Poetry

Spitting Matchsticks: a Poem

White knuckle it,
and the pain still sears through these autumnal bones.
Crumble them like my skeleton has memory.
It hasn’t forgotten the calendar days piling up
(as thick as novels).

It’s time to start spitting matchsticks
and not caring about the consequences (the aftermath) of fire.

My ears, stuffed with cotton, muffle the sound
of silent, blood-curdling screams.
I have crushed tears into my palm
and have screamed silently
into lungs of shower stalls
(yet the world still whirls
as though I were flung off a carnival ride).

I wasn’t being coy when I said “no”.
I was being adamant.
My teeth marks in your shoulder blade should serve as a reminder.

I will punch through glass
with words alone.
No amount of duct tape, super glue,
will repair the realms destroyed.

Memories are like binge drinking.
I wake up with my throat burning.
(The ghosts wail outside my house,
rattling the windows and
causing the rafters to shudder.
Begging to be let in.)

He mistook my empty for hollow
and tried to fill me when I was merely seeking fulfillment.

Another left shadows form-fitted to my figure,
lying, saying I was just an angel slut
falling
when really, a shove sent me
flying.
(The truth tastes as rusty as nails and goes down just as smoothly.)

He lied to me about the taste of electricity,
claiming it was a needle to a vein.
And all I ever wanted was the stars to be bright enough,
I never needed a neon sign again
in this town.

These memories are skyscrapers,
and these skyscrapers are leveled by volcanoes.
(And now, I am soaring like a phoenix, above the rubble,
taking me beyond the landscapes I once knew.)
No longer do I care about where these matchsticks may land,
nor who may scorched by the words that sear.

Isabelle Palerma

Where Memories Once Towered like Infernos: a Poem

I remember tasting the tobacco shored in your lungs,
and you had the courage to tell me
my auburn hair smelled of a bonfire.

I once vowed a dress I owned would forever smell of rain
and my ink-stained fingertips would fidget – restless
with memories,
but now, when I cradle myself to sleep,
my eyes are empty.

I no longer name the silhouettes
that landscape my bare walls
or dance along my broken skeleton bones.

I remember when my brittle skin was
scented like my favorite library,
but no one picks up an abandoned tome
when the ink that travels the pages
is nothing more than a smudge and ashy dots.

I am an empty teacup in a house that is
haunted with your name.
When I reread the letters you wrote me,
shards of glass glitter along voids of thought,
threatening to lacerate the emptiness.
To puncture the silence where
memories once towered like infernos.

Isabelle Palerma

Un Cento: A Poem

From the Academy of American Poets, a cento is derived from the Latin word for “patchwork”. The cento (or collage poem) is a poetic form composed entirely of lines from poems by other poets.

Love,
what is love?
I tried to answer,
but our language had been lost
(and forgotten).
So, love’s face may still seem love
(to me).

Everything carries me
(to you).

Love,
what is love?
I tried to answer,
but our language had been lost
(and forgotten).

If little by little,
you stop loving me,
I shall stop loving you…

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me…

Love,
what is love?
I tried to answer,
but
our language had been lost.

If I were a poet,
I’d kidnap you.
Lyric you in lilacs.

If suddenly
you forget me,
do not look for me.

Isabelle Palerma

Poems Used:

“Love — What is Love?”, Robert Louis Stevenson.
“In the Dusky Path of a Dream”, Rabindranath Tagore.
“Sonnet 93”, William Shakespeare.
“If You Forget Me”, Pablo Neruda.
“Kidnap Poem”, Nikki Giovanni.

Anorexia: a Poem

I sicken myself with hunger.
If this was a physical disease,
my ribs would be visible through a sheath of skin.
(My rib bones so sharp they could splinter glass.)
Instead, I waste away while appearing strong.
I’d have carved your name on my bones,
but bones fracture and break.

You took a needle to your skin, but this time,
it wasn’t filled with an illness.
You injected yourself with ink,
and ink is my illness, my poison.

If you throw the stars upon the midnight canopy,
a constellation can be found.
In that pattern, my star is home.
But this emptiness gnaws at me, a hunger
that makes me want to devour my own flesh
and cannibalize myself.
Instead, my soul is atrophying with disuse.
(And I pour more and more into myself,
wondering when you’ll return.)

This isn’t a lacuna nor a crater.
You have vanished for longer,
but I have a heart that’s gone beyond starvation.
It’s empty here without you, &
I just wait for your return,
sustaining myself on memories and promises.

Isabelle Palerma

A Shattered Autobiography: a Poem

Like collaging layers of parchment paper
on top of one another,
I have buried myself underneath a rubble
of trauma.

Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon
or a phoenix rising from the ashes,
I am discovering my autobiography
stencilled between lines of poetry

and fiction

and fire.

Every word I scribble down in a mad haste
is a frantic attempt to name a feeling
that is beyond words.
(My way of sketching the rocket ship
that will guide me back to my galaxy.)

The sanitized version of reality
goes down as smoothly as cyanide – a bitter pill,
but somehow, something I’m forced to swallow,
nonetheless.
I see myself in the paint splatters &
the little messes she was so eager to take
a damp rag to.

(This is an imperfect work of art –
lines crooked and acrylics splashed
out of bounds.
This is not something that will catch the eye
of an art dealer.

This is my little mistake on canvas,
but you see,
that inked-in star is home for me.)

I have spent lifetimes, hiding underneath
piles of paper, dodging who I could have been,
avoiding who I could be,
but the truth is

I could be amazing
if you bend the bars of this iron cage.
I could be unstoppable
if you listen to these memoirs,
read these poems,
study these paintings.

When you finally ask who I am,
I’ll tell you.
I’m in media res,
still in the progress of self-discovery,
but I swear, even in the shattered mosaic bits,
I can shimmer.

I, too, can shine.

& perhaps that’s because of your belief in mirrors
that I can see the vestiges of beauty
glittering through the shards others neglected
and left behind.