Did you decide that winter
is your vanishing season?
That the frost is where you take your leave?
I have starved on less,
but you swore I wouldn’t be hungry
this January.
So, why do all my pockets have holes
and my heart vacates like a hotel room
after a weeklong conference?
So, why am I alone, holding hands
with memories and begging stars
to tell you
goodbye doesn’t mean forever?
poem
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
A Cage for Your Heart, the Softness of Sadness, and the Gentle Lull of Love: a Poem
An architect constructed you a mansion
for your heart and you called it a cage.
He crafted each room with so much caution
and care.
The muscle nestled between your ribs
felt like a boulder I was incapable of swallowing,
I am a myth,
tugging on strings that have strangled me.
My fantasies were polished glass shards
shattered by laments and heartbreak.
Ancestors draped mirrors
with black organza in bereavement
after a loved one died.
The fabric is as light as a ghost,
so tell me,
how did I still I wake up with
bits of glass crunching beneath my feet?
The sadness was a fragile creature –
the weight of black organza –
and yet I am a myth,
desiring nothing more than to pull
the strings that choke me.
But it’s gentle sometimes,
sneaking in like a moth,
as soft as a ballerina’s skin
and barbed wire.
Our wires danced across the dance floor,
and if you watch,
we might just choke on the memory,
the softness of sadness, and
the gentle lull of love.
Isabelle Palerma
My Favorite Problem: a Poem
I have never showered
in grief –
I guess that’s one of my favorite problems.
I can’t vow that my hands are good for anything.
My fingers are usually too numb
to hold a pen for long,
& yet,
I try to craft poetry and art out of thin air.
I took a train west, thinking running
might solve my problems.
I flew out east.
I never know if I’m running toward or from,
I guess that’s one of my favorite problems, too.
I’ll try to settle down for a while.
I never thought I’d be stable,
but sometimes, I wake up forgetting the past.
Sometimes, I wake up forgetting you.
Infinity paralyzes people sometimes;
the prospect of forever can intimidate.
I just want to remember who I was
before all the casualties of running.
I’ll try to settle down for a while.
I never thought I’d be stable,
but sometimes,
I wake up forgetting the past.
Sometimes, i wake up forgetting you.
I never know if i’m running toward or
from,
I guess that’s one of my favorite problems, too.
I try to craft poetry and art out of thin air.
I guess that’s one of my favorite problems.
Can you distort what I’ve forgotten,
take this blurry snapshot,
and turn it into something real?
Can you distort this blurry snapshot
and make it your favorite problem?
Isabelle Palerma 