Poetry

Lypophrenia: a Poem

“A feeling best described as sorrow that has no clear cause.”

We thought by giving him a name,
it couldn’t break me so badly,
but the agony still extinguishes the illumination
within my irises, within my pupils,
within my soul.
There is a darkness deeper than I care to admit,
but I cannot hide from forever.
(My fire has not ignited in days,
yet I cannot hide in bed
and relinquish myself to the shadows
completely.)

I swore to myself
I would not drown in thoughts such as these,
but sometimes,
the devastations are greater than I can control.

It sometimes feels as though
I am caught in a riptide,
the ocean current pulling me away
from everyone who loves me
until all they are is a speck of sand,
a memory.

(My honesty is raw,
my words are plain.
I usually hide behind an ornate metaphor
crafted carefully and I tread with caution –
not to overstep the boundary lines.)

I have picked up the pen several times,
but the ink well is dry
and my thoughts crystallize
like honey thickening as it cools.
Nothing makes sense when the demons
take the reins
& I try to swallow the bile down.

I try to offer a courageous smile,
but I feel weak and collapsing
is the only option I have sometimes.

Don’t judge me for the anguish I carry.
Each one is a sparrow beating its wings
inside my chest,
desperate to be released but finding a home
buried deep in my rib cage
alongside that dimly burning crystal
that is a barely beating heart.


(I cannot swallow
for all the feathers that have climbed
from my chest to my throat,
from my throat to the wet insides of my mouth.)

So, instead, with this inexplicable sadness,
I lie here,
my heart – my sparrows – knocking against my chest
(an unspoken tragedy bearing down on me).

Isabelle Palerma

Image via freepik.com

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.

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 to me.
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