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