Shaela Phillips

Queen of the Mosquitoes


it was a late funeral
i carried poems hidden
in breast pockets
from all those angry years
no one taught me how to live

dandies fly off dark ivy swallows
into pits
gloomy
held captive
on the shores of barbicide
bubbled
curdled
putrid

a river of madness

where i drain my blood
from a small incision
for the leeches
hurry come and get it,
fast
run
smooth
into the quick sands
withdraw-ling my sickness
injected me with serum
to formulate attitude
under a bridge of armageddon
bye-bye sweetness

there are thickly boarded houses
settled on puddled dew drops
that call me by name
and know the history
that I have stored
from even my husband

the icy rivers through me
in red rock canyons
eaten mosquitoes

i blow on raw-hide
rolled into a bamboo flute
And call
to the woman in me
lost in the wildness

i make home
and shake the hand of peace
knitting my sweater
i am a free woman




Shaela Montague-Phillips: I am a student at Pittsburgh University. I begin having problems with depression when I was raped by a close family member and then I got married to my husband who was foster child and did know how to love so he was always drunk in the first few years of marriage. But now I have this fresher outlook on life and I am loving myself more and more each day.






Joe Hackworth Bruce Stater Rick Parsons Jerry Hicks Colin Van der Woude Shaela Phillips Martin Rutley K. R. Copeland Jack Cannon Dave Ruslander