The Earth’s axis spins on inception’s box. It’s I who grants the release. The ferris wheel’s taunt rings; reflections drown my face in looking-at-you light, the smell of September before it gets cold. Chairs shove, arguing East and West, the taste that lingers, stealing my eye the glass takes Orion. Frances Hall, Niagara Falls, NY: she was less calculated than I, I am not that intentional. How much of what I am doing is actually getting done? The gold star oracled to lose. “You up?” Called the cornfields before me. Beat up ankles answered the phone and the roof yelled, “I want to be famous!” I do not want to be famous enough to know fame. You learned the guitar and never heard me play. The drenched typewriter pleading hello to goodbye, at peace with war, and connecting the galaxies with hands until too crowded. In that room, the man on the moon hopped on the spinning teacups. You are not the sun if you are not the son. The violin forgot its song and the fiddler on the roof was dead. I could not imagine a morning when day did not find its light. Laser beams burned my fingers; goodnight to the old lady whispering “hush.” Plant, why do you water everyone but yourself? Show them the petals. So today, tomorrow, and the day after that I use your pigments to construct a self portrait, praying to a god you do not believe to grow like the tree outside that window.
Blossom – Cat Jamison
I am not a plant you water to grow there is a garden inside my mind I have eaten my vegetables I have said my blessings I have cursed the scales I have had enough lessons the weather is the same up here the rain water is drowning I do not need more thorns to grow from the soil
I want the present to sprung the gift wrapped pollinating nose tickles the snake skin to shed the rain to create iridescent glow the sunrise to wake up the world to admire the array of buds the flower girl petals the colors only healing can paint
Lies of an Angel – Sarah Sanfield
I am good at lying
Little white lies
That go with my disguise
Golden wings
So pure and kind
On the outside
Of which people see
And breathe
In my presence
And would consider my
Personality when I feel
I don’t actually have one
The feelings are there in
The black ink blots in
the back of my mind
Except they aren’t true
They are the little white lies
That go with my disguise
Golden wings
So pure and kind
I don’t actually feel
Those feelings that
Are cramped in the black ink blots
In the back
Of my mind because
They have been there for
So long that I have lost
Touch with them that
I cannot feel them
Truly anymore
Nor do I know how to
Touch them once again
Or even only reach
Or beg to even catch
A glimpse of their
Dappled faces
That have been
Cramped in the darkness
In the back of my mind
Held hostage in the darkness
Of the back of my mind
So weak and cold
And almost like nothing
Just like how I feel
True
Onion – Sarah Sanfield
Onion-
pyretic, potent, plum
Onion’s first sliver
a razor to its riches
A tear of grief
falls
Onion’s layers
cleave
so galling to see
yet seen by none
Deeper colors
of Onion
burn more when
darkly
bitten
Onion’s core
clammy
and white yet
only once innocent
The most important piece
the value of Onion
she stabs
and rains down
What have I done?
Knife
butchering
rabid fumes
of Onion’s
fluid
splattering
Onion slumps
on porcelain plates
weak
every where
slit
Onion
dribbles
drips
onto
the
floor
Onto
other
hands
Onion
Bled.