The Poetry Marathon

Broken Earth

Make a fault in the Earth

rip, rapture, and spoil

all to even the score. 

To take energy

from beneath your feet

and capture the moon. 

Accept loss to return a son.

Risk the world to start anew.

I Only Want What I Cannot Touch

The word normal hovers

outside of the unexpected,

that is to say 

that it exists outside of life itself.

Normal is the fantasy 

you created in your Barbie dream house.

It is milk that still tastes the same

after the cereal has come and gone.

An orchid blooming in dry heat, 

resting in my mother’s living room. 

Normal is the curtains closed 

when I am hypomanic and 

laughter when I’m depressed. 

It is a night unkissed by satellite blinks

or a moment when all I can feel 

is joy. 

Gravel

Each footfall brings me farther from you

and I know it is cliche to miss you 

in the length from your doorframe

to the front door of my Ford Escape

but you’ve closed the sliding glass 

before I had the chance to look once more

at those melting eyes that blend so well

with the leather of the couch you had me on

so rather I will think of the gravel beneath my feet

wearing away at the soles of my shoes 

first at the heel, then arch, then tip

imagining what nakedness feels like

amongst the stones. 

Hands

They open the casket

and I ask if I can hold your hand

a callused time capsule 

of every choice you’ve ever made,

particles clinging from the skin you last caressed, 

hairs on the back moving under the fans –

the only part of you that is. 

I can’t,

hold your hand that is,

so I am left to ponder your life line.

iI I would have known this date 

if I knew to read the crevice of your palm. 

Grazing

after Matt Rasmussen

I know you didn’t choose this place to die / you chose another / but I still imagine the shoulder of your favorite chair / spattered with red. / I cannot help / each time I curl my neck onto the cushion / like a bird preening its feathers / but to think about the absence / at the meeting of your skull and neck / or at least that is where I imagine it / the bullet’s nest / though I suppose I don’t know where the cavern laid / but my scar runs across my first vertebrae / a pink line across the grassy landscape of my scalp / and I’d like to think your ghost shares the same. / But I digress / this chair is where I mourned you / where I still mourn you / silently and with a smile / stretched across sharpened teeth / as I chat with family / as they see me laugh so hard I cry / and rehydrate the leather once more / differently now that I’m observed / but I sit here and / “I wish the god of this place / would put me in its mouth / until I dissolve, until / the field doesn’t end / and I am broken down / like a rifle, / swabbed clean.”

What it feels like

to be bitten

by the cold

or by him 

as he is the cold

the icy onset 

of my lips

when blood 

is flowing

everywhere but

to be bitten

and feel pain

or is that pleasure

my skin 

can’t taste

the difference 

anymore

to be bitten

and consumed

in some

small part

or swallowed

to live in the 

soft folds

of intestines

to be alive

just this once

with you

Island

 after Thelma

They say pain is an island with a cabaret law. 

Say that aching is a song you shouldn’t groove to. 

Don’t let your head bob or your foot tap

for your joints will groan in protest. 

Let the space between the joinings lay stagnant

the air expanding until you are a balloon 

tethered to the mooring of this plane by threads 

woven from your hair

as it pulls from your scalp.

This is Not the End of the World

after Neil Hilborn

I’ve been hearing that the world is ending

Mostly from a voice slightly different from my own

Whispering in my left ear

Right behind the eardrum

I’ve heard it so much these days I can either

Accept the dread or find a way to pay for my medication

There is nothing but endings in both

Of this version of me who stalks their own mind

Who sees their next meal 

And watches it smile back in the reflection

Who wonders what it is like to be calm

To be empty

To live and breathe

Without the future running nails down their back

Hi folks!

My name is Alex Aimee Kist and I am thrilled to join the Poetry Marathon for the first time this year. I am joining from SoCal, though I am originally from Salem, MA. The past year and a half, while difficult in an abundance of ways, has given me the freedom and confidence to pursue growth in my writing. This is certainly the type of challenge I need to push myself.

I have a few poems being published soon, I will drop the info in a later post. I cannot wait to see what everyone has to share.