Two Poems – Writers House Review

Cori Camp

Ode to the Somerset House

We turned you into a microphone, screaming into and throughout your walls, doors and rooms

Used and abused you like the loversdrinksdrugs and fathers that floated in and out

An upstairs bedroom that used to be baby blue now looks like a cloudy day covered in spackle from 15 years of teenage fury and frenzies

The chipped step in the living room from constant leaps into the kitchen, feet landing in a small almost unnoticeable dent in tile

A missing door from The Incident ™ years ago that’s remained an open frame as a reminder of how terrifying a mother’s rage truly is

A Scrap of carpet scorched lightly and hidden under a bed frame–a group of pre-teens’ first run-in with a lighter

But you gave as good as you got

Stitches in retaliation for broken gates, glass and cups

Countless wounds received during games of Ghost spilling from the living room up the steps and beyond

Twisted ankles and battered ribs in the play room, your towering cabinet filled with toys to the ceiling, crushing kids beneath its shelves

A climb up the railing ending with a not-so-smooth landing

The stairs themselves: a racetrack, deathtrap and slide, home to our Avalanche games that always ended in splinters and scrapes

Bumps and bruises from collisions, beanie baby wars, crashes over chairs and hair-pulling fist-flying fights in the arena of your walls

For years the dents in your doors have matched bruises on our bodies, compared chipped and ripped paint to broken skin and bloody knuckles

If your walls could talk, half of us would be in jail and the other in the nuthouse–all of us in therapy; you’ve heard the worst breakups, the loudest and cruelest fights

You’ve been front row to genuine laughter, the declarations of love and hidden moments of sibling kindness

The biggest lies and quietest truths from our mouths soaked into your very foundation

When we’ve all left

When someone paints over the baby blue a new shade of family

When steps are fixed and carpets replaced

When those who roam your halls screw a new door to the hinges and don’t remember why it was ripped down

Remember us floating deep in your floorboards and running wild through pipes and growing through the spaces between your walls

We will remember the scars painted and screams echoed and secrets held safe in shelter you gave when nothing else would.

If I could Love Poem

My brother asked me yesterday if I was in love

I told him my chest hurt when I hear your name

And he said it’s close enough

But I promise I won’t tell you I love you because I’ve given up on lying

The calendar says it’s been almost five months since my last one

Even if a white lie could have saved a life a time or two lately

You’ve softened my soul enough that it would feel sacrilegious to tell one

When I’m tipsy enough I think of you as a Trojan horse filled with saints instead of killers rolled into my body

Usually I don’t get to keep the things that come to me

So I wonder who will bleed for it

Me for letting the saints starve inside me or you for thinking I couldn’t turn them to killers anyway

It’s been hard lately to have the heart of a thief when

you give me what I want so easily

I haven’t figured out how to write something happy

even when my face is sore from smiling

What I want to give you is warmth from my touch

All I have is red hands that will stain yours

But this has to be something divine if I feel sick thinking about burying it

It might be love

I feel loved, I think

Warming my fingers for as long as I want to stare up at the stars

Learning to pull my hair up as I lean over the bathroom sink with bile behind my teeth

Let me conduct my benediction in the form of rug-burned knees

Stay under the shower with me until the sun sets across the tile and the water is like the Atlantic in march

Draw bandaids in red pen over my cuts and bruises so I can watch them while they heal

It’s become hard to believe this is the body that ever wanted to touch another

That the eyes I have could look into someone else’s willingly

Now I know if my back breaks carrying your secrets I’d crawl to keep them from touching the ground

I know even being made of shadows I can’t make myself mind when your light colors me invisible

And if I feel your heartbeat echoing against my chest I can breathe like I have the lungs of my 17 year old self

If this is love it hurts as sweet as the poets sob

Is it normal to feel cold whenever I’m alone

Hold my hands over a flame until I can’t feel them then press fingers to my cheeks

So if I close my eyes you could be standing in front of me with your palms to my face

Am I getting too dark again?

I’ll listen to Big Thief on repeat until I feel you lie next to me

Maybe then I’ll feel less melodramatic

I’ll start taking the pills with my name on them and stop touching flames

If you only ask I’d take whatever you put between my lips

Is this what Juliet felt when she let the poison touch her tongue

My mother has been telling me I look brighter

Maybe it’s what love does

Maybe it’s your slow poisoning of sunlight across my shadows

It feels like love

Like you have my heart between your teeth

Like when this is over and you can’t look me in the eyes

I’ll keep this poem as proof I think I loved

Proof I had it if only until you got to my center to find it rotted

If I could love it would be for you

Cori Camp writes, “I plan to graduate Spring 2022 with a major in English and minor in Creative Writing, then attend a graduate school for an MFA in Poetry. Proudly from Gloucester City, New Jersey.