Author: Isabelle Palerma

This Movie Scene: a Poem

A poem built around an Evan’s Blue Song.

Within this shelter, your beating heart will be a bomb
(waiting to explode); instead of him, her, or me,
your rhetoric will be because of your enemy’s fractured heart
thudding inside their cracked rib cage.

You have written yourself off as a casualty of this war
(a hostage of this situation), and you swear
there is no way to leave this war zone, unharmed, unscathed.

(Yet, somehow, you declare the scene a happily ever after ending.)

Your beating heart demands fireworks (flashbangs with brilliant colors). My heart has always begged for pyrotechnics (as though it was crafted to create a show).

Cling to your memories, baby.

As the hours tick onward, you’ll be as distant as that far-off town you call home.

Release the demons you swallow because my memories are accessories, and my heart is a hostage to the situation.

Your energy is hemorrhaging, losing consciousness with each passing minute.

My cherished self-pity is the refrain to that song we knew all the lyrics to.

How insignificant is this movie scene to the overall effect of the montage.

How trivial.

& yet, it’s all we can think about for days.

This scene is a car crash on a rainy night home,

and we’re counting bits of broken glass as though they’re stars.

We’ve made our bed, as they say, and now we must lie in it.

Even as the broken glass scratches, leaving scars – hopeless reminders of rainy nights and car crashes.

Your memories constellate at this exact moment in time (where time stops having any meaning whatsoever).

I have to ask.

How can you bear witness to what you saw & still manage to crack a smile, darling?

Your cigarette cologne is a scent you wear all these years later like a weapon, like an aphrodisiac.

Your energy is hemorrhaging, losing consciousness with each passing minute.

Your cigarette cologne is a scent you wear
after all these years
like a weapon, like an aphrodisiac.

Your beautiful energy is hemorrahging,
losing consciousness with each passing minute.

My cherished self-pity is a memoir that fell in the rain. Warped all the pages. Ink is left smudged.

Cling to your memories.

This scene is a car crash on a rainy night home.

You’re a distant, far-off city.

We’ll stick to singing melodies of a song we all know. No cherished self-pity in the refrain. I’ll continue to remind you of graveyards & ancient tombstones, of fire escapes, and of long-abandoned lecture halls, and quiet libraries

like a ghost

We will sing melodies of a song we all know the refrain to,
yet no one picks at karaoke nights.
I will remind you of graveyards and ancient tombstones,
fire escapes, and long-abandoned lecture halls

like a ghost.

Your beautiful energy is evaporating now. We have made our bed, as they say, now, we must lie in it.

How insignificant is this movie scene.

Isabelle Palerma

with a little help from the boys at Evan’s Blue for some inspiration when I was struggling with a block.

Funeral: a Poem

Housed within my ribs
is a metronome that on a good day,
glistens like a cluster of amethyst,
but most days, it burns
like an arsonist’s proudest achievement.

It is an anatomical feature
I thought I disposed of
when sitting on fire escapes,
waiting for lovers to save me from the clutches
of my own sins & sorrows.

But she wrapped some grass around my obituary
and smoked it.
The vapors felt like my soul parting from my body,
but you did not say goodbye.

That day,
you made love to my ghost while a part of me watched.

That’s the shame of dying –
no one knows where we are
& I exited the room silently.

Isabelle Palerma

Memories: a Poem

Forgive me.
Memories are a wound &
I must carry them.
Nostalgia lies close to my skeleton bones,
and yet my past is clouded
like a mirror with its shine worn off.
Whenever I try to recall the small details of you,
it’s like gazing at a blurry photograph taken
many years ago
of someone I once loved.

& remembering your voice,
though I could listen to it the rest of my days,
is like hearing a phonograph underwater.

The way it falters in my mind
as though you have a stammer,
though I know you never stuttered.
It’s my mind that creates the gaps.

Memories are a wound &
I must carry them.

As I carry them, the past becomes less certain
and I wonder if my memories are true
or perhaps just something I wrote down
in a book.

Storytellers don’t always make the most reliable narrators,
but even through the gauzy haze,
our memories glimmer with a whispering beauty.

Isabelle Palerma

An Excerpt from my WIP

Hey y’all,

Long time no updates. So, while I’m still working on GP, I’m also working on a few other projects – a chapbook and an unnamed novel as well as a novel I’m tentatively calling, “The Machine that is Me: Static Dreams”.

I thought some of you might be interested in seeing an excerpt from it while I continue to work on my other projects.

I need to see you. It’s urgent. The words shimmer before dissolving into an array of scintillating pixels and vanish from my screen. As I yank my starched lab coat off and tug my scuffed-up leather jacket on, my thoughts splinter between the contents of the message and its sender, my best friend, Nahia Winters.

Meet at my place? I text back, scrunching up my eyebrows.

As the laboratory doors slide open, the chatter of my colleagues escalates, echoing against the linoleum. Most of them are headed to a downtown zone-out café. Some hipster joint with the hottest headsets, most up-to-date Dream technology, and most recently uploaded dreams.

After a fourteen-hour stint at the lab, I don’t blame them, but the word “urgent” buzzes through my veins like a stimulant. It makes the concept of rest impossible. Anyway, Nahia’s a Tier-1A Dreamer. Worst case scenario, she can lend me a headset and upload a dream for me.

“You coming, Simon?” Jonathan calls, glancing over his shoulder at me.

I wave him on, flashing him a small but genuine smile. “Got some personal stuff I’m dealing with,” I admit, “but thanks, anyway, bro.”

He nods. “Sure thing.”

I watch as he catches up to the rest of the group, grateful he doesn’t ask any follow-up questions.

A ping as Nahia reply comes through. I’m already there. Our texts glimmer: individual letters become dancing dots, then disappear before sending me back to my home screen. All evidence of our exchange disintegrates rapidly. Pinching the bridge of my nose, I shake my head in disbelief. “How does she have access to my phone?” I mutter, rolling my eyes. She’s the Dreamer, and I’m the scientist, and I can’t operate basic tech like she does.

Shit. It occurs to me. Nahia might be in trouble. I sprint out of the sterile space and hurry to the Aeroline station. Once I am at the station, I gnaw on my lower lip, contemplating how to ask Nahia if she’s in trouble without rousing suspicion of the monitors.

I loathe the monitors. They’re the ones who capture the outspoken ones.

I’m certain they’ll capture everyone who speaks out against the Regime one of these days – the way they surveil our phones and emails and now, how they check the Dreamers’ dream content for any signs of unrest or revolutionary thought.

Focus, Simon, I remind myself as I slide into the seat and flash my pass at the scanner. My heart begins to hammer in my chest as it dawns on me that Nahia’s probably already in trouble with the monitors if she’s showing up at my apartment during peak Dreamer hours. So, as we begin our ascent through the clouds, I start scheming.

Interested in reading more? Let me know! I’m always looking for more readers.

Isabelle Palerma

Dream

As you may or may not know, one novel I am currently revising is about a young woman whose dreams begin to interfere with reality, and another WIP (work-in-progress) is about a dystopian future where sleep is outlawed.

Here’s a dream I had a while ago. At the time, I thought it was more like a vision than a dream, and I had a professional dream interpreter interpret it for me. I thought some of you might be interested in reading the interpretation.

Life was a whirlwind: people deserting me, families I used to work with shaming me, friends leaving and spreading false rumors, etc. My family was angry with me because I owed them money.

Interpretation: This represents my anxiety, what I am feeling presently.

Everywhere I turned, people were mad. This part was semi-lucid because I kept thinking, “I’m in bed. I’m going to remember this and write it down. I’m going to learn from this. I’m in bed. I can feel the night breeze.”

I ran up the stairs through a class in a lecture hall.

Interpretation: The upward path I was on represents success.

At the top of the staircase, there was a figure I could not see. He apologized for putting me through trials. I told him that I nearly died. I told him that people rejected me and hurt me in many ways.

I told him that he was responsible for things being messed up.

Interpretation: This figure represents a scapegoat, a person who takes the blame for the uncertainty I have in letting others down.

The lecture hall represents the feeling of being “lectured” about morality.

Furthermore, my explanation to this figure about nearly dying and people rejecting me represents that I cannot handle the rejection he is placing on me.

This figure represents a lesson I must learn.

The figure smiled, emanating a powerful, white glow. It was so luminous that I could not see beyond him. I ran through the light and entered a cafeteria.

A girl I knew when I was younger stood in the doorway. She was a friend who later became an adversary. I told her what I told the unseen figure, “I withstood all my trials and found that I am my own hero. I did it all on my own, and I’m still standing. I discovered I can do it on my own.”

Interpretation: The cafeteria represents a place of nourishment and nurturing. I am trying to please this person who stands in the doorway, Judgment. She does not represent Good nor Bad. She is my Experiences. Because of her, I have taught myself to be cautious.

She tells me though I can do it on my own, I don’t have to, then hands me a stone.

She tells me I must polish the stone. She did not give me any further instructions on how to polish the stone, simply that I must polish it.

Interpretation: Her lesson is twofold. She is both advising me and giving me permission to reach out to others. Though she has failed me in the past, others will not necessarily follow suit.

The stone represents Truth. How does one polish a stone? By tumbling it and removing the dirt.

What remains is Truth.

She told me that I will know when my task is done. She told me, “You will know your destiny after you polish the stone.” She also told me, “You saved him from his own noose.”

I held the rock as she faded from sight. As she faded, I heard her say, “Put it under your tongue.”

Interpretation: I saved him by telling him he needed to heal himself. Holding the rock represents me holding my truth. She is telling me to keep my truth a secret.

I saw a beautiful man like no one I had ever seen before. He emanated a radiance, and I felt my heart swell.

“Not this one,” a voice said.

I kept walking and arrived at a staircase that sloped and curved beyond my line of vision.

I walked down the stairs to arrive at a landing. From the landing I could see, the stairs led to a hallway with a door.

I began to choke on the rock under my tongue. I nearly swallowed the stone (the Truth) that I held in my mouth.

Interpretation: The voice is that of Judgment. She has returned to warn me that the first man was not the right man. The sloping staircase represents an unclear path. It could lead to a great success or a terrible downfall. The hall leading to a door represents the unknown as well. The door could be an escape out or a prison within. I do not enter the doorway, so, whether it is an escape or a prison is unknown.

As the stone tumbled around my mouth, a man with dove-white skin, dimples, and an amazing jawline ran up the stairs to meet me. He watched me gag on the stone, wanting to assist me but unable to help.

I finally coughed and choked up the stone (the Truth). It had tumbled into a glimmering tiger’s eye. The man too transformed but became harder to see. He was still beautiful, just harder to see.

Interpretation: I walked down to meet him, yet he walked up to meet me, but we still met in the middle. By walking down to meet him, this represents I must lose something to meet him.

He held in his hands a noose, and around his neck, he wore a placard that said his name.

The voice said, “He is the one.”

Interpretation: He has removed the noose (a leash), and by doing so, the man is finally free. Judgment has again presented itself to say he is the one, but something has changed. He is free, and of his free accord, he ran up the stairs to meet me and underwent his own transformation.

The dream is saying I must hold my truth until it is polished and clean. When the time is right, I must choose between speaking it-freeing it from my mouth-or swallowing it.