Poems by Clara Burghelea

FALLING APART

I cannot sleep, flitting back and forth between the sheets,
together we hunt gravity with a rusty musket, except you
are in the upstairs bedroom, naming all the ways in which
wood can burn, rot, splinter, stain, and break, its flame,
a residue of coughing fits, on the couch, the air tingles
with lust for all the cravings that fit the tight space, pull
a bee from a rose with my bare lips, feel the sick sneeze
of the Akita on my cheek, save my favorite Skittles color
for last, let a tall man ink-stain my breath, engrave mosaics
in his rough skin, hold a sandtimer between my thighs,
and this house, striving to stay unharmed, the edgy silence,
a loitering moon inside its lids, honeysuckling the wait.


GIFTING

A mother has a glass tongue,
the spinal cord of the sun
exhausting all her cells, then
follows a succession of leavings,
little deaths or explosions, the son
tearing up flesh to grow flesh,
a daughter exhumed every year
to appease guilt and hang desire
by the throat, eat your fill, cradle
those hungers, says the man who
tries to shatter every sliver of her
tongue with his metaphor-laden
teeth, a mother knows how to open
her mouth into a snow globe, every
soap flake into a boy, girl, lover.