Cherree Wellman

I have always enjoyed reading and writing poetry, and have been writing free verse pretty continually since I was around 10 years old, though I have not had much formal education in writing. About 5 years ago I completely changed careers, moved to Stoughton, and threw out everything I had ever written. Our lives have many phases, and while I am thankful for the past that brought me to where I am ("This is the strangest life I have ever known"), I am thoroughly enjoying the present circumstances of life and writing again after a brief hiatus. I work and spend much of my time in Madison.

 

To Be a Wife: A Cerebral Musing

I will never have an innocuous 50th wedding anniversary
with silver, china, or paper or whatever …
cement, shellac—concrete shoes
in a sparsely packed VFW reeking of depends full of piss
and southern comfort olives

I’ll die with the name my parents gave me
that day I came out silently crimson, trying to hang myself
it was as if I knew—by some preternatural neuron
racing through my glistening new cranium
squishing and squishing
It’s as if I knew

I used to be proud of the fact that I would die
never having taken some man’s name
(… always a brides-made never a bribe bride)
but keeping my own
even though I despised it in its anglo saxony
brutish sound
yes, I used to take some silent pride in that
fact until I met you.
Now I’m all longing and happiness
and futures full of gratitude

But even our brightest future can only be
realistically 30 years
and by then we might forget who we are, our names,
or our children …
Unfortunately our minds never forget
who we were—even in its deteriorated state it keeps
banging away at that old drum
half dead isn’t insane enough—
every crevice, pit, soaking its brine and pickling our memories
leaving me in an eternal limbo
where I am waiting and waiting and waiting at the altar.

 

He Says Goodnight

This loosened strand
I’ve named you
Who have the ability
To drop me to the floor

When you are quiet
The raindrops pull upwards
The crocuses close
The bed is a stone slab

 

Jim Morrison Scrawls “God Help Me”

I have consumed
all of
myself

My exterior
parts
swallowed me whole

I am immeasurably lacking
now I see it reflected back at me
in cold porcelain imagery
—this world gave me up

one thread
I hold onto
in the gale

Damp with wanting
clinging sobs
regurgitating

the loss of my
infinite seed
     this stillborn life
decomposing in the Parisian night

     I love what I hate
     and I hate what I love
     —what kind of demon looms out of my
          unrepentence

what kind?

As I smile
it is only for silence, and
Morrison the demon
I created here

I finally
escape
myself

in this water
this vomitus
this blood.