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Accidentat the corner of boone trails and owenAccident9 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
she learned the brevity of flight:
glinting bumper for launch pad
trajectory approximately 5 feet
across the median.
she pirouetted
as proud, as swift
as any prima ballerina
but the landing
proved rough.
this I keep for her -
the listless weight of limbs
defying gravity, the beastly beauty
of a body bouyant before
its death.
Bitlet 09 - PoliticsWhen I speak of Carolina, cicadas sing in my memoryBitlet 09 - Politics3 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
and I want to shout so you, little sister, might understand
the way a creature smaller than my hand can stand
with its brethren and shake my arrogance, how each
of their voices alone are just the sliver of a whisper -
but singing together they become thunder.
PositiveLeft to me, your worst historian,Positive3 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
to pick up, in a daze, some depth of diction
I never found while you had lived
and I can only now pretend that words are capsules
of sanguinity, that they’ll unmask the symbologies
of sound that bore your binaries to their realms
like sacred dreams of Hypnos.
Regret’s a simple word.
I always thought of "A Separate Peace", and in those scenes
you were this Mozart in the rough, a perfect chord, one
which I would meekly channel through cracks of light
shown through the fist of my own interference,
steady indifference.
Hand and foot, Hip and breastHear the ever-wonderful =TwilightPoetess read this aloud here!Hand and foot, Hip and breast5 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
And now I understand the depths
to which a woman must sink, must
dig herself into, must push past with hand
and foot, hip and breast. It is not light I seek
but solidness. Not spring air soft against
my cheek, but the scalding touch of lava
forced for so long to be silent and still
now worming through a cracked
and weeping crust. It seeks explosions
because affection must be dramatic.
But the sky will not love it
as thoroughly as I do.
And now I understand the impossible
permanence of night-lit words.
They linger in the valley between my wrist
and fingers; stow themselves in my freckles.
I cannot erase their presence, ignore
their weight -- only hope for a lover
who will burn away your shape.
But I understand hope to be a fickle
and most unfortuna
SurrogateI stopped using his full titleSurrogate2 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
because it started sounding too formal,
and it’s hard to be standoffish with someone
who swaps albums and memories so generously,
who loves German chocolate but hates the smell of oranges,
who knows me by my boneless,
drowsy form on the couch and by my words.
And maybe one day he’ll ask
me to drop the title altogether and call him Brad,
but I won’t.
Because it sounds too much like dad,
and I’m afraid of slipping up.
AcquittalWon't you leave me? I will love youAcquittal8 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
more than if you stay, transfixed
to the point of reference, our bodies
melding a sad, soft sublime, the back
spine of a little universe blown out
like a crafter's hot glass, the growing
moment, the wonder, the expansion
before a chill.
beaut(if)ulYou exist in thebeaut(if)ul4 months ago in Haiku & Eastern More Like This
space where beautiful is a
question unanswered.
it's your call, starlingmy sister is going to be a cyborgit's your call, starling3 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
and i hope she stays gentle. i heard
that cochlear implants
can sometimes become commanders
the same way that learning commands
formative love. i hope she
stays humble and continues
to make my tinctures in the endearing
way she does,
dissolutions gentle
enough to flood underground tunnels
with flute-song.
she takes my wrist by force
and she decrees that all knowledge
happens in a snow-felled wood
at sunset. it's like the natural life
inside her yearns still
for that brackish obliteration,
and maybe when she's a cyborg
it will detach itself from its carbon
sequestration and fly out to its avalon,
and,
The Watchmaker's Lover - RevisionYour clockwork appendagesThe Watchmaker's Lover - Revision7 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
were cold to the touch.
The industrial complex of your mind
was grating gear against gear
where the unoiled works
kept clacking away; your atrium
was a tick-tocking machine
that counted the hours while the rust settled in.
The mainspring spiraled round
your mechanical heart tensed
so tightly it showed in your face,
in your quivering hands,
your troubled eyes.
The unlubricated escapement never
released, oxidized into place
from ages of neglect.
Your lonely footsteps echoed
under orange gaslamps submitting
to the glare of red lanterns.
Used parts are yours for the taking;
here, a hairspring; there, slender
legs unde
syracuseListen to the audio version for the full effect, pretty please.syracuse6 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
cloudshot sky like an oil painting and i am watching the
seagulls. i--
darling, i will swim for you
and swallow every whitecap.
i will pluck myself a coat of pelican wings,
sew them up with salt and spray--
become icarus for you.
you are calling me across the waves, love--
but you pull against the ache
in my bones, the hollow--
the clawing out for unseen sunsets and unturned tides.
i hear you, love
give me time.
i will always listen.
dead1.dead5 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
i hear these words
and something happens
in the yard;
it doesn't fit
a poem
or planet.
i see it squeeze
into the slits
beneath your shirt.
i feel it fly the smooth
of you
from off your back. it turns
and hides behind the acres,
stock frontiers
of jagged rooftops,
kept far and safe
and free
of me.
2.
the squirrel
has left the limb
as light would leave
a photograph.
i’m staring into its absence
and some new kind of animal is made;
one where
only
its reversal is alive.
it doesn't move or breathe.
the park is wintered over, and i don’t go.
the poppies
are all gone.
and when they do come back, they never chan
Holiday TweetBaked two spiced pumpkin pies,Holiday Tweet5 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
barely stretching the crusts over
each dish & everyone will know
that I am a poet, not a baker.
Wrote no poems.
expired warningsI hate to break it to you but we're all betting on the day whenexpired warnings4 months ago in Free Verse More Like This
your nightmares will swallow you whole and you won't
remember how to open your eyes. we forget your voice,
it broke and no one buried the pieces. we're giving you up:
secessions (your ribcage is a civil war, your heart is the victim.
there will be no memorial; there are only red flags)
obsessions pick your bones dry, vulture needs, vulgar
mortality argues at least you're not alive
at least you can't see us anymore, counting the knots
in your neck and catastrophes in your mouth. in
your summer cage you were a soggy butterfly bearing
a cumbersome cross. now, we leave yo
Sta.sh
