LAURA, MEANWHILE
Amanda mitzel
@amanda.mitzel
She’s up in the canyon
singing at this maroon-faced
supper club with stones
on the walls, stars on the
ceiling. Her face like the
Buddha – staring into other
times, into nothing, nothing
at all. Her voice falls down
my throat – clots of honeycomb,
bright summer cloves . I ask her
why here – lost in the canyon
with black market koi, coyotes
the color of vain, desert sun, and
against the slope of my skull
she speaks:
We are all canyons.
Even those boys who ripped
canyons open inside me.
But now, now, I sing –
like spring birds, like an ocean
pouring from a cloud.
The air here is smoke, cats on
metal roofs, hot pile s of drowned
creamed corn.
My
arms
they
She walks over then, little jagged
pony steps, clowning as a velvet
filly . Her blue fingernails reach
down inside me (curling, curling) –
looking for nothing but
her name.
Amanda Mitzel lives in a cabin in the woods, where she writes horror and free verse poetry. Her chapbook, We Are All Made of Glory & Soft, White Light, was published by Bottlecap Press. She can be found at amandamitzel.com and on IG @amanda.mitzel.
Taste of Metal
MaryAnne Bernardo
@mar3plus3
A pulsing phantom of water channels moss
You cling to clouds
A warm darkness gathers
Phrases that stand in faiths' way
begin to quake
So many are mourning
The wheels of apathy come to a full stop
Long standing grudges
Taste of metal in our mouths
No one is forgiven
All the while the trees sing praises to one another
In a language foreign
To those who can reason but won't
The clinging mass of
My opinion
My possessions
My blood
Like yours reddening the cold tile floor
Fire Walk With Me, or
every girl i’ve ever been is tired
Fee Cuimeanach
@la__fee
the room was already trembling when
she said your Laura disappeared
and i thought of mine, lost somewhere
between the deep roots and the pines
the open wide and the unlocked doors
lipstick smeared like a signal flare
a burning body marked for demolition
i will her to use my mouth to scream
into pitted mirrors in redlit rooms
on mornings where no one deserves it
i have lined my pout and flooded it
armour or apology or dare me go on
sometimes it was cherry pie sometimes
it was called things like harlot or fatal rose
which tells you everything you need to know
about how much they want to hurt us
and it’s never really transfer-proof it always ends
up stamped on someone’s jawbone or painted
faintly on the rim of a glass or pushed into
the creases of your own cheek when you forget
what kind of girl you’re playing today