Author: poetryfest

In Which Mallory Learns Three Important Things
About Herself as She Pinwheels to Death, Among Other Things

p.1
Dear Mother,
I do not regret the time we never spent.

Dear Father,
I am you and you are me. Who came first? The chicken or the egg?

Dear Self,
You must accept the fact that your imminent death is not and will never be glorious.

p.2
The worst part of realizations,
is they are cruel because
they cannot be changed.

Mine is that I will die

in exactly 17.12 minutes,
(my suit calculates)
whirling between
green, blue, black
speckled with
pinpricks of distant
light from a
different age.

I do not scream.
I do not cry.
I accept.
I am streaking
through time and
atmosphere is
so close, filling my polycarbonate
visor with wisps of white.

I am glad that the last
thing I will see before
I asphyxiate is the
Pacific ocean. I wonder
if fish look up
and wonder what it
is like to breathe.

p.3
I do not envy anything.
I am here, staring at my
entire life defined to
four numbers ticking!

(I have moved past
all things in life. I have
moved past staring at
twin tombstones and
I shall move even when
my synapses shall not,
forever freefalling into
nothing.)

the third thought
that cartwheels across
me squealing heavenly
mercy cries⸺
who will remember you?

The birds twittering under the shingles
of my roof, the squirrels eating the acorns
left on my porch, my posters hanging in
my room are all bits of my
existence and remember me in of
themselves.

I am real; my pain is proof of this.

p.4
00.10
there
00.09
is
00.08
nothing
00.07
more
00.06
beautiful
00.05
than
00.04
earth.
00.03
I
00.02
am
00.01
happy.

Has anyone told you
How long you’ve been away?
There’s a bounty on you;
Ten thousand for the shattered cage
Of your yellowing remnants
Since the fireworks and fireweed
And forest fires of midsummer
Maybe all three joined mouths
To swallow you whole
Your sinkhole eyes slow-dripped dread
On my mother, poised on the hammer
Of a cautious gun
Now they surely pour instead
The writhing, creeping vicars
That hold the slow vigil
For every dark blooded thing
That lie contorted
In hasty gravel graves
They have carried you to an afterworld
And you live on beneath the laminate
Flapping slowly
Against the obligated storefronts

The sky looks like a pearl
scraped from the oyster,
unwilling shells pried
apart
by the man’s callused hands.
A man who asks himself,
Why do all the sad things
happen only to poets?
And a man who believes it
despite the oyster’s split spine,
clawed curves.
One who would note
two fewer eagle nests this year,
one who could make a meal
out of a homegrown tomato slice.

It feels like pissing in a clean bathtub—
relief that could kill him. A
mustard gas spatter.
Like trying to suture it all back
together after sawing clean through,
the layers of fabric and padding and springs,
too yielding beneath the rev.
Gnawing against stitches sewn
by thimbled fingers on frosty Sundays
while he watched America’s team.

He leaves things lesser than he found them,
just in more pieces—
like a cloud breaking apart to let the sun in,
or a baby bird shattering the egg with its beak.
All of what nature intended,
all of what he scrapes up
during his riverbed rounds, knowing
that the deeper he goes,
the tougher the earth will be.

And he tells himself
that if he were a musician,
he’d never want to fly again.

I didn’t think about it much then
But I do now understand

The precision with which my
Grandmother could skin

Apples and potatoes
Such serene cool about her face

Not a line in the skin reminiscent
Of a frown, nothing in the eyes

Twinkled a smile
Her tiny fingers never slipped

Steady in their journey
Never wasting apple or potato

Only skinning what was necessary
When I’m fumbling a knife around

An apple staring out into my backyard
(My lack of rigor reminds me that

My hardships are nothing to hers)
I do think about

Our lives as parallel
Or as derailed synonyms

As a little girl I didn’t think about it much
But as a woman, I do now know

What my grandmother was thinking
When she skinned with such precision

My Dad, My Hero, My King

There is a man I truly admire,
An absolute legend don’t you know,
He’s constantly hardworking,
Forever on the go.

A true inspiration to my boys,
Of how a real man should be,
He’s loving, respectful and loyal,
Always takes care of my boys and me.

He will always remind me,
That it costs nothing to be kind,
A true magician for making money,
Out of the things that he can find.

We never have to go without,
He’s always done whatever he could,
To make sure we always have the best,
Never stops making us all feel good.

I am eternally grateful,
For each and everything,
For giving us the best we can ever ask for,
He is my Dad, my Hero, my King.

©️Ailsa Wright 2025

a doodle never drawn,
sits atop the roof of your childhood home,
looking down at all the little things,
that never led to its death

madness slithers in violent waves,
all around the heat that seeps out of your hands
the one eyed demon we once met in a crossfading fantasy,
told you to catch it all,
in glass jars or copper paper

when we reach out
to touch the border of our lives,
i always hoped yours would linger next to mine,
but you’re flying away,
making paths i did snot know could exist,
although you never showed the world all your red stained books,
on days when my sky looks like a drawing
you might have conjured up in our shared dreams,
i’m glad you left me one of your glass jars.

I loved something wild,
something that knew the secrets
whispered through the winds,
that spoke of forgotten times,
of untamed lives lived long ago.
When the earth and trees stretched soundlessly in snow,
and in the soil, there was a piece of her bound to grow,
buried in a time long before this one.
Oh, she’s known something lawless,
something that calls her for more
than what humanity has decided it is
molded for.
And so, she will leave this town
the second she gets the chance.
I’ve loved someone untamed,
someone whose spirit runs like the rivers,
whose soul recognizes the same voices that speak to me,
telling me to run, to hide, to escape
from this noise, to find peace in the silence.
I’ve known someone
who hears and sees
life
through my eyes.
But now I must realize,
someday,
she will wander too far off,
and the rivers will
be the only thing I am left with.
Her footprints will fade into mountains,
and I will have to sit at the base
and wonder if it was really her who had left them.
Someday, her words will dry like ink,
and the distance between us will grow too vast,
but I know—given the chance—
I would run too.
Because she made me wild,
showed me the restless fire bound to ignite in our hearts,
how we never understood the ease with which others stay,
how we questioned those who didn’t have this primitive ache for more,
who couldn’t feel the pull of the mountains,
the rivers, the sky.
Those who were unable to yearn
for anything else besides brick houses
and family dinners.
God, our conversations were filled with past lives, soul ties,
and the fire that burns at the edge of our feet—
a fire that has taught us we were never once weak,
and that it’s been in our hearts since the day
we breathed air that was clear.
But now it has spread
throughout our entire bodies,
and it is telling us
to run.
And I know that we will.
Someday, I know I’ll have to watch her escape
this place we both swore we would never come back to,
because it was I who chose to love someone
as wild
and as covetous as myself.
I was always someone who knew more,
someone who ached for unleashed freedom.
But for a moment,
I was willing to become docile
if she was the one
who’d continue to tell me the tales
of what it is to feel the rushing rivers,
and the bright stars,
and the tall grass
as if they were part of a distant, forgotten memory.
Oh, I loved someone who was always fated to leave me

Not every life is equal
Not every family perfect
Some are raised with flowers at head
Some grow with minor inconveniences

Many marriages are happy
Honeymoon states throughout the life
But some weren’t a perfect match
Broken right from the start

What benefit is there in harming the person you’ve sworn to protect?
What satisfaction in breaking your oath?
Father, what do you yearn?
What is your “glorious goal”?

Mother, are you still there?
Mom, can you hear my voice?
Mom, I need you to get up
Mom, I need to go to school

What strength is needed to survive
To thrive, despite the pain?
How do you have enough persuasion and love
To lie still and not break?

No, you don’t break, nor transform
You still do not resemble these men
You fight endlessly, day and night
You give us shelter from pain

Your actions are an example, your words show us the way
There aren’t enough words to describe the awe and adoration you deserve
For despite the harm, still love
Still survive, still grow, still thrive
To still look at us with happiness
To still call us your light

For your endless patience and virtues
Which numbering would take too many lines
For companionship, support and love
I would bring you the stars from the sky

I’m sorry.
I wouldn’t be surprised if these were my first words,
Words I probably spoke more than my own name.

You’re just a speed bump in everyone’s lives! Just go away already!
I’m sorry.

No one even likes you, I don’t know why you’re even still alive anyway!
I’m sorry.

We always lose when you’re on our team! You suck! Everybody loses because you suck!
I’m sorry.

You’re the one making things like this! You never even really cared about me in the first place!
I’m sorry.

Boy if you don’t sit your ass down somewhere, damn! Why can’t you be normal!?
I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry.

Scars don’t apologize for taking up residence on your skin
or in your heart. They apologize
for being seen by prying eyes,
for being burned and drank away

by tequila and whiskey.

Left to hollow out a crater of the flesh,
they merely sit in patience and wait to be accepted
like blue roses that bloom in snowfall’s hush.
Scars don’t ask for a mirror, but they do
vent to the veins about their hope for one day
to find the person capable of letting them
see daybreak and its warmth hug the wounds.

Scars don’t ask to be carried,
they don’t ask to be born
into a world of blood thicker
than water. They pray for the moment
when they can bask in silence
without the curtains gossiping about
how they let that happen to them.

Scars don’t ask to be healed.
Sometimes, they shouldn’t be.
Not as some twisted badge of honor,
but as a purple heart for the valor
and fortitude in surviving the mental warfare
waged for their right to not have
to view the world from halfway down.

Scars don’t ask to be held at night,
even when they should,
even when they deserve it,
because they don’t know how
to cradle tenderness in arm
without the constant fear
of their ugly scaring love away.

Scars don’t ask to be beautiful.
They plant their roots in the skin,
bloom white lilies from the stargazer seeds
left behind after the deaths of the old ones,
water them with fountains of warmth
and elixirs of benevolence, and bask
in the blossoming of their fleshed smiles.

Scars don’t need to be radiant,
or magical, or majestic.
They find their beauty
in their existence, the mortal,
the ethereal, they live
in the light of a dove’s kiss
from paradise above
and drink the ashes
of crisped phoenix feathers
because scars aren’t beautiful
or ugly, but ancient
reassurance of the gentle
inevitability in being human.

“gotta go make a few shekels,”
his kind eyes saturated with speckles.
this man, my hero,
never a zero.

he’d always have a phrase
getting ready for work most days.
he’d sing “gotta get that name”
from the muppets, with no shame.
surely, a deep cut
but we loved to watch him strut.
it was his on time song,
but when his timing was wrong
he’d sing quite unluckily,
“fuckety fuckety fuckety.”
we’d laugh and laugh
on my mother’s behalf.
our working class comedy
by a musical prodigy.
he’d play flute in the night,
a lullaby of delight.
he taught me great art,
and with it, open his heart.
my mom would make dinner,
my dad proud to be the breadwinner.
well, that’s what they agreed
to provide us what we need.
i’d make up a fable
about the lunch table.
we’d laugh altogether
as light as a feather.
he’d talk about work
with a cheeky little smirk.
after the evening spread,
it was time to go to bed.
he’d read a bedtime story,
voice each character in all their glory.
a picture book come to life
and afterwards he’d kiss his wife.
we’d say, “ew, gross!”
but saw true love up close.

it was a gift of a childhood,
i turned out pretty good.

i think my dad
was the father he wished he had,
and when i reminisce on those memories,
at those magnificent melodies,
i sometimes miss
that ignorant bliss.

so, when you see my pop,
tell him i never would swap
the childhood i had
with the world’s greatest dad.