I rediscovered an online magnetic poetry kit and have been using its limited word selections to inspire a few poems today.
I thought I’d share a few more I’ve written.
I rediscovered an online magnetic poetry kit and have been using its limited word selections to inspire a few poems today.
I thought I’d share a few.
I remember a photo I saw of a two-hundred-year-old
cherry blossom tree.
I imagine the events it must have borne witness to:
births, deaths, tsunamis, the rise and fall of empires,
but still its branches spread with pink and red blooms.
I wake up some mornings, an elegy for self
on my cracked lips, gazing upon my scars
and wondering why I’m still here.
But to some, I’m still blooming and they don’t see
the fractures I think define me.
Perhaps I still have some life in me.
If a tree can withstand two-hundred years
of storm and sun,
I, too, can live and love a little longer.
You talk of your soul ossifying –
the soft parts hardening,
but I’m preoccupied with
pulling out the hems of reality,
ripping out the stitching.
I refuse to yield.
To be soft for too many years
means
to decay,
to become moss underfoot
& I refuse to become trampled.
They told me that the way you identify
lace is by its holes,
and I know now,
I never want to be recognized
by what I lack.
Instead,
I hunt for the parts of myself
that used to be consumed by the patriarchy
and men with hunger for eyes.
(The pieces of myself
that were consumed
because I swallowed my teeth
to make myself more digestible.)
But I don’t need a flashlight
or a search party —
I can be discovered quite easily.
I’m not the girl who I thought I was.
I’m the woman who refuses to surrender.
I forget my fight sometimes
(like the candle who neglected her flame),
but I am prepared for war.
I am no longer paraffin wax that pours down smoothly-
only to harden on your lungs.
I’m not the gentle pieces you stepped upon –
the dandelion you crushed & never asked
forgiveness of.
Pain is a razorblade skating down your throat.
(Are we monsters or are we martyrs?
Hide me in a closet or tie me to a tree &
you’ll see the true nature of the beast.)
A microphone amplified your voice,
so arenas could hear you shriek in anguish —
but no one heard the cry for help.
You splayed yourself open for dissection,
offered the world opportunity to see you
bare.
You clawed through your own midnight darkness
to provide a spotlight for the blind.
More dirt piled on you – who was digging your grave? – your screams muffled, the silence even louder.
When I wanted to scorch off my thumb prints &
erase my existence from the history books,
when I wanted to burn my diaries & abandon my name,
you were there.
(Are we monsters or are we martyrs?
Some of us are mere mortals,
but you were a savior beyond saving.)
You shouted, but no one could hear you
until it was too late.
If you swallowed that razorblade that waltzed
along your throat,
don’t bother telling me when you taste
the copper of blood.
Hide me in a closet or tie me to a tree.
You will see who I am & what makes a man
a man.
Forgive me.
I don’t know how to save you.
I can’t even save myself.
Isabelle Palerma 