Poetry By Lucinda Trew

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songs in the key of demolition
 
the workers demo’ing our kitchen
                 speak Portuguese
as they liberate old cabinets, sledge
walls, wrest ovens from twisted nests of wire
 
they wear the powder-sift of hard work, dust
that gives them ghostly airs of apparition, but they
 are here, boot-print real, and I hear them
                speaking Portuguese
amid the din of demolition, the unleashing
 
of what’s broken and old – I hear
hammers, saws and heaves, their voices
                speaking Portuguese
words that rise to the rafters, like raucous birds
or Maracas fireworks
 
they laugh loud and long and easy – our shambled
kitchen now a stage for stories and teasing and
                 speaking Portuguese
I sit upstairs, eavesdropping on the cacophony
 
wondering how such ruckus turns to music
that grows softer with the trim work of carpentry
the whisper of sanding and brush stroke and
                 speaking Portuguese
and how the heavy hardness of work
                 can be spoken so gently
 

 


I want to wrap myself in Patti Smith’s braids
 
because I know those long, loose strands will hold me
though they are reckless, defiant, frayed – the gray of wire
               and cloud wisp, metal and mercy
 
they are what I need, a cat’s cradling and a raw-edged
song – a song that might be prayer, or lullaby
               in the key of punk
 
they are the strummed-out, undone spiral of a notebook
owning secrets, written in wanderlust, the cursive
                of subversive, the softest of circling
 
around my shoulders – those braids are everything
yet barely there, they are salvation – Madonna, Medusa
                a Rapunzel lifeline
 
on days like this, I need a nest of twigs and words
and revelation, a settling into the thistle down
               of Patti’s plaited crown
 
I need reins released, the manes of horses
spurred to run – those wild, wondrous braids
               they are what will save me
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Lucinda Trew is the author of What Falls to Ground (Charlotte Lit Press, 2025). Her work has been honored with four Pushcart nominations, a Best of the Net nomination, and Boulevard’s 2023 Poetry Contest Award for Emerging Poets. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Cagibi Literary Journal, Pinch, The North Carolina Literary Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Susurrus, and elsewhere. She lives, writes, and rambles in the piney, red clay piedmont of North Carolina.

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