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.
poet
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.
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
Our voices will be heard.
We will not be silenced.
News about my Chapbook & Novel!
Hey there!
It’s been a while since I’ve updated, but if you follow me on social media, (which I highly recommend you do) you’ll know that my chapbook is almost complete! We have a title, my publisher and editors have polished it, and I just have my final checks to do before we take it to print. That being said, we’re doing some pretty unusual and cool things with its formatting that I think you all will be excited to see once it’s in print. I’m so excited to share this labor of love with all of you.
Speaking of labors of love, I’m currently going over the first round of edits for Catching Dreams that my publisher has sent over before sending it to the publisher. The first round of edits involves tightening up the prose, tidying up some redundancies, and just overall polishing it up. From there, it will go to the publisher’s editors, go through more editing, and then, hopefully, we’ll start drafting up a cover and it will – fingers crossed – hit the bookshelves in 2025!
I am so excited to share with you the progress of my journey. Also, while I have been away from my website, two of my poems were published in a local literary magazine called Perspectives. If you are interested in receiving a copy, please let me know and I can send you an autographed copy.
That’s all for now, but be sure to keep checking my website for more updates!
Isabelle Palerma
Lingering Regrets: a Poem
Every syllable, every plosive shatters the remnants of once held promises.
Shards of broken vows pirouette across the rubber of my tongue.
Each word a lacerating cut like a needle,
like the fine lines etched into my palm for an oracle’s prophecy or an artist’s sketch.
My mouth tastes of iron and of rust, and my head is a beehive, swarming with thought.
My name is Regret — don’t you have a few?
As imperfect as you were, do you ever carry the weight of remorse?
Of course you can’t answer.
The ghosts never respond.
I’m alone in my grief & in my solitude, I cannot beckon Lazarus to awaken from his slumber.
This is my greatest sin —
for which there is no redemption.
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 