Poetry – Page 2 – swamp pink

On Cunningham's Wire Sculpture with Lemons

August 26, 2025

Gentled now, the lemons dream smooth in their uterine sweep of steel, damp pips looped in place, their swift acid at a loss, shock of pith turned low to gray. Otherwise they’d roll on & on, a wayward tumble, juice gnawing rust through to the lens. This is why the steel cradles the fruit water- tender, its shadow thawing just enough ...

The Yellow Cave of Depression

August 26, 2025

Leaves on trees bordering the trail glow yellow bright brilliant tunnel before falling. You should know the name of those trees that light your path two weeks each year. Depression. Inadequate name watery dish soap cheap hair dye that flopped on the market. Slow leak of joy patched, re-patched, glue dissolving into unexplained grief, patch bubbling up peeling off...

Shadow of a Doubt

August 26, 2025

The length of time it takes to swallow a handful of pills is less than it takes to hang yourself, shoot yourself slit your wrists, or jump off a bridge. Based on hunch, assumption, rehearsal. Depending on when you start the clock, leap off the stolen motorcycle. Given the lack of scientific evidence, given anger and grief, an abundance of blame, imagined alternative scenarios. ...

Dieback

An American sentence acrostic after Lucille Clifton In rooting the tree, I planted the seeds of disease.One key lime shed blooms, coiled its leaves, spent a brittleweek or two brooming the sky clean of clouds. I grieved for the wood that had to be taken against its livingwill. It couldn’t remain, not even as...

Close at Hand

Transplanted in the woods, the iris rose from swords to fill the garden with color neither lavender nor periwinkle but close. They smelled of grapes if you came near, but few would, afraid of forests and ghosts, spirits from centuries ago, from where no one exactly knew. The rhizomes had seemed a cross between stone and rope, some kind of chord...

Connective Tissue

As if a tongue was more than muscle, silver. As if silver wasn’t muscle. Each split into a fork like snakes our mothers taught us to fear no matter how many times people from the city came to show us we should love them. Too strong a verb? Say then admire, appreciate. Look how snakes never sing, or speak, and feel no...

Aubade with Music from Selling Sunset

For so long mornings occurred without you. No leveled up karma boss, no ready set money—you couldn’t get out of bed, true colors in a get it, get it hurricane. Your dreams were a sleeping bodybeside you, back gently rising as queen light streaked through the shades. Battle on, the day chirpedfrom the hall. Play the game but break...

Pantoum Post Two C-sections and a Stillbirth

Bladder to uterus to bowel, soft and cinched– Doc says, nothing to undo that your body won’t redo. Womb a knot in the cradle of my pelvis, scars stitch and tie and tie again. Doc says, when it’s undone, your body will redo  all the places opened like a mouth,  scars stitch and tie and tie again. How many fingers does...

O it's on

Cute rips filters through the aquavelvetSlit though without me slinging sodden clamsOr pushed up or even convenientlyFlattened. Same me flatters by dressing justlyReady for that laugh, it gets meThick like the mixed heightOf it. Looks almost real likeExpensive touching. But I lose it and can’tMulch it, that’s my flaw.My head attached to my body, or...

Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt

Inang, who knew me when I was only a mouth: forgive me. I used to be better at being hungry. You knew me as a twink when I abstained from meals with the confidence of a god. You were there with me on vacation at Fire Island when I accepted the exorbitant price of chicken fingers as divine intervention, when...

Power Loom

Only at night, only by clot do I scratch, think,I want to buy, to mark on map my stuffingreach. Money is an idea to fabric into nothinglike money, a runway before the snap. I’m pinkas speed, a loosened chord comportment.I wear that bug with a hinge to stingscraps. Each click’s a look roostingspikes back, like...

Letter of Openings and Closings

for E.V.R. Hello stained glass cornea, Dear this morning’s blurred edges sun coming over the hill of her hip. Oh Hello, Elysium hips! Dear lovely haunting of her sable spacious hair. Dear thing I didn’t know how to dream. To the party that clothed us in enough smoke and noise To touch. My Dear hot pink...