Rebecca Fransway Poetry

On this site you will find some of the published and unpublished poetry by Rebecca Fransway. We don't remember where we lifted some of the images. If you are the owner of any of these images and don't want them on the page or want credit for the them, please write and let us know. Thank you.

I hereby give permission for any of my poems to be reprinted for any not-for-profit use. Credit should be given to myself, and perhaps to the original publishers, if applicable. I also reserve the right to rescind this permission for any reason. Thank you for wanting to print my poetry. Rebecca Fransway, author, 12-STEP HORROR STORIES. Anthology: THE OUTLAW BIBLE OF AMERICAN POETRY. Plus, assorted literary magazines such as those credited at the end of some of my poems.

Take stars from breath
all of you at night
flat we lie
and share closed eyes
breath into mud lungs
a thousand tiny stars
into veins, out
the ends of toes. Offer
an innumerable pledge of stars,
sifting into the dry night, into the music
of the brown eyed Sammy
geyser of small fire, a cirrus
of stars. Into the sleep
of the fretful woman in tiny rooms
into the drum of the young brown man
whom all will hear and glory.
Moon hat, bejewel, float outward, stars--
For babies to catch in their bright smiles
and silly hands

You called I love you, hey!
Because of you
I put off suicide by vodka,
a ripped-out phone a locked deadbolt,
put off suicide a day,
turned to a week. Then,
as I limped again toward the end
of work, of riding in the sun & rain
& hate, you ran
out onto the lawn of the group home,
wearing those rat-a-tat tights
that crash helmet zinging
with day-glo. You wanted
spare coins
which I gladly
gave.

anonymous meadows, we,
covered in sad stories,
that the yarrow rises from our dirt chests.
We have begun our return to wilderness;
Its order is a holy one;
at our own we have many failed.

PROVERB FOR THE PALE CHRISTIAN
Scapegoating is tied up
in the heart of the pale Christian
The rod of Poetry
will remove it from him.

CHRISTIAN?

Christ
christian
christian marriage
christian families
christian schools
christian television
christian rockbands
christian bookstores
christian country
christian politics
christian politicians
christian coalitions
christian fundraisers
christian poorhouses
christian militias
christian prisons
christian electric chairs

christian scapegoats
Christ

© 1995 Poet News

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is a medical anomaly. For too long
she's carried Esteban.
Her maternity dress hangs
in foolish drapes over the huge
nakedness.
She lumbers through the years
and sweats, and smiles at everyone.
See her feet splayed in eight-dollar sandals,
battleworn and red-nailed.
And always, she loaded down
with the lead of Esteban.

God he's heavy. Today marks
her eleventh year of pregnancy.
Her legs have become very strong.
Every year they tell her
he will be born soon.
Yet all along, people have thought
she should kill him. And yes,
she sometimes things of killing him.

But he has grown, and, of necessity,
broken from her pelvis
to engage her central artery
and has tunneled upward
through the friendliness of her stomach
and into her rib cage
where be breathes, in and out.
Lately, she feels one of his child hands
press up her throat,
senses his apologies
as he sips
the red haze of her brain.

And she thinks she carries a genius.
From the moment of his conception
he would speak, and sing, and amaze her
with the secrets of his life.
His sound pulse through her everlarge body.
Only she can hear him.

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She's a rich man's daughter gone
vagrant on the Richmond bridge
where the cars flash and the bay
shivers like a happy heart.

The seagulls dash their white sweets
pretty on her windshield,
another conked car
to be whisked from a world
of working order
like San Quentin way down the beach,
its toy turrets riding the sky.
Esteban's there in the North Yard
waiting for the loudspeaker flare:
Visit Visit Visit for Esteban
out of West Block!

You could have seen her
eyes slip hast as light as the edge
of water, quiet as moths
in the nightlamps of San Quentin
as she hurries with her dog-eared ID,
her bare arms goose-bumped
her hips swinging in a checked dress.
There's only one Esteban
and, like cars, a million days running into days
of invisible grace.

Maybe you've seen it for sale at the summer carnival.
A foreground of lilies,
a wildwoman naked and splayed
for the visit of a unicorn from heaven,
where thunderheads roll
in a sky of blackhearted blue.

A blue that dilates the eyes
and kisses the tips of breasts,
a blue that breaks the hearts of men
and women like Esteban's widow

She smiled in bright lipstick.
In her yard-sale coat she cuts through leaf-strewn alleys
to dark-glass bars
trying to find and hold that blue-

Esteban's widow tries to drink it.
But blue is a spirit, will not stay
inside her.

Like crows from the tops of trees, it rises
calling, calling to genius,
then leaves
her always hoping she is different,
that she can mate with the unicorn,
that she will never die.

Crows overhead,
rain's black captains call.
They float
like gunboats full
of the secrets of rain.
The path
through the slatted fence
parallels the tracks.
From tired trees,
olives drop
glisten black
out of the slick.
From a window somewhere near
a young man sings
after the thrumming
of the Amtrak.
He sings
a warm small sooning song.
Please, go down low to hear
it sung
from a secret
in his precious arteries.
Something strange and sacred
spills a resinous river
where bulrushes grow
in the evening.
Here, the wind also
originates. It blows
in frightening holiness.
As clouds round the sky,
rain advances.

By no means let them know
you are crazy.
Do not talk to yourself.
Know the day, the date, the year.
Know who the presidents are.
Never laugh
while riding your bicycle
as rain pours out its loneliness
to the town.
You are not rich enough yet.
If anyone asks what you'd do
if you found a lost letter
say, "why, I'd mail it, of course."
By no means tell them
you'd rip it open, aglow
certain of a message from heaven.

And if, in the middle of your job
clearing dishes, wiping crumbs,
you pause to scrawl poetry
on children's party napkins
between tomato sauce and Road Runner
be careful no one sees you.
Tuck these quickly into your pack
to open by night
as the living moon lifts it hook
approving
the day's loot~
your precious, holy heart.

From far back
a certain memory bobs
like a moth, old and mute.
A deep fur of land
smell of night green water
and wild yearning for the man.
Orgasm is not new.
It is from far back.
People are stick figures back there
running in the dark.
Wild trees blow high, blow high gods, alive
you are, out of the lightning rain.
There is no such thing as alone.
Your thoughts are not words
but small fires.

JANUARY EVENING BETWEEN SLATER'S COURT
AND THE AMTRAK STATION, DAVIS , CALIFORNIA

Slivers of olive leaves
like tadpoles imposed
in sparkling stones,
and rain-panned~
the glow from gold lamps
and that one ruby
lamp that marks the crossing place
for trains. A golden haired man
walks across the pink tiles
and down the path
behind the veil of trees, breathing
into the hobo camp.

Damp silence, archways, stuccostone.
Air as cool as the deep,
deep blue that fades to cirrocumulus
north. Oh, my love.
Behold the moment's wealth.
A single cat flashes.
Bicycle spins the rainshine.

Dreaming in the forest
blue flutter, waking ah!
Bluebells blown
through the missing pane.
The forest is Olive Drive,
we are oil for Gaia's lampstands.
The man in the laundry room,
red clothes in free water.
We walk, blue flutter of some
kind of wing. We wake,
the old leaves large
as dragon feet. Large
so small, so brown
as ants climbing up the honey
jar. This is paradise.
We are all on welfare, on fire.

© 1997 The Flatlander

SUZANNE GOES DOWN

My name is Suzanne
I am learning military words
The father of my abortion was in Special Forces
He killed people in hot jungles.
My brain is a hot jungle.
We deal in amphetamines and weapons.
We have a machine gun in our trailer.
It leans against the same couch
with me and someone else's year-old baby.
I am drunk.
I play patty-cake with the red-haired baby
while the father of my abortion
bargains in Spanish with devils.
His wife jumps from the kitchen
and nerves about the room saying, "honey"
pretending I'm a better friend to her than he.
What a son of a bitch he is.
My love is a disease.
I am learning military words.
Reconnaissance means rounding up you man
who's been captured by the cops.
Leave McDonald's wrappers by the tunnel
a mile from Folsom Prison.
Siege means you've been up five days on crank,
barricaded in your trailer. Enemies
crawl the roof and rattle the vents.
My name is Suzanne, I think.
I am a military cunt.
Look at my chest-no slacking here, sirs.
I carry my pride in a lump behind me
to be saluted while I die of drunkenness.
It's Apocalypse Now, folks.
My brain gives orders from its thick hot jungle.
My body is on automatic.
It marches down the lunatic lines
from trailer to liquor department at Safeway.
See the bottle drop into the handbag.
Here is my body at the A.A. meeting.
There there dear it'll be okay one day atta time
and it's NOT OKAY.
My body is on automatic.
My brain gives orders from a fierce hot jungle.
I am dying a military death.
I am dying with military dishonors,
in ripped underpants.
Someone is going to see my underpants.

© 1996 Long Shot
© 1999 The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry

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DAVIS RABBITS

We are serious animals
who in the springtime
come up from holes
with charms attached to our bodies.
We strap ourselves into tiny cars
or beneath foam bike helmets.
With chains of keys
we lock the dead bolt.

Behind the university
we sit beneath prefabricated umbrellas
and push benign vegetables
about recycled plates.
From glass bottles to cups
we drink water we hope is holy.

Sometimes we are disconcerted
by a chewed-up heart
dropped from the bare mouth
of a woman who is secretly crazy.
God will drift by
listen awhile.
none of us want him around
because we think he is a man.

We fear the embarrassment involved
that he will make us cry
want to dry his feet
with our expensive permanents.
That we might become hungry for pig's eyes
and be swept into tan impossible childhood.

© 1996 Long Shot

Since childhood
Suzanne has been strung
with electric wires.
Praise be her father
who drank himself purple
and urinated on throw rugs.
Her true veins are unacceptable.
She secretly loves whippings, like Eva
Braun, like Teresa of Avila
but this is a shysome issue
not for human company
except vote to bring it back to schools.
Her veins were replaced
with red and blue wires
and a gold, secret one
that runs through her center
from tongue to clitoris.
She need green
for it insulates.
Otherwise
she experiences a zillion volts
which rat-a-tat
the teeth.
She has to find green
and watch it
awhile
for the easing.
Any deep green will do-
old bottle glass, the eyes of witches.
Then she can go to her job
listening for trains,
for their boisterous horns
their longings and elephant
thunderings. She
can ride the boxcars
and fuck the engineers.
She needs the care of Mormon poets
who surround her with blankets
and instruction, no matter how
stupid she seems,
and she needs green.

© 1996 Long Shot

STRUGGLE FOR THE BODY OF TOM MCLAUGHLIN

He's doing six smokeless months
waiting canteen for a piss
pot full of candybars and mail
days for letters with
clippings of wolves
and eagles and candycone
breasts. Pinkpen scrawls

from the six-foot Dolly-dooed
lioness in black jeans and jack
boots. Face
bolted to eternal meanness,
she hogged the front of the pickup,
strongarm kick on his
cranked-up liver.

Another with a red purse
gone across like a soldier's
sash, wallet of pennies
inside. She
stands like a shot
gun shell full of black powder
for Tom, waiting
for his rag-heart body
to fish the rocks
from between his holey old teeth.

© 1995 Poet News

It's a feeling I had
stranded late at a dirty
wheezing bus stop with an old yellow man
nearby and lights scratching my
twelve-year-old eyes, heart
picked in my bird ribs like tomato.
And behold, come from nowhere Dad's battlecar,
gunning for my rescue.

And Dad, rubbing my back
until the asthma lets loose my skinny neck
and I can breath air so good it tastes
blue and God is alive, painting the world,
taking the pale from my face.

© 1995 Poet News

There is no shame
where pride has been abandoned.
Will you have me?
Imagine the body that lives
in these borrowed clothes.

Do you object to Irish?
To thick, peasant legs, to dirt
in toenails? I've gathered rice,
cotton. I've cut apricots,
lain them out in dry-yards.
These hands are scarred.
Don't lay them out.
This tongue is experienced,
the thighs placid as cows.
You fear the embarrassment?
Be warned. I am in no way correct.
The holy family is all I know.
We use no chemicals, no condoms.

If fear neither your illness
nor your lack of cash.
I fear neither the homeless
nor the crazy. I have little fear.
I dreamed you stabbed me.
There was no fear. Life
is not mine; there's no penny
in this little red purse.

© 1995 Coffee & Chicory

ON THE WAY TO HUMAN ANATOMY

In the center of winter
the wind sweeps in by north;
I know it now, the power of convection
and I, alive, with tiny red leaves
ticking the walkway. And the room
full of bones and the end of the hall
waits, and the body
who lies there and lies and lies

and lies, wrapped thick in plastic.
We, full of grace, joke
as we name the parts, Real Name no more
miracle, somewhere else, maybe.
A long time ago

in my lower bunk, safe
with the night heavy outside, I listen
to the train, wondering myself inside
with whom…
and I realize I cannot see my own face,
if I try hard, only the ghost of a nose.
A body in a nightgown, freckled arms
stretch out from where I see. Who, or what…
scares me, I call to my mother.
She does not understand.

Some have seemed to resolve this.
I have not. Every love is a leaf left
in the center of winter, its color separate
and piercing, lemon keen in the sides
of jaws. Scrabble-gray rain in eyes
not meant to see themselves;
rain dotting a coat worn by a body
whose love clings like a tramp,
drunk and glorious,
to the train.

© 1993 OnTheBus

TOMATO SILENCE

With my father I remember
the breaking of sound barrier
on the plains of Sacramento
this sacrament
overhead jets break
six-year-old’s terror
it’s just a sonic boom, honey.

Thirty years later
will I talk myself into anyone’s head?
We fly down the freeway
between the jeweled lines
and the scatters of tomato, the broken
road flowers

poor beauty, ragged riches.
I wear a choker of small
bright words
A whole swallow of life
downthroat, just another little piece
of tomato.

You go on thinking
I am stupid or poor
while the red money within
becomes huge,
impossible now to cough
piece by salty, seedy piece.

© 1993 Davis Poetry Review

In those early hours
of Epiphany known to us
impoverished by our own
small crabs of self
in those hours I seemed
to take Jesus as a lover
In those nights he came down
into my plaid blanket
the one electric
one with no cord
He held me with
torn hands
pressed his
pressed himself into my
hot, recovering breasts
His glance of light
into my soiled gown
Acceptance of my
unshaven boulderous
legs, my yellow tooth
poverty

Then my heart
came to me in dreams
His own wife
she began to walk me mornings
Sound began, and vision
perhaps my own
child spoke
from her crib to this secret
Being who cared for her
the early hours of Sunday
while mother and father slept
off a cloud of wine and fruit
flies. She sings the tunes of
frogs, their myriad
whirling tunes from far
below the trestle, the far
off secret tracks.

I’m alone with October evening.
The sky is a pirate glass of deepest
blue, that black-hearted blue,
a color so perfect I could cry
for wanting it.

That blue is a young color, cold
and wild. Like north wind,
it loves me in my old sweater.
I breathe its shock
and it rings, blue rings. Then
I know I am alive.

I want to drink that blue.
It would fresh my throat
like water from a well of clean stones.
And I would be filled with something
cold and beautiful and knowing
like a dream that pierces
the tar-dark sleep of the hot and fretful,
that old dream you wake from
and seek and barely touch.
It disappears like the shine of a needle
in a mile of space.

© 1990 Suisun Valley Review

Walking alone
on Huer-huerro Road
I stop.
There’s this crow sitting on a post
watching, quite certain
of who I am.
Will I imagine its insanity?
If this crow became human

she would hop from her post
and tramp down the lane
trailing dark feathers
from a dress loose
at the waist, the hem whickering
around her knees.
The dirt in her toenails
would be glad as the laurels
that bob in her triumph of hair.
She would flick a piece of green corn
from one of her teeth.

But the crow god whispers
You are still mine.
On the first day
she eats dog food from a porch dish.
On the first night
she searches dumpsters
for whatever she can get:
a last gulp of wine,
a gobble of beans from an abandoned can.
Then she sleeps
in the wattle and sigh of old lunches.

She wakes,
stares out at the drip-rimmed sky.
Her family is thrown
to the air by the crow god
to scavenge, and they
will not speak to her.
She touches
her strange new arm
and remembers that she had
no hands, no tongue, no voice
but a ragged caw,
and she is filled with amazement
at her luck
and a fresh and greedy joy.
The crow god was wrong.

© 1990 Suisun Valley Review

THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARS

from Grandmas, hangs from the wall
the Siamese face, hunger
yanks the boat-eyes here, over here
Scares the girl who goes there summers

to San Pedro and all the wonders
of big fat Grandma—her packets
of mints, the big-city TV

Don’t play with that pillow
it makes me nervous
He drifts down Sepulveda street, that man
from under the glass on Grandmas wall

In the search-lit night, he’s a thin
man with a metal tap-tap cane, hungering
He’s gone into the old theater
a poor man, intoxicated, odd genie clothes

Slips into the stucco hotel of Long Beach
a mantis flensing in a window
Grandma brings the buttered pie-pan of divinity

The girl watches television for hours
chewing her thumb. Summer is almost
gone, almost time to go in the Greyhound

home, back to war in the overgrown
barleyfields of nowhere, back to asthma
Big fat Grandma waves good-bye
wait

for another summer. No one seems to notice
the picture, but a boat-eye starves
in the girl’s head forever. No one else
ever remembers that man.

© 1997 Suisun Valley Review

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