What the Truth is Worth
by Lisa Caloro

  1. These are not confessions, they are bone
  2. 					bled truths,
    								they are words trapped 
    								in marrow that burn you
    								alive if left unsaid.
    					They are barn-burners, house-wreckers, black
    cigarettes holes left in your mom’s new couch 
    					after nodding out.  
    
    
  3. They are dog-stranglers, son-smackers,   the car flipped
  4. in a field as you flee, a bleeding child in your arms.
  5. They are infidelity held in your mouth,
  6. a sour tongue,
  7. the girl hit, closed fisted, in tenth grade homeroom.
  8. I’m free with my truths so others feel safe to tell theirs.
  9. A wounded world gapes behind the construct
  10. of admissible truths It undulates like knife accidents viewed through tears,   begs us to return, beckons in the dreams we wake from alive,
  11. gasping, looking around.
  12. You do not seek relief; you unpack the bloody lunch, still twitching, eye
  13. the unhinged gates of heaven.
  14. The almighty absence is a cool breeze
  15. rattling useless latches.
  16. You settle into the firepit, cover a blanket of flames,       un-
  17. pray for forgiveness.
Packingtown Review – Vol.14, Fall 2020

Lisa Caloro teaches college, writes, and bar-tends in a small Catskill Mountain town. Her poems have appeared in Evening Street Review, The Carolina Quarterly, and Slant, among other publications.

  1. Lisa Caloro
    God’s Replypoetry