Turn to the window--
lilac fills the sill
in your dreaming.
Fade quiet toward eventide--
stars will be caught in the velvet
as it wanders up from the sea.
Breathe in the dusk like a whisper,
softly, slow, in twilit tones.
You'll find my consciousness tangled
in your fingers, keeping me by.
it’s quarter after midnight.
above, blocking needlepoint patches of stars,
a whale swims across the sky.
she does not belong there.
held up by fog instead of ocean,
she inhales deeply the thin, cold air,
and hopes for the best.
i wish i had lungs
that could hold fresh air for half an hour.
blankets of fat wrapped warm
around the muscles of my body,
voice slow and soft,
heart strong enough to pump blood for miles.
you are my ocean
& i am not a whale.
i only wish
i’d brought a stronger boat.
did your mom pick out those clothes? by hedonophobe, literature
Literature
did your mom pick out those clothes?
I used to wear my heart on my
sleeve but I don't wear sleeves
anymore so now I have it tucked
underneath my bra strap because
all the pants I own have fake
pockets - and I don't like purses
so I can't carry my empathy with
me anymore (but if I'm honest,
I had always tucked it in a pocket
at the bottom of my bag anyway).
I used to wear flowers in my hair,
a blooming crown all the colors
that I had bleached from my skin,
and now all that's left are horns -
delicate and wilting but still bejeweled
in glittering thorns, red with the
blood of every bitten tongue—all the
words I've ever choked back now
dancing across my glass
Man spotted getting out of his car to tie a Get Well Soon balloon around the front paw of a dead raccoon. Witnesses speculate the man, mid-40s, white, was responsible for the raccoon’s untimely demise earlier that afternoon. Wracked with guilt, unsure of the moral stain left on his tires when he crushed a small mammal in his path, the man returned to the scene of disaster to extend his well wishes and express his remorse through a plastic, rainbow, loud, GET WELL SOON balloon, before taking a picture and re-entering his car. Witnesses say: “Sucks to be the raccoon. But you've got to admit, the balloon is pretty funny.”
In N
my father a king, my lover a genius, i a fool by inkstaineddove, literature
Literature
my father a king, my lover a genius, i a fool
my heart belongs to
men whose bodies have
long been cold beneath the earth,
who took their last breath many a
century ago.
i find myself, when i am
alone late at night
without another soul around,
praying to a king i
never knew.
i wish for his guidance,
his approval,
his praise.
when i whisper his name,
it tastes like blood and iron and
paternal.
my kingly father is warm,
stern, reflective, everything i
had hoped my
flesh and blood father
could've been.
i find long lost lovers in
the pages of biographies.
they reach out to me -
calling my name,
grabbing hold of my clothes
to drag me down to them
in between the pages.
each one of them
Silver light upon the sea
Sharp as scales, they slit the
Morning sun open -
Like a yolk it bleeds, ichor
Spilled thoughtlessly;
Smearing the fish belly white
Morning with a splatter of life.
Golden light upon the sea
Warm as palms, they stroke the
Turbulent blue -
Like a cat it purrs, star-chilled waves
Licking shores;
Tabby pelt flecked with shell white
And the gulls sing once more.
Clandestine Inhabitants by BlackBowfin, literature
Literature
Clandestine Inhabitants
the house next door
has been taken by the bank
and well-prior to that, by divorce
then addiction
and in parallel to it all
by the possum family, that emerged nightly
from the collapsed corner of a workshop roof
crumbling invisibly behind its garage
unnoticed, they scratched an ascent
up beams, plywood and scaled the tree bridge
into an overhead continent of night,
collections of june moonlight
unfolded an expansion of our histories
into ceilings of flowering wonder
and these histories contracted, equally unnoticed
in the shadow of that same sky's ability
to oscilate its waveform and ratio
of positive to negative space,
where entire dream se
Where honey bees blend into sunsets
They sit in a crooked circle
Writing non-love poems
Writing stories
Writing the lives of the living they never knew
As documents or poems or journal entries
Encoded with flavors only the pen knows
And curiously
They pass those words down the line
They read
They think
And pass the papers back, then begin again
With a new dream, speckled with what they know now
Like nascent freckles in the wrinkles of a sun-worn face.