CHERILYN FERROGGIARO

The Night He Overdosed on Lithium:

With salt lip and deception, he called my name
           Seeking pity in a place
           Where the blind lead the blind.
I saw him lying across my bed,
A suckling in need of attention,
However, I could not
Bare such a jester.
And all I could think of was
                      Damn, he must be parched
           As I prepared for work,
           For a way out.


The Funeral:

 Day passes like a train that I purposely
Missed and I am at the station standing
In silence
                      With not a soul about.
I study the clouds and overhead gray,
Fascinated with nothing in particular.
           Time meanders dull as I mark
The halfway point
And settle into the afternoon.
           I see the pine drape before me,
The walls have splintered,
           Wrenching the barriers of yesterday.
Stepping over boundaries,     my fingers
Split to red,
           I begin to plant
The charcoal of your bones, flat,
           Where once
                      A wilderness stood.


In The Valley of Penumbra

Point of day where flesh pauses,
Stretching leather-flat,
           All is whist; sunlight fades.
In this valley of penumbra, my lips
Unfurl,
Like a fetus
           Struggling
           In the womb.
Sepulchers swell into ashen skies,
I am alone in this bone-yard,
And as the scent of despondency
Permeates the air, my will
Is no longer
                                 My own.
I cannot go back,
My eyes are not bright. They are draped
In rue, blood-filled, glutted.
And with pallid fingers, I trench the soil,
Scratching at the copse, splintering,
Pleading for anything.
As if the sun had begun its climb
           Instead of ending it,
As if this was the first breath
           Of morning, instead of demise.


Cherilyn Ferroggiaro is an Italian brat from Sonoma, California. She is currenly in
school to become a Physician's Assistant and has appeared in a variety of poetry
journals, both online and in print. She is the photography editor of The Surface -
Online Arts Magazine and Gallery, and spends her time enjoying photography and
writing.

Her most recent publications include: Reflections, Thunder Sandwich, Spent Meat,
Underground Voices, The Melic Review, Surface Online, All Things Girl, Erosha, Poems
Niendergasse, Locust, Tamafyhr Mountain Poetry, and Babel Magazine.

Her current projects are becoming a partner in publishing with Meeting of the Minds
Journal and Blue Steel Publications, a one time owner of Spitjawreview, she was an
editor with Tony Spivey for The Regal Quill Quarterly, and she is currently working
on her book "Scenes From the Station and Other Poems".

Photography Editor: The Surface Online Arts Magazine and Gallery
Surfaceonline.org

Visit me: http://pathetic.org






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