|
Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover pic from web
•
Download every microchap
for free from this website.
(Set printer for landscape printing!)
|
I.
I was born first in her shadow
the brilliance of Gemini pulsing beneath our veins
and Libra’s rings joined together in birthright
of moon and song
of cribs turned into castles and
simmering tv static I can still hear it
II.
on the days we dissolved
more identical than we are
the olive-blood we share
pooled beneath my nailbuds
anchoring my fingertips
to thin layers of denim and dermis
and she couldn’t lift her own
fingertips to sign her name
III.
maybe they will bury us in the matching
blackthorn coffins I dreamt about
during her stay at Baptist
when she was little more than a
silhouette still more than I wanted to be
a hearse or a haven?
IV.
carrion-clouds doomed to circulate above
rotting hospital beds
pulled at my intestines
so I found solace in expelling all the bad things
flushing them away
|
V.
our language became one of byzantine
instinct
of places where necrosis waits
beyond to whisper away gray matter
half-planned memorials on all of our minds
VI.
after lithium prayers after rorschach tests
after confessionals after grief
throbbing in our necks
her breath emerged from
where it was sleeping
and she held onto my hands
during the unhaunting
held still while zigzagging neurons
fired back into place
VII.
and we said hello in our own language
no longer maligned and cruel
just there just as it always
had been before.
•
Madison Zehmer © 2020
|
Madison Zehmer is a 22-year-old wannabe historian and emerging poet from North Carolina. She loves poetry, cats, Jewish studies, history, and psychology. Her published and forthcoming work can be found in Wards Lit Mag and La Piccioletta Barca.