new poet

Kissing You, Angels Smile, A Vast Universe, etc : a Few Poems

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.

“Girls like the Mist/like Summer Storms”

Isabelle Palerma

The (Not So) Gentle Parts: a Poem

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.

Isabelle Palerma

The Garden of Eden: a Poem

On January 18, 2015, at Stanford University, Brock Turner, a nineteen-year-old student, sexually assaulted Chanel Miller while she was unconscious. On September 2, 2016, Turner was released after three months for good behavior – only half his original sentence.

The original scene of the crime is now a garden.

If we could landscape the horrors
and build walls of stone (to call them beautiful),
we would.
But remember –
even without these gardens planted,
you can upend our worlds.

There are names we never speak in our households
like giving Satan a title (a crown) –
James, perhaps,
or
Geoffrey, maybe.
The boys with ruddy skin & sharp teeth,
the boys with trust funds and drinking problems.

The girls we worry about are the ones
who think “no” isn’t a reason
or that “stop” isn’t a complete thought.

*Photo by* *Yana Mazurkevich’s* *photo series,* “It Happens”.

The ones who break us are the ones who teach us
rejection doesn’t matter —

nothing matters.

Boys aren’t always just boys.
Boys can be feral creatures:
unforgiving with dried blood
underneath their crescent moon nails.

Boys like Nathaniel and Brock and Christopher.

(The boys you thought were beautiful
are the ones who disrobed you
with their lust & savagely attacked your beauty
with no regard for how you crafted your stars
or lingered over your constellations.)

Manipulate me,
but I will always say your name.

I will not be quieted
because like the author warned me,
the girls who swallow their teeth
are the ones who get eaten.

So, I will not get roped into settling for
the garden of Eden and blamed for taking a bite
of the fruit of knowledge.

I will not be silenced.
I will not be vanquished.
I will scream.

Isabelle Palerma

The crime scene where administration refused to let the words Chanel Miller chose be placed on a plaque in honor of victims of sexual assault.

Our voices will be heard.

We will not be silenced.

2023: a Year of Independence

To recap 2023, I moved to Independence, Missouri, in the last few weeks of December 2022 and started the new year with a brand new beginning. I left everything and everyone I knew to try a fresh start.

I lived with a roommate in Independence for a couple of months before we quickly learned how incompatible we were. I had a couple of jobs and worked on my writing.

For a few months, I just kept my nose to the grindstone, job searching, writing, making new friends, and creating art.

All the while, I was dealing with a bully who spread rumors about me and devastated my self esteem, which resulted in me tearing down this website and rebuilding it from scratch.

I let her erode at my self esteem until there was nothing of me left, and I was hospitalized. I was hospitalized twice last year because of my issues with my mental health.

I struggled immensely with being so far from my family and my loved ones, but I found a way – I continued to work hard and got a publishing offer on my debut novel and my poetry chapbook.

I made new friends while living in Kansas City and met a lot of great and memorable people. I experienced a lot of amazing things, whether meeting film directors and actors from genre films who encouraged me to shoot my own movies or going to see an aerial performance in an ice crystal cave.

I met people like the Mormon who wanted to marry me or the girl who took me to expensive lingerie boutiques and went swimming with me long after the pool had closed.

It was a year of ups and downs, but most importantly, it was a year of growth and new experiences.

We’ll see what 2024 holds.

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.