100 Lines of Poetry

Laying in the bath
she is
pink and puckered
like a strawberry
rinsed under the faucet of the kitchen sink.
Supple, still, and silent
Her breasts her thighs her eyelids
speak for themselves
Half-submerged
as the final air-bubble-messenger-of-life
makes its way to disappear at the surface.

[11 lines]


Brick upon brick of book
I have stacked, walled, fortressed myself in.

Drawing. Jarring. You carve,
pen in their spines.
Bolting upright,
bringing to life, like Zeus, out of clouds
a man of imagination.

At night I can’t sleep,
it sounds like a pendulum- caught-
going too fast,
against my ear.

[11 lines]


It’s been a shoebox full of days since the last time I thought.
And longer since I’ve thought of you.
I’m not the only one who’d rather be cold and outside.
No, apparently I am.
I like what the goose bumps do to the feeling of my body.
And what the air paints with the colors on my skin.
It makes me feel tangible.
I become more of a reality.

[8 lines]




There’s a conspiracy on the airplane.
I knew it!
The pilot had to pee.
That was a pretty dang cool switch-a-roozy.
The stewardess,
who was chatting all cozy with that old man
-instead of getting me cranberry juice-
is standing guard.
This is hard core.
Why am I so aware?
How did I catch the secret sign?
Why isn’t the back-up coming out?
Look at her eyes, how creepy.
She is watching everything at the same time.
Planes are skinny so that they don’t need too much peripheral vision.

[15 lines]


We sneak into the theatre on 4th with a full jar of Nutella plus two spoons and stare up at the stars painted on the ceiling and pretend we’re at Hogwarts.
I want to suck your tongue like a dried mango strip.

When you run into the woods later to throw up
I wait for you.
Sitting on the curb I pretend I’m being sucked into the gutter during a rainstorm.

[6 lines]


You are my Space-Age dream
I want to experiment with the anti-gravity of your breath
Whisper into my skin so that I may float upward
I’ve been feeling heavy lately
My head is not even underwater
There is moldy dirt dripping out my ears
Soil moist in the corners of my mouth
and under my tongue
Scrub me clean with your sterile heartbeat
Probe me
I am following the fish with my eyes but when they turn they evaporate into the air
The red one is my favorite
When are we going to leave for Mars?
I’ve been saving up my oxygen.

[14 lines]
At the bonfire
Teresa went down to the river
Where we pretended to skip rocks.
We only ever got one skip-
from our hands
into the water
But we didn’t care.
The atmosphere was cooler,
not just the temperature.
And that boy wasn’t even tree-dancing.
His name was Sam-
and he was breaking off a branch
to hold into the fire
while everyone else roasted
and toasted.

[15 lines]


Sometimes
my heart
feels like
it has been taken
out
and
disassembled.
That there is just a place-holder
in the wrong shape
a star
or a downward spelled word from a crossword puzzle
maybe just the boxes
blank and
inexplicable
impossible to fill in
they belong to a really difficult word
and the clue is too cryptic for me-
or anyone.
And so it just sits there and stays like that-
empty
and contained.

[21 lines]




Ice cream
Pink, sweet
Melting, oozing, running
It’s all down the length of my arm!
Heaven.

[5 lines] Cinquain

Inside the bookstore
they lock up my medicine
Am I making meth?

[3 lines] Haiku





TOTAL LINES OF POETRY: 109

TOTAL FORMS: 2