Author: poetryfest

This is true,
Life is quite sadistic.
Ripping you away from friends
And family,
Breaking your heart
And your bones
And your mind,
Killing the ones you loved
In violent storms
Of wind and
Water,
Or even,
Love,
Rejection,
And heartbreak.
Time teaches us nothing
But just how to live with
The pain.
The pain of never seeing your favorite person
Again,
The pain after loved ones are rescued,
But it’s too late.
I believe in a universe that doesn’t care
And people who do.

His poisonous words,
Dripping from his tongue,
Resting in your ears.
Your ears no longer can hear
The lies,
The lies filling the orifices on your face.
His hands slide up and down your body,
His lies pressing into your body,
Holding you,
Enfolding you,
Never letting you go.

I am unraveling
a calamitous disaster
pace, woefully languid.

I’d bathe in your sunlit eyes and dance
upon the freckles that decorate your arms.
so I’ll let it take me.
Crestfallen. Despondent.
Reduced to my want
for you, personhood carved away.

I look at the glow of
the moon and my stomach
has pits.

I’m furiously unwinding this carefully crafted knit as
the moon reminds me of you.
i’ll keep tugging, aching
with a fervent desperation. I can at least feel
your gaze until it runs out.
I’m curious how far you’ll let things go.

It will hurt.
I just wonder how bad?

I’m letting you lead, despotically.
Hand in my hair, guiding me.

My ears eagerly feign whimpers
I crave to know the ways that your face would contort with
strained breaths and an arched back.
vestiges of humanity.

I couldn’t imagine
my dad
saying the things
Trump said
about his own daughter.

Not about her body,
not with that smirk,
not on national television,
like it was
a compliment.

My father
taught me how to ride a bike,
not how to shrink under a man’s gaze.
He called me curious,
not curvy.
He said you can be anything,
not if she weren’t my daughter…

Trump said that.
To Howard Stern.
On The View.
To the world.

He never flinched.
Never apologized.

My dad never
looked at me
like property,
never spoke of me
like prize.
Never lingered in the mirror
of my reflection.

I hear what Trump says
about Ivanka—
and I flinch
like it’s my name
in his mouth.

We’re not the same person
every thought in his head isn’t mine
but different
there is evil in his
depths, some evil that is not mine but so foreign to ears
and his
and is him and he varies
he’s multiple paintings in multiple moods he is a room
he has designed himself.
Like me, he is an engineer. Though
a better one
he has carved his corner now he sits, he is a baby bubbling in his own bath
he knows this
place
better than I, he watches me, trembling
carve.

The wind comes and the apple sees its chance.
It pulls and tugs, heaves and ho’s,
But the stem is yet supple, green with promise.
The wind dies down, the tree chuckles, and the apple sags.
Next time.

The child comes, a little girl, the mother watching from afar.
As they climb looking for the reddest, most luscious fruit of all
The apple slicks itself back, bares its widest smile.
But just as the ingénue stretches out in its direction,
They are called back to safety, to warm, welcoming arms.
The tree snickers, the apple sighs.
Next time.

The fox comes by, chasing its next meal
That has scurried to shelter within the tree’s hollow.
Defeated, the canine looks upward, and the apple starts.
It stretches down, Adam and Eve be damned.
But the tree holds fast and the fox proves the more divine,
It shakes itself and scampers away.
The tree smirks, and the apple wails.
Next time.

The season passes, and the apple looks nervously
At the brittle peduncle holding it still.
The tree notices, and for the first time, speaks.

Why do you worry, my child, about where you will fall?
Look there, among the spaces between my roots where you will tumble,
Cushioned by my leaves, shielded by my branches,
Digested by none but the worms
Beneath my soil.

There you will be nourished by the sun I will share with you
The water I will trickle down upon your remains
Until your withered self finally gives way
And your rhizomes intertwine with mine
For the centuries to come.

The apple weeps silently at the tree’s speech,
Gazes with horror and longing at its promised land of rebirth,
And this time

I wandered far through sea and storm,
No steady voice, no hand-kept warm,
But found you near so soft, so true,
A whisper soft the wild winds blew.

Your voice, like midnight’s gentle rain,
A slow, low, healing refrain,
And in its sound, I find relief
Words that could soften any grief.

You smell of pine, of earth and sky,
A scent that holds when nights run dry,
A scent I chase through dream and day,
That does not leave, nor fade away.

I am the storm, untamed, unbound,
Wild winds that howl without a sound.
You are the pine, firm and wise,
Standing tall beneath these skies.

You said you’d support, come storm or sun,
No matter what I’ve said or done
That if I called, if I should plead,
You’d be the one my heart would heed.

I fear, I fade, I flee, I break.
I speak in spirals, drowning ache,
But still I find you, still, you wait,
Unshaken by my shifting state.

You are not ink I’d write anew,
Nor tale I’d twist to make it true
You are the page, the song, the muse,
The one I feel called to choose.

So let them speak of space and time,
Of stars that burn, of fate and sign…
But all I want, through dusk and dew,
Is just one world
One path
With you.

By Linda Boxall

canvas stretched. my eyes –
(moistened, mirrored), like an out of
service city bus.
red neon and a
set of concrete steps into
a basement lounge

a boar’s head on the
wall. someone placed a hat on him.
there’s dust on the teeth.
what was it like in
Japan? here are Bashō’s musings,
here is his heart –

etched into the stones
that are here now, still and then
breathing. now humming.
when he slept here what
wild duck startled him awake? what
cold chill called his name?

Minneapolis,
my hands are in my pockets, a
cold curl of breath –
I still don’t know your
name. the Mississippi River
at night. all empty

save bright eyes shining
from dark alleyways. Bashō!
cracking knuckles, gone.
put your teeth in me,
wild dog of winter’s awful night!
jet lagged by morning.

and what do I have?
dry hands that sting like breaking
ice beneath your feet,
and a cold look back.
the skyline standing completely
still. hands to the sky!