Poetry

Appeared in Wasteland #5

Art by Chris D'Alessandro

Salome

milking rainfall
from her artificial tear duct
"how pale she is"
how she crumples the why
of words and blood-

why is faminefeast
always seeming
always something
falling from instead
on a night so soft
a night like this

"how plae she is"

the moon
that albino pupil
irised by midnight
lightbulbed
in a cobalt sky

the clouds form ribcages
crazy ribcages
that glow violet
from words and blood
and the colors language makes

light-boxed
empty
on a night so soft

by Kathleen Newell

Pool

the air's thick with wanting
time is like paste
chairs are firm vice grips
chaos is music
of voices-not meaning
clothing in spectrum
of straight jacket
silence!

moment stop motion
discovered forgotten
this blister of feeling
too sudden
too wanton

fear wells
and hell stares
this trail of illusion

congealed and distorted

a bloodline so savage

By Chris D'Alessandro
 

Job 23

I go forward, but he is not there,
and backward, but I cannot perceive him

                        pinioned
against the checkered cab of the screen door
spidered and webbed against the moon

or so they seemed
from a distance

you're hands in my head

platonic and pluperfect
looking  to water to find sky
of where we happen
to vein our bits of body into wings

transparent lines
that flutter gray handed
too small or too heavily painted
to crack the surface tension

they don't come off that easy
despite how hard we scrub
the wing fragments
the bits of body
that chigger beneath the skin
too small or too heavily painted
to play rain with a malestrom