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Best Poems Written by Deb Rhodes

Below are the all-time best Deb Rhodes poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Deb Rhodes Poem

After the Storm, Columbus Day, 1962

After the storm, my brother
(all gangly knees and elbows)
bore the brunt of its ferocious aftermath.

Every day after school
I watched his wiry biceps bulge a little
as his handsaw scritched against the tree
which had fallen diagonally across our front yard.

I witnessed the violence of metal on wood,
the violence of The King of the Mountain’s smirk
as he too watched, his greedy eyes
taking in my brother’s razor sharp collar bone,
with jaw set in furious concentration.

This imposed punishment was meant to goad my brother,
meant to tempt him to rage
so that the next time the stepdad slugged him
he would feel justified, holy even.

Kneeling on scratchy couch to watch
I scrunched my shoulders,
Folding into myself like an accordion,
gathering myself up to make of me something smaller;

I pressed my knees together
wrapping my arms around them
and lowered my head,
waiting for the sky to rain trees
with swollen trunks, and branches thrust downward
as if warding off a sickening impact with earth.

My brother, it seems,
must be punished for the crime of
his existence;

for this the stepdad’s eyes shone bright,
bright as the heavy duty flashlights
he begrudgingly loaned my brother
so he could work far into the night.

His eyes fairly burned with lust—
The lust of sadism’s glee.
I saw him lick his lips;
You’d have thought he’d conjured up this
Columbus Day Storm all by himself
for the sole purpose
of proving to my brother
that he had no right
to co-exist with him in the same universe.

I watched until my eyes burned
and my head ached dully
and my brother, sweating and chilled,
laid down his saw
swiped his arm across his forehead,
and straightening up, met my wary gaze
with the scoured look
of shame whittled down into hatred,
sawn away into stumpy pieces like an old tree trunk.

After the storm my brother cleaned up nature’s wrath.
He stood a little taller and his eyes, when they met his abuser’s,
burned unflinching.

After the storm we feigned memory loss
Pretended that nothing had shifted in our family dynamic.
We sat down to meals silent and repressed and picked up our forks
as if the stepdad hadn’t just won a major battle,
as if my brother’s days in that household were not numbered.

Details | Deb Rhodes Poem

Lollygagging

Just the whiff of pink rose
growing outside my front door
brings my heart to my throat, stirs a desire
to don frayed cut-offs and white tee-shirt
and climb into the womb of my childhood fort,
to dream, to write, to lollygag to my heart’s content.

Details | Deb Rhodes Poem

An Ordinary Girl

It doesn’t take much:

rustling bed covers

a whiff of Old Spice

menacing tattoos,

and I travel

backwards in time,

heart clinched with fear

my hands suddenly small and helpless,

nothing but gulping gasps

where my breath should be.

Your hair oil

Your manicured nails

Your bristly crew cut

Your fevered breath.

My writhing shame

My mangled dreams

My nightly fear

My scabbed up knees

and gangly legs

unwillingly intertwined with yours.

It doesn’t take much

and I am there,

listening to a gaggle of kids

playing on the street I know by heart,

counting the moments

until you release me

and I rejoin them,

not missing a beat

as my trembling legs

propel me over the jump-rope:

just an ordinary little girl

playing innocent games,

once more.

Details | Deb Rhodes Poem

Steady Hands

They laughed at my feeble attempts to express myself,
then wondered why I spent so much time
alone in my room.

A closed door, blank paper.
A typewriter’s busy, furious clicking:

(Let me write, let me write,
let me fill up the blank skied night
with words.)

“Isn’t she ever coming out of there?
It’s not normal spending so many hours
alone in that room.”

Sweet oblivion reaches out its kind fingers
and buttons me up,
envelops me in the warmth of my little corner.

Words splash and spill
into midnight hours;
they shake their heads in puzzlement—
I am not one of them—
and I have no explanation to offer.

I kneel down
and mop up the spillage of words
with steady hands.

Details | Deb Rhodes Poem

Sacred Romance

Sweet Ancient of Days,
Come to me wearing any disguise:
thorny rose
soft-footed snow
mournful wind
or rain tippity-tapping my window pane.

Romance me, though all around me prove false
though mountains shake
and the hills be removed—-romance me then, or not at all.

I will learn to love the snow because of you
learn to pick out the disparate notes of your serenaded love
in melancholy music,
in the fresh smell of cotton dresses steam ironed
in the remembrance of my father’s laughter ( though now its merry swirl is lost to me.)

Wear wood smoke as your cologne
and autumn’s vulgarity of colors as bold contrast to my drab little self.
Like a blind woman whose fingertips have grown accustomed to Braille,
to the unique texture of things, I will caress the barks of trees
the familiar landscape of knee scabs;

will tremble with desire
to be the warp and woof of your weaver’s loom,
my self woven (bones, hair and all) into a gorgeous tapestry,
another kind of tapestry than what I dreamed I could be.

Ancient of Days,

my dreams are too big for me;
my child’s hands fumble them clumsily
even as I blink back tears at my ineptness, my lack of grace.

I turn at the slightest rustling sound
my ears keen for your approach.
Oh! I love you so,
I betroth myself to you
to your light in my baby brother’s eyes,
and to the sound of your lullaby meant just for me
in the sighing of falling embers
and in sun drenched streets I dare not explore without you.

Sweet Ancient of Days:
tarry with me one more hour
linger near while mother frowns over the stove
and the step-dad smirks at my stupidity;
stay lest my soul wither away
and I lose myself for want of you.
Stay.

Details | Deb Rhodes Poem

If

If God were to smile upon me as in the days of old
If he gentled my step and blessed me
with soft spoken reassurances of love—

If He were to rise on my behalf
with righteous indignation,
and only a portion of my enemy’s curses
smote me and tore at my hard-won peace—

If His hedge of protection
set boundaries on the evil which walks by day
and never sleeps by night—

If once more I heard the sweet strains of serenading love
calling me forth from my hiding place,
and no amount of head lowering
could shake this hound of heaven’s ardent pursuit:

oh! how my heart would stir within,
bringing me to my knees
in soul submission.

I would rise and bestir myself
seeking Him whom my soul desires above all others;
I would shake the dust of this earth from my feet
and making haste
would run to meet Him:

my soul
my darling
my lover, once more.

Details | Deb Rhodes Poem

The Color of Bones

My mother (a bleacher of bloodstained sheets)
bleaches my dreams the color of bones,
and feeds me on snakes and dirty slate stones.
She winces each time I walk through the door,
a mere apparition (though we’ve done this before.)

She blinks at the angles of my newly-formed hips
and her voice sounds strangled through
thin pressed lips.
“He did this because he was stressed at work;
if you turn your head
if you concentrate hard
our skeletons will stay buried in our own backyard.”

Oh! See how dust motes stir in my wake
(and mother just Pledged, for Heaven’s sake!)
Don’t pick at your scabs
Don’t stand pigeon-toed
Don’t ask for answers to questions you’ve no right to know.

O, wicked child so much in the way
Nothing but underfoot night and day.
Can’t you see that your visibility
makes mother suspect her accountability?

But others decide the sting of my fate!
The slant of my head and the tread of my feet—
and mother’s bleaching my blood from her snowy white sheets.
Another fine mess for mother to scour
And look at the time! Another lost hour!

I’ve gone far away so far from myself
and live on old bones and the most cunning of stealth.
I’ve perfected the art of tip-toeing on my Flintstoned feet . . .
and mother is bleaching my blood from her snowy-white sheets.

Details | Deb Rhodes Poem

You Speak Poetry

You speak poetry liquid as fragrant tea poured boldly
from steady hand.

I sip at your words, savoring the sweetness of each syllable
and swallow smoothly the rhythm of each verse
jealously lingering over the last drop,
loathe to come to an end of it all
and place empty cup in cold saucer.

You speak poetry
drowning out the noise of the faucet’s cleansing water
overflowing into empty china cups.

You speak: poetry.