[x]

AlterI stopped dreaming the color of my wedding dress
years ago

the picket fence around a small square home

the soft surety of a kiss
every evening. One morning it was

one leg in the left and one leg
in the right

you know? Things change. These days
I dream simpler: Waking up

laying next to another warm body, at least
a little in love.

Bad Mouth Habitsi.
I carry God around in my lip like he's chew,
spitting his name out in poems like potholes,
I make everything a simile
for the hold he has on me.

ii.
When it comes to men,
I've the appetite of a Roman housewife,
I take, I taste, I tear,
swallow and then then toss up
for the next course.

iii.
I don't kiss anyone so dearly
as the glass pipe bridged between lips
and fist.

iv.
Jameson, you're an Irish Lad,
a young ram of bucking proportions,
I let you rattle around my mouth
til I herd you in
and down.

v.
Sometimes there's nothing so sweet
as the jack-hammer of angry words
or the steel trap clamp of silence.

I exercise m

RiftTrains collide through a fist of hot snow. Her eyes
and mine. Soot against the thick storm skin,
flashing metal and scraping bones, the earth
screams something primal. She looks away
and through the peppered sparks of fire
a silence prevails.
Quiet lips say too much. I follow spotted horses
to the meadow, the waterfall is broken, and
I see her mouth make fog. Lumps of coal
are stacked in the distance, making a hut.
I do not enter, the windows are tied to the sky
with knots.
9am there was a rift in the evermore. They said
the sky belted open, stars wept plasma coffins,
and out of the dew she put one foot,
then the other. In her left hand there was a blue fig.
I could not see the other. The arctic sun set
and a desert sun rose.
Her hair was put back with paperclips, glimmering
in the cold light. I fell into a vat, watching
a thousand four hornets unnest from behind her. I felt high,
but sank deeper until I touched bottom. She pulled at me

Holiday TweetBaked two spiced pumpkin pies,
barely stretching the crusts over
each dish & everyone will know
that I am a poet, not a baker.

Wrote no poems.

PixieI never had enough faith in you,
my best postmodern pixie friend,
who presses herself against my shoulder
killing her fall with leaning.
You taught me something new
about anxiety today:

   how to wake
up when it's morning, how to miss
dactylic illness with the parched
indelicacy of a crinkled sun.
In the eternal rendition you say
your name is always in the vocative
   case, and only vocative:

says the girl
who taught a smaller girl to sing,
a girl of thirteen, with the same
nimble character we shared, the same
calderical eyes we shared.

   The girl's voice
tumb

Jenner - 35This will be the Christmas I remember
stringing popcorn and cranberries for hours
to wrap around the tree

the lightly buttered popcorn, all we could find
musking fresh pine- and a smidge of blood,
won over by the needle. The year of a

mostly empty apartment: the plain
white walls and black metal chair
we use as a TV stand. Telling ourselves

we're not broke; we choose to live like this:
nomads with little to grab
when we get out and go

and one buttered Christmas tree
adorned with blue lights
and beer corks.

Jukai IIYou are a soft rustle of promise
across the calm Pacific and
wasted sun of the Sonoran

and the sad truth is: I don't know
if I can wait for you

they will alwaysbounding,
more like hurried floating, these Kublai Khans on little discs.
they ride on hurricanes, one each foot,
which seem to flare in wood grain floors
or else they’re pulled by tiny demons
unexorcised
‘till dinner’s ready.

there’s two chaotic ballerinas,
stage right, stage left, i’m trying to read
but here they blunder
unabashed
at supersonic lightening speeds.

i can’t help but laugh for life
when they steal their silly heads
from silent rooms like fairy ninja
and then pounce and flounder on the couch,
upset my drink,

You Need A New MusePoets, if your muse smells like eggnog, boiled eggs, fresh eggs,
or any sort of egg at all: get a new muse. If your muse makes sounds-
chomping or mewing, smacking, or worse, slurping - when she eats
animal crackers: you need a new muse. If she’s that sloppy gal that
downs a pint and hollers, “Freebird” at the bar, you know where I’m going with this:
you need a new muse. And trust me, pudding, when your muse misquotes
Bill Cosby while eating jello, you're going to wish you had gotten yourself
that new muse.
If she begins to insist on beginning debates with “irregardless,”
you won't need a dictionary to tell that you need a new muse. Even brings
to question your rhyme scheme or does not know how to tell you
she set the table in iambic pentameter, seriously, you need
a new muse. If you can’t get her to write you letters, but can’t break her
from sending four-page texts, then it’s time to call in a new muse. If she doesn’t know
t

UnlayeringThere are words queuing in line
 for the page, simple words, trite
 words, words of circumstance, words
 the world could have never gone on
 without their repeating; as day and night and fear,
 the kind of words you never wanted from me,
 void of Eutony, a simple psalm
 of sound rhythm, but—

  they cannot go unspoken any longer:

  My heart unfolds like an infinite peel,
 an onion pulled fresh from damp earth
 that has forgotten it was once fertile.
 You wash away packed dirt and tear
 roots with your fingernails. The inside
 of y

you asked me to write your eulogybut darling, do not ask such things of a poet.
We live with death and feathers
in our bones, and you—

clouds have purpose, and one
is seldom alone in the sky. To
say, smart or handsome or
funny or caring, it is the lid
on the trash, never appreciated
till missing, and you—

undercover smell of well-water
and thick terra cotta clay,
a fallen angel left in smoke-screen
somewhere below the salt, the heart
still beats, and you—

a mythology come-to-life.
Hellion and savior, black-tipped
like raven wings, always more
in the right light
than

Poem for a MotherWhen I was four
I'd follow you into the bathroom
on sticky feet,

press my little bird hands
into the back pockets of your jeans
while you were washing dishes
at the sink,

babbling on: Mommy, Mommy,
I love you.

Then there was the youth
who played Simon Says
to your aerobic routine.

I took jumps to your steps,
laughing as I tripped,
I wanted to go
where you went

I practiced to be
who you were.

The world split sideways
and I stumbled out
a teen traumatized
by the gory birth.

I'd've sworn you did it to me:
the red plague of my face,
the heartache,
the inexplicable serrating rage,

I beat at you as an extension
of self.

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WyomingI am combing my hair
and leaving pieces of myself to the wind

zipping by like mossy tumbleweeds,
they become part of Wyoming's rolling tundra

little gifts to a land
my heart
may never be

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Southern Belle - 2

by `vespera, Nov 20, 2012, 6:44:49 AM
Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

I want to sing you songs on the low notes
for hours. Comb your hair behind your ear,
gentle and lingering. Slip into your eyes-
anything. You are

a ripple spreading across me. You are refracted light;
slickness of an abalone's back. The soft pearl.
Idle thought of my afternoon- always, always

I imagine. And Bourbon's not so far:
nineteen hours through a day,
then I could see you. Will we ripen
on touch?

Southern Belle - 2by `vespera

Literature / Poetry / General Poetry / Free Verse

for Rachel, who itches all over

Belle, you're not my love,
per say-
but you are something
of a balm
for this weary traveler.

I've never been to Bourbon,
but I've a mouth of whiskey
and a will to try
the finer things-

Finding HoursIn twenty seven hours, I could
hear you speak. The speed of sound
is lost on this distance. You, my darling,
are not. I will find you.

From where you are, it would take
something like twenty eight hours to
feel at home. The air, I imagine,
would have a different scent where
you'd rather be.

You could go, half the way, and wait
for me, somewhere in Kansas. We could
meet in Bourbon; that's a real place, you know,
and it sounds like somewhere we could feel
without any influence.

I know nothing of there, but from here,
I'm willing to bet that you, my dear,
would be the most intoxicating thing
our hours might find.

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*scatteredwords Dec 18, 2012

Now if she'd just get her ass out west, we'd be happy to scratch her.

For however weird that sounds.

`vespera Dec 18, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

She's all lame sauce and anti driving that far.

*archelyxs Nov 27, 2012

"You are refracted light;
slickness of an abalone's back."
This is gorgeous.

~WaKip Nov 23, 2012 Writer

Beautiful. Just...beautiful.
I was reading this and I was like "Woah! This is so good!" then I looked down to who wrote it and thought "Pfff. Of course." Why am I not watching you if I've already began to get a feel of your style? xD I'll have to go on your page and see if I have any reason not to~
Anyhoot. I have an un-official critique for you.
Good: The imagery was absolutely beautiful, tickling my imagination and painting vivid images that lead me into a colorful story. The first line was romantic and intriguing and made me want to read, while the last gave me a slight chill at its loveliness. I love it when people end with a question! The way this woman was described was, well, poetic to say the least. It was descriptive, yet not. I could interpret it so many ways, yet all of them have similarities. I liked that.
Bad: The way it was structured felt kind of...broken up. I think you did this on purpose, but it was kind of awkward the first time I read it, because my mind kept breaking things apart and it felt like it hurt the flow. Also, "Comb your hair behind your ear, gentle and lingering." should be "Comb your hair behind your ear; gentle and lingering.", if you want to be grammatically correct. I didn't feel like you did that on purpose, so I brought it up.
Overall I loved it, I just wanted to bring up some points of improvement, just in case you were interested~

~winterkate Nov 23, 2012 Student Writer

Wow. This was excellent...your writing is very Sextonesque, which I love.

`vespera Nov 26, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

*crossing-ariel Nov 27, 2012

Oh, this one knew how to compliment you. Someone must have given her a cheat-sheet.

`vespera Nov 27, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I know, right? Hahahaha. I'll take that comparison any day.

*riparii Nov 21, 2012

Oh, what good taste you have.

`vespera Nov 26, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

I like to think so

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Southern Belle - 2

Southern Belle - 2by `vespera

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