May Poetry Compliation

 

He Robs A Pear Tree

By Lauren Kate Hurlocker

Axed Pear Tree

Can I come say hi? 

Do you think you’ll be there still? 

Text me when you’re halfway 

I’m outside

Complex closeness

I’ve forgotten the reasons for loving you

Lipstick stains on a plastic water bottle


Drone = functionless, hovering, circling around events

I’m Locked Into You

Anger is a real thing and it’s okay to write about

Virgin with a body count

I may be high, but I still try to be professional

You don’t kill a tree to eat an apple

Can’t complain

Art students are horny

We derived pleasure from the deed 

simply because it was forbidden

(sugar in grandmother’s sewing room)

I didn’t learn anything academically 

Dancing in front of my computer screen


Edward

By Anonymous

Dreaming of him, 

Was better when he wasn’t on my mind 

Meaning it was hard, 

And barely happened any time

Smoke and it’s stains, 

Filled my room and entire being 

Tears I tried to cry,
Danced with my fan on the ceiling

When I did dream, 

I leaned back and let him graze 

Fighting to stay asleep, 

Leaving my Monday’s in a daze

Sat in my shower, 

I was bathed in his ecstasy, 

In his realm I lived, 

Where my routine could be fantasy

I no longer dream, 

It’s too hazardous a fiction 

This I know now, 

That there are much better addictions


Universal Gossip

By Ana Palade

 

And I told the stars about you,

yet maybe I shouldn’t have.

They mocked me,

laughed at my confessions

somehow, I did not cease my obsessions

of what once was but is no more

for they didn’t know you

the way I still do

 

And the stars told the planets too

whispered in their ears the way in which I couldn’t stop the tears.

Told them of

the grey eyes which pulled me into an ocean of mystery,

An insomniac’s best hope of a dreamless sleep

they listened to my songs of sorrow

begged me to come back soon

to tell them more tomorrow

 

Soon the moon found out

about the stories you once told me in the dead of night

fairy tales where the princess could rewrite

a story of love under the permission of the moon

She laughed.

Told me my broken heart was now her heirloom

I begged the stars not to tell the wind

of my hardships and

the way my soul had dimmed

So the stars told the trees instead

sharing the news through a small summer breeze

or perhaps it was autumn,

Time merges when Love is a disease

 

The trees told me worry not, child

for while you were sobbing to the night sky

about that small and final goodbye

He too joined the stars when the universe split open

and when She walked him home

he knew you would come back to tell the stars

all on your own.

Do You Remember The Rapture?

By Billie Fabrikant


Do you remember the rapture? 

Half-past twelve without the wind 

scaling streetlights to see Sahara steeples


We stank of gin 

I guess that’s why they left us 

rotting alive, it’s sudden Hell 

Seven-eleven neon corners 

with their slowly-killing smell


And I knew then that there was no god 

or at least none that would ever care to listen; 

better to pretend he wasn’t there at all, 

you told me, laughing, 

lighting up again on the unmowed White House lawn.


Poseidon

By Zaynab Abigail


I could marry myself to the sea bed

But I had read

Or heard

Somewhere

You cannot drown yourself

No matter

The effort

Whether it comes in shades

Of blue or green

It will not be possible

I think that

He was watching out for me

Though I have made an

Effort to tell myself

That kind of love

Is not real

At least not for me

Painful

And brown as

The stagnation of sewage water

Flowing with weight

Deep below

The solidity

Of the concrete

That holds us all up

Tarmac-ing us all from

One day to the next


The love is all around:

Bubbling

Foaming

Sometimes

Moderately sulphurous

A crystalline

Soapy knowing presence

Pulling me back to shore

When I swim

Too far from the surf


To The Poet I'll Never Be

By Nahnah Najeeb

To the poet I'll never be, 

I'm aware of your copper-crusted skin, 

flaking as you bleed poetry, 


I'm aware, you chew hatred for breakfast

and yet mix it with ink and paint yourself, 


I'm aware of how you run your fingers through 

your ribcage and search for cracks,

and break them open, 

like the sky. 


I'm aware, you are drowning, 

Unable to breathe yet not giving up,


And don't worry, I'm aware, 

that you exist in me. 

To the poet I'll never be, 

How are your poems made?


Do you taste the inked papers? 

And tell me why you cry like an owl, 

Screeching, and heart pounding, 

Limbs numb, lips dry,

A hollow beast to behold, 

Tell me again, who are you?


Yesterday, you were the moon, 

Standing upright in the pitch-black sky, 

Undoing the gravity.


Today, you are the wind, 

bringing the aura of purple hyacinths, 

huddling a poem about daydreams,

Tell me how, how you are a poem yourself. 


To the poet I'll never be, 

I'm proud of your chaotic mind,

Your veins carrying hints of gold, 

Let me tell you, O' poet, 

I'm an inch closer to you every day



Celestial Plights and All

By Nathalie Paulino


Tell me just how long it took for Icarus to fall 

so that I might understand 

the length at which I’ll tumble down 

when you lure me to your rays

I’ll build my wings and come flying 

earnestly, fervently 

ready for my peril 

if only it meant a glimpse of what could’ve been

and what could be 

had I not been afraid of the sky