Chris Tusa Poems

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 My grandmother’s teeth stare at her
from a mason jar on the nightstand.

The radio turns itself on, 
sunlight crawls through the window,

and she thinks she feels her bright blue eyes 
rolling out her head.

She’s certain her blood has turned to dirt,
that beetles haunt the dark hollow of her bones.

The clock on the kitchen wall is missing its big hand. 
The...Read more of this...

 Maybe it’s Emphysema, a shiny black jewel of phlegm 
humming like a clump of bees in my chest. 
Perhaps a tumor crawling in the crook of my armpit, 
a blood clot opening like a tiny red flower in my brain.

Maybe it’s too early to show up on an X-ray, 
a kind of cancerous seed planted deep 
in my intestine,...Read more of this...

 She looks rather pathetic, really,
leaning against the black air,
the three mangled fingers of her left hand
clutching a yellow purse,
her right arm raised over her head
as if to shield herself
from the silver shower of stars
raining down upon her.

Her mouth is a crack
growing beneath her nose.
Two dimples open like holes
in her cheeks. A pink ear
dangles from her chin.

Looking at it now,...Read more of this...

 Marie Laveau, a colored woman who eventually became
known as the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, often used
her knowledge of Voodoo to manipulate and acquire power.
 --Enigma

In one quick lick I waved my mojo hand,
made the Mississippi’s muddy spine 
run crooked as a crow’s foot, 
scared politicians into my pocket
with lizard tongues and buzzard bones,
convinced the governor to sing my...Read more of this...

 after Sue Owen

Born from flour anointed with oil, 
from a roux dark and mean as a horse’s breath, 
you remind me of some strange, mystical stew 
spawned from a muddy version of Macbeth.
Only someone’s replaced the spells with spices, 
the witches with a Cajun chef.

Maybe you’re a recipe torn from Satan’s Cookbook, 
a kind of dumb-downed devil’s brew
where evil...Read more of this...

 after Susan Thomas

Truth is, my life was no fairytale, 
that afternoon, I lay, a smiling corpse
under a glass sky, a rotten apple
lodged in my throat like a black lump
of cancer, your sloppy kiss dying on my lips.

Did you really believe a kiss could cure
the poison galloping through my veins, 
as you stood there, with your ugly white horse, 
the...Read more of this...