I wailed a welcome - baring ribs between my teeth. Adam’s. Before I crumpled, converted to sheets left in the cold to dry, dresses hung above steamy showers, creases pushing themselves away with nervous hands. I learned quiet. I learned how swiftly fire burns, not when played with but when held unflinchingly close to your … Continue reading A definition of womanhood
after Emily Perkovich Between these pages you will find the witnesses to the ink staining the soft side of our palms. Our truth gleaming in mottled gold, rivulets of alloy for every heart we have broken, most often our own. We are bruised - too honest for your own good. Hiding in plain sight; taking … Continue reading The Poet as an Open Book
after Laura Gilpin I am the two-headed calf; the beast with a burden. Scars and scabs I cannot peel or wear as smiles or storylines. I am hideously on show - all this human - put me in a museum and watch my breath fog up the glass; the alarms will balk at my audacity … Continue reading Dripping in formaldehyde
after Traci Brimhall Begin beneath a cold moon, wish upon a star and hope it is not a cloudy night. Begin with a quiet kiss, against glass or the back of your hand, taste yourself: learn you are more, than sugar, than spice, than all things nice. Begin with a tiny bird in winter, squeeze … Continue reading How to write a love poem
My redhead skin smells the thunder and says thank you; tastes rain in the wind and smiles - opens its stretch marks like smiles not hand-me-downs from sad days, lets the water trickle like glitter or confetti - my redhead skin feels loved. Despite my burnished shoulders, lobster red rather than gold, I know this … Continue reading Redhead
Sometimes I choose titles before my pen reaches the paper; today, this poem, this story, this limb severed from my heart is half untitled because this is for me, for you and the one in the mirror we're so adamant isn't us. As if our reflections are portraits we have painstakingly sat for, only to … Continue reading A poem for –
after Emily Blewitt This is not a rescue. This one will sting like bees and pomegranate seeds; Persephone, oval eyes turned upwards to the darkness beading the sky. This is the beginning of the end, the fall into something new. This is you - tobacco and loose lips, my hips and buttercups. This is … Continue reading This Is Not a Rescue
after Kait Quinn My marbles, my mind, my temper when I was just five and the world kept turning in spite of my stubborn hands and feet trying to scale the stars. Breadcrumbs and balls of string; every attempt to find my way back home again; to savour the word again as it slips … Continue reading Things I have lost
They read a poem about a girl who is forced to leave a war-torn country, a home swarming with tanks and sunlight. The teacher asks them what they know about refugees; what it means to be displaced. They are shown a picture of a child washed up on the shore; the picture which made us … Continue reading Classroom study
after Emily Brontë & Emily Dickinson Hope makes herself comfortable in the dark. the moon has run away Even if she looked up, she would not see the sky but for the hairline crack in the lid of the jar. Her wings no longer flutter; they collect dust like swollen sapphires found glistening in … Continue reading Hope
