Isabelle Palerma

Imperfections

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about my art and my writing. I have found sketch pads and notebooks where I have ripped out nearly every single page because I was expecting perfection out of myself. What a lofty goal – perfection ten out of ten times? It was ludicrous. I realized I stopped enjoying the process when I was so focused on the outcome.

It took me some time, and a lot of journaling, to revitalize my love for writing and art as a process. I spent today working on a painting where I told myself, no matter what, I was going to keep it and not throw it away. I accidentally spilled a blotch of purple paint on the corner and my first thought was that I needed to fix it, but instead, I just lived with it. And you know what? All Hell didn’t break loose. I survived, and the painting survived too.

I used to have a friend who said, “It’s not in spite of our flaws that we’re wonderful, it’s because of them.” And that’s the attitude I’m bringing into the new year. I’m enjoying my imperfections, whether it’s in my poetry, fiction, or art. I stopped creating for so long because I was expecting too much out of myself.

Now, I’m back to simply enjoying the process – no matter what the outcome may be.

Isabelle Palerma

News!

My poem about my grandmother’s battle with Alzheimer’s is being published in an anthology, Forgotten Fragments of Time, to raise money and awareness about the disease, and I just found out a small press has accepted Catching Dreams, my debut novel!

They want to publish my book. My baby. The one that has been formulating in my mind since I was twelve and having vivid dreams about my grandpa after he died. The book that all began because I kept asking myself, “What if?”

They want to publish it. I never thought I’d be a traditionally published author, but here I am with a contract coming my way.

Isabelle Palerma

Serenade to the Dead and the Damned: a Poem

Love is a Ouija board for the lost souls and the damned —
I will not surrender my planchette if it means giving control to the ghosts.
I contain within me a cemetery with anonymous tombstone and nameless crypts.
I thought mausoleums were meant to be quiet & this one is as loud as a burlesque hall.

You are a ghost & I cannot commit to a life
of haunting.

Seances never felt like homecomings but I gave you my last dance – those nights always scented of clove cigarettes and nostalgia heavy like cologne –

I remember watching the moon cut through trees and thought myself a spirit drifting in & out of your life.

Isabelle Palerma

Runner: a Poem

I’m writing absences where
your heart used to lie,
lacunae where stars used to soar.
You were my sanctuary,
& I thought I believed in
forever.

None of this is broken,
but sometimes, parts of me
fracture.

Every time I try to write,
memories of who I was or
who I could be resurrect
like Lazarus from a tomb.

My skin is barely hanging on my body & I have grown frail.
My desires are no longer carnal,
and my rage no longer violent.
(She told me the years would soften me like overripe fruit,
and I denied it like my hard edges
have an advantage.)

Now, here we are at the gates
and Peter interrogates me —
he asks me why I harbored so much hate,
but even if I have forgiven,
I couldn’t be lace and be defined by my empty spaces.

I feel like I’ve ruptured,
and a part of me will never be the same.
I’ve said it before, so maybe I’ll say it again,
a fabulist isn’t always a liar —
sometimes, just a storyteller.

I followed this line until it fractured
and you taught me about the
fault lines I never grew up along.
He asked me if I still smell like
autumn,
and people clamored to say
hazelnut coffee or brittle fall leaves.
I never knew who I was,
only what others saw.

I couldn’t be lace.
I read through the doctor’s notes
and they all diagnosed me the same –

a tired cliché.

This isn’t Plath nor will it ever be,
but the most I can ever ask for
is someone to love me as I am,
to take me into their arms,
and not to simply tolerate –
not to merely accept –
but to cherish, to celebrate,
to worship, & to love.

You gathered all these different parts of me,
all the different eras,
and you saw who I was reflected through each,
and you swore you’d stay
(as long as I didn’t push too hard).

I’ve been pushing people away
for centuries now,
and I’m tired.

This certainly isn’t the poem I started,
but now that you see me clearly,
tell me –
will you be the one to run?

Isabelle Palerma

The Scent of Loss

The sky is the black of a bruised plum with a cobweb of stars scattered across it. The air no longer smells of stale cigarette smoke nor does it smell of his pungent cologne. It was a cologne kept in a green glass bottle on a high shelf that you sometimes uncorked to marvel at the power of its scent.

The air is empty. It smells of dry, autumnal leaves, and there is a chill. It makes you wish you were at a bonfire or anywhere but here. You are curled up on a reclining chair, wearing your favorite sweatshirt. Inside, there is no fire roaring in the fireplace like usual on a Friday night.

There is no fresh homemade bread baking in the oven. All the grown-ups are outside. Your mother’s eyes are bloodshot from crying. Even your father’s eyes are red-rimmed.

The moment is dark and heavy.

It as though they have forgotten you curled up in your favorite chair. You slip out the garage door past the knot of adults. You plop onto a gigantic geode that sits in the rock garden in the front yard, its many facets shine in the silver of the moon. As you inhale the air, you smell other fires in other people’s fireplaces.

You think of bonfires and candy apples and of Halloween. Halloween is only eight days away. You think of your costume still in its bag slung over your chair in the bedroom. You begin to hate Halloween. The red pencil you are writing with is the only sound as it scratches against the bone-white paper.

You tell yourself you will never forget this feeling, this moment. He is gone, and the world as you know it ceases to exist.

Darkness closes around you, but you do not cry. Though you are only eleven, you are aware of the darkness inside and outside of you. The air is empty.

The night is cold, and you are alone.