[x]

BrokenThe lace of my skirt was only as perfect
as the flesh that it covered

my childhood stretched until the woman inside
could be seen, raw and bleeding

He left behind calloused fingerprints
on every seam that he tore

The lace of my skirt is only as perfect
as the attitude I put into every pleat

my fingers burnt flat with blistered scars that left me
negative, flawed and reviled

She left her signature on the stitches, scribbled
with needles and veins

The lace of my skirt will only be as perfect
as the stranger looking in the mirror

my addictions have left me broken i

scar-crossed(my fingers are colder than the solemn blue
buried in her eyes. so much dead beauty,

like an ocean without waves).

she is fading and i cling to her,
and in this tiny little moment
between breaths

we barely even exist.

astronomerswhen we're together
dusk is containable; the moon in my palms
and the stars on your ceiling.

we lull the city to sleep
with our theories of life; my tongue curling
into speech.

do you remember,
when Jupiter was a silver wick, lighting its countless moons?

that night,
you balanced a cigarette off your lips,
and I watched the vermillion flame burn life
as a newborn sun;

stars forming,
planets moulding and constellations snaked
above our eyes.

i imagined
what it would be like to be curled
inside the embers – creator and destroyer
of worlds,
so close to your lips.

There's Something Wrong with Norman BatesLoving you was like seeing absent color,
the unforgiving grays of a poet's December,
waking from a nightmare to a sky devoid of
stars and the moon sunk in the ocean.

The moment I laid eyes on you was the epoch
of my detachment…the collapse of all serenity.

You told me that your parents were dead and buried-
But sometimes they called your name from the wine cellar.
I begged you to haunt me when the lights were off;
"Ghosts won't bother other ghosts." I said

You went to the other side of the room and stared
at a fly dying on the windowsill. When the creature finally
stopped moving, you looked at me with e

summergirlNow read aloud over here. Do give it a listen, won't you?
i. summergirl,
you are crowthroated and tumbling
through the aspen grove
hair on fire with sunrise, lungs
full of sky.
eyelashes like wildflowers
and every morning brings
a new spray of freckles
and a sharper curve to your collarbones.
the cornfields hold no shadows
for your lighthouse eyes
and there are no endings in that
surefooted smile.
ii. you have grown
so fast.
autumn finds you with broken ankles
leaning on an oak branch
and watching the skies.
crow to sparrow--you are quiet.
summergirl, there is peace in silence,
perched treetop,
fallen antlers in your hands.
you will come to mourn your deer.
keep them close.
iii. by winter you have paled,
and like the streams
your eyes have frosted over.
you feel the chill--
there is no need for sight.
summergirl, th

overflowi tried to show you
all the broken bones
in the cupboard

all the cobwebs
underneath the staircase

all the schisms
and chasms
and chinks in my
a(r)mour

but
your finger touched my lips
in a curious sort of way
and you said
shh, darling,
don't say a word

none of that matters
anymore

so i tried
to shut away the
ghosts
but now they're out
and about
and coming for me

and i can't escape them
with my heart so chipped
and faded.

outgrowing gillssea-cradled urchin
child has a salty heart yearnin'
for a glimpse of mother moon
tiny spiked wunderkind
punk, studded belt
you know life's answers well
shuffling through the seaweed-less halls
missing the ocean swell
tidal waves foaming at the mouth
everyone is laughing now
at the boy born on a boat one sunny afternoon
cause mama loved the sea like lovers love the sheets
landlocked kid is homesick and
sea sure, he's searching for the sea shore
life's a blur for Davy Jones at his locker
capsized by sea-legs on solid ground, he finds his seizures
and he hates his earth mother
he hates her
for falling for the ocean and
how he's rocked by the moon
how he's mesmerized by her glow
her pull on his sea-conceived cells
no
he hates her too
for the puking in the stalls
for the ridicule

kids cut through the middlewhen you spend a summer somewhere
where people squirrel away their
ugly children, it's hard not to notice
the subtle strain of the truth
on certain smarter faces,

or the absolute oblivion
in certain spinning eyes
and stumbling legs.

--

i met a girl named K,
just K,
with ankles like a deer and a voice
loud like noise and swampy like a swamp.
she liked orange foods and big words and
her hands shook like the girls in jazz class.

K clicked her tongue between words sometimes
but nobody ever mentioned it. her socks
were alphabetized. she carried a comb in her back pocket
but only 'cause she needed it, she said.
her hair was turning

PersephoneI fed her
pomegranate kisses

and she cried
at every frozen sunrise
for 180 days.

With cracks in my heart
and souls
caught in my hair
I counted 180 more.

InkYou found me as
A mess of sharp corners
And smudged,
Wrinkly fingerprints.

Someone had wadded me up
And shoved me in the corner,
Trying to forget about
Our shared past.

I guess you were curious
Enough to take a second look,
Smoothing out the worst of the
Wrinkles
And speaking soothingly.

You said you could fix it.

And for a while, you did.

I became smoother,
Less wrinkled,
And some of the rips knitted together.
I was still a bit smudged
By my past,
And had some sharp edges.

They made me
meghan.

And I had a crazy personality,
An odd writing style,
And a habit of not looking
People in the
Eyes.

Those made me
M

perthcatch your breath

in the skeletons of leaves

it varies - this land

these trees - it carries

the wind of my afterthoughts on the

mountain tops

i stole it from the cedars

they came to me when i was young

when dreaming was too keen of believing,

& forgetting was too fond of feeling.

i sent it off, & found it reeling

itself back in

i stood in the lakes

you stared at my quak

ing heart; tore apart your

self-made prison.

undone & dealing a thousand

sentiments on the tip of your tongue

i spilled wisdom

but saw my reflection

in the vapor, & this was when

i became older - & later on

told myself how to look beyond an hour

i've bee

happy birthdaydishwater the color of dawn
detergent is grayed by three plates
and two mugs. your hands are pruned,
the same soap opalescent against
white ceramic and pale skin.

i dry what you pass to me,
then take your wrists to mop away
the suds that bed beneath your nails,
the color of grayed dawn.

"at least we didn't have spaghetti,"
you say while i spread your fingers,
admiring your dull calluses and
knuckles, thick. "at least you're drying,
i said you didn't have to."

"it's your birthday,"
and i admire the thin hair at your temple,
faintly grayed.

prey.i'm a collection of curves in your cycle:
a single revolution of your rhythm,
my taste a mile marker.
my hunger is satisfied by your rapture,
and devoured by your voracity.
starving to be grasped, claimed,
and consumed, I feed death— give in,
swallow black relief —your belly round
and warm with the scrapings of my bones.
bury my leavings and tell me reincarnation
is a lie.

--
1/16/2013

Copyright © 2013 Jen Fowler
All Rights Reserved

in lieu, lamentwe speak of tragedy, forgetting
we raise the dead with the simple fragility
of our dismantled threnody-
concord our ears to meet the soiled ground
in hopes to hear the stirring strangeness of maternity
brought back to cradling earth, bound.

lukewarmshe had the kind of voice
that seemed to be stuck
in the hour of four o'clock
in the morning - soft
and tired and luring,
mumbling her way through
subways and tunnel lights
all pale yellow with noise.

there was tea and long baths
and longer absences,
hiccups of breath
the best
she could do.
long springs and
longer falls,
one equinox to the next
and still the bad
was never that bad
and the good
was never that
good,
and she continues to hum
the birds continue to sing
the apples continue to
grow and
sour and
fall,

and bury themselves
again.

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Submitted: October 1, 2012
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[x]

sick hydrangea and my bones

by ~520romeo, Oct 1, 2012, 8:50:41 AM
Literature / Poetry / Transgressive / Traditional Fixed Forms

i bare my bones to the screeching moon.
twenty-nine days, and i claw again.
take my flesh, take it, dye me maroon.

ribcage and spine: shadows soften too soon.
light, light, as i crawl through the glen.
i bare my bones to the screeching moon.

i gouge myself open to find the rune,
hacking, peeling, like do all wise men.
take my flesh, take it, dye me maroon.

pooling skin-folds, i want them scattered, strewn.
this skin's all bark and oozing holes when
i bare my bones to the screeching moon.

bubble, swell; i can hear the snakes croon.
beauty of being lies beneath the vein.
take my flesh, take it, dye me maroon.

crazed lust for hungered grace at night's high noon:
haunt me til all the blue months turn sane.
i bare my bones to the screeching moon;
take my flesh, take it, dye me maroon.

sick hydrangea and my bonesby ~520romeo

Literature / Poetry / Transgressive / Traditional Fixed Forms

villanelle.

_{EDIT: DLD featured here [link]
and here [link]
and here [link] .
thank you so much, everyone.}

this poem. sucked so much out of me.
please give it a chance.

- what do you think it's about?
- do the images convey the ideas alright?
- flow between stanzas, and even lines? they don't jump around too much, right?
- is there too much of a jump between the first two lines of the second last stanza?
- how cohesive is it, overall?
- does it still manage to possess the "beauty" that poetry is supposed to have? supposed
critique: [link]

thanks. all comments are much appreciated

~Hildetann Oct 29, 2012 Student General Artist

This is a lovely poem! It mystifies me (not "what is going on in here" so much as a sort of ancient-fantasy-mysteriousness), but I feel that the poem's subject is not very abstract. In my opinion, it seemed to be about some form of ritualistic self harm (such as in the Aztec Empire). The idea of the screeching moon reminded me of the lunar goddess Coyolxauhqui (also Aztec), who was dismembered by her brother (and would probably be screaming. because of her dismemberment. yeah.) Also, the blue months mentioned in the last stanza could mean the several months of the year when even more sacrifices were being made than usual (blue i.e. sad?? idk), such as Panquetzaliztli, which was to honour the war god Huitzilopochtli. (this is what happens when my imagination goes free upon reading great poetry ok)

I think the images conveyed the ideas more than alright. They are very vivid, and one can really tell the narrator of the poem's emotions. The flow between stanzas seemed fine too, mainly due to the repetition which connects them together and the fact that the rhythm stays the same throughout. One thing that confused me a bit was the rhyming pattern (mainly because I haven't seen a rhyming pattern like this before, I'm pretty sure), which I found slightly hard to get used to, but I'm pretty sure that's just me.

okay i seriously can't believe you just asked the last question like seriously this is great and gorgeous ok (also i am sorry that this comment is so long but seriously, yeah, this is a lovely poem please keep writing

)

~520romeo Nov 2, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

first of all, sorry for the ridiculously late reply. i really didn't know how to reply to such a detailed & wonderful comment without sounding unappreciative.

the Aztecs are quite mystifying, yes. it's really interesting how you linked elements of the poem to them! very perceptive. :thumbsup the blue months definitely refer to occasionally-occurring months. i love your interpretation, but that's not really what i was thinking of when i wrote it. but that's perfectly fine

about the rhyming pattern: the poem is a villanelle, which is a nineteen line poem with five tercets and a quatrain. there are two repeating rhymes and two refrains. it's kind of complicated... i suggest you read about it if you're interesting. [link]
but yes, vilanelles hard to get used to and even when i read them, they sound slightly odd.

thank you so much though. _{can't believe you spent so long writing a comment for me TT.TT}

~Hildetann Nov 8, 2012 Student General Artist

ahaha it's all good!!
you're welcome c: and thank you for writing this poem!

~ragnaice Oct 13, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

I'm not sure I understand this...all this about screeching and moon and the violent language makes me think of werewolves or some pain-maddened animal but google tells me a hydrangea is a flower so I guess it's about a pretty miserable flower...? I don't get the 'chorus', whom it's adressing and this emphasis on 'maroon'. Hmm, I think this is a little too deep for me...but I love the cleverness of this phrase "night's high noon" Google also tells me you weren't the first to use it but I've never heard it before and that's kind of what stuck out to me. Sorry I couldn't come up with a more helpful comment.

~520romeo Oct 13, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

i like how you searched those things up on google.

yeah, and google will also tell you that our dreams, our life and our thoughts all aren't original. _{in other words, yes, the phrase would have come up sometime, somewhere in internet history, but it's completely original on my part.}

i appreciate your comment though! if you would like an explanation for what this poem all means, i could note you.

~ragnaice Oct 14, 2012 Hobbyist General Artist

Well, in that case

(I just didn't know if it was a commonly used phrase, it could have been a well known one for all I know - *not a native English speaker*).

~520romeo Oct 14, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

~Tornment Oct 8, 2012 Writer

Beautiful! Reminds me of Sylvia Plath a bit.

~520romeo Oct 8, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

thank you.

aha. i do really like sylvia plath.

~jessica35 Oct 7, 2012

Haunting and powerful! Congrats on the DLD, you deserve it.

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