Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Nina O'Donovan Jul 2016
The sun beats,
splits your skin.
Underneath
you’re heated till ductile;
you yield to the day.

The day is bloodhot.
A fish in a fist; you feel it
like a clot
in summer’s vein.
It drums the city dry.

You stay
in sungripped rooms
too small to compete.
Too soft with sweat,
you splinter and dash.

You happily waste the day.
Now nothing
has the energy
to raise itself
far off the ground.
  Jul 2016 Nina O'Donovan
Sylvia Plath
Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.
  May 2016 Nina O'Donovan
Rina Vana
We’d meet up in the bridge of the night
on Monahan road where no streetlights survived at all,
where your
car would impatiently grumble as
I scurried out of the laundry room window

My bare feet kissed the cold concrete briefly before
I threw myself into the warmth of your old Honda,
attaching my body to yours like it belonged to you

The raccoons would come out to greet us because they
heard the sheer ripping of my cotton dress
into pieces between your palms and the rough grip of flesh which
held my flexing neck

Pearls of sweat accumulated once
I tore the shirt off of your back
My loving lips bit by your tough teeth and
I crumbled into your mouth like warm cake,
cuffing your face to the
irresistible urge to lick the plate
clean
windows once were the last moment I noticed but,
you dug your nails into my muscles like I deserved it
across the foggy surface of my skin as if we were lions leaving
chilled bumps and the marks of midnight
scarred in my mind for a minute

Fluttering lids lick this fleeting daydream
that I can’t seem to catch with
my bare authentic hands
Hands no longer tan,
Nor connected to the center
of your plans
Nina O'Donovan May 2016
thought i could move you by handfuls
could sweep into you somehow
this mountain i despise
to share could slip you into
a feeling like mine air thin
weaker at height

safe for me is to defer
i sit statue and deny
what nobody knows should feel
like inhale
mintmouth—
curves time in a way

once we talked romance
told how to do it wrong
i took that on board
crave a kiss to thorn my tongue
any touch to burn
deeper than i can heal
Nina O'Donovan Apr 2016
Here she is with soulful eyes telling me
I'm ancient, I'm precious, but she's wrong;
I'm pale, sickly lithium
and she's gold, she's the sweat of the sun.
It turns out every word I think I have
is foreign to her. Hammered out,
inscribed with triple negatives. Each
leaves its meaning to be moulded.

It's not a way to be forgotten;
always thought freckles would be red, a spark
not soot, not post holes on a new land.
A discovery, not something
I'd feel so wrong for noticing.
There was no red in her. I'd stripped it out
like thread through teeth, solid ache;
not like how you’d expect.

I am not careful, while she pretends
not to need any care. Until now,
never exposed to each other;
we’re left with this red in our hands, too
mudded like closing eyes to the sun.
Seeing ourselves stretched thin,
buried bronze in the river, an offer to what?
To make it hold deeper, the very start of us.
Next page