in her soul, along with intense admiration for strong people like her own mother, who exemplified personal stories through poetry. Words are magical, each one telling a story that invites the reader into this captivating world of poetry created with amazing compilation of stories found in ‘STRANDS of STRUGGLE.’ The skies will brighten as we slow the clouds, enabling us to see a world with shapes of new eyes watching us from the stars, moon and sun whispering to the universe.”
See ya’ in the fire kids…
(still have to work on a better sign off)
Dumpster Fire Press 