Jul 31, 2022

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.

Poems by Les Wicks

AVAST Their barque was launched in a swamp with fiddlers & wine in real bottles. Potted politicians & public barflies paraded down t...