Emma Amme: Favorites

Jan 2014 Emma Amme

Glass Shield

Jan 2014 Emma Amme

echo

Glass Shield

...
she drew the line
but her heart
was on
it
...

10w

Jan 2014 Emma Amme

Something I Could Only Read To Your Feet

Jan 2014 Emma Amme

bb

Something I Could Only Read To Your Feet

I'm going to love you like the floorboards do. I'm going to touch you like your bedroom walls never could; lay your forehead against me like the shower wall and try to recount every lie you ever told laying down. Your nails will hold me against the headboard in a dark act of crucifixion; I have been dying of your sins since before I understood that they were not the kinds that I should love, and perhaps this is not the kind of love that ends well on glossy pages but it is the only love I know. I was a nearly dead stray on your doorstep and you fed me pretty words from your hands like you knew how to take care of things that had no home (despite having never had one of your own). You know too well how your name sounds when your hand is on my knee, you know too well how your name sounds when you are coaxing the life out of me, as though my trachea were the back door of your apartment, and you know how deadly you are with a look on your face that burns like the candles in a chapel but never melts - I sit vigil over your dead body but your ghost is always touching me, you are always bringing out the worst in me and stretching it out like sheets over a ****** mattress and I cannot take care of myself and I am incapable of breathing until you are watching me.

Jan 2014 Emma Amme

Thoughts

Jan 2014 Emma Amme

Satsuki

Thoughts

Today I was asked what emotion I'm afraid of
Love, fear, guilt, hatred, selfishness..
I wasn't too sure
But I think instead of specifics
I'm just scared of feeling
Love can break you
Guilt can make you do unthinkable things
Fear is what keeps you up at night
Happiness can be ripped away from you
Sadness can drown you
Emptiness is the only time i feel no fear
The lack of emotion
Nothing to live for
Nothing to die for
Nothing to be scared of losing
Emptiness is safe
So I'm afraid of feeling
It's dangerous to feel

Jan 2014 Emma Amme

I like you

Jan 2014 Emma Amme

ASB

I like you

here's what's going to happen.
we will sleep together
a few nights a week
for a few months.
we will talk on the phone
and our conversations will be
brief -- just to hear
each other's voice
at least once
every 36 hours.
we will get incredibly drunk
and we will believe
we miss each other
but we really won't
and we will believe
we are in love
and perhaps we are --
but after those months,
I will get used to
the crack in your voice
when you talk about
your family
and you will get used
to the way I cry
over films with
or without
happy endings.
your smile won't mean
as much
and there will be few
surprises
and love will have become
a habit -- and we won't
notice it anymore
even though it is
still there, sitting
at the coffee table
or between us in the bed.
we will amount
to nothing --
but I don't mind.

Dec 2013 Emma Amme

Tell Your Tippy Toes to Take a Deep Breath

Dec 2013 Emma Amme

AJ

Tell Your Tippy Toes to Take a Deep Breath

I wasn't taking advantage of her vulnerability.
It certainly was not a pity ****.
She was crying, and clinging.
It was the only way I knew of
To make her feel good.
To give her a release.
Does that make me a good man?
What makes a man?
I don't know.

It is never an issue,
Until it is uttered out loud.
Now we both know
That she will open her legs before she opens her heart.
I'll told her that is stupid,
And that she is not stupid,
But still beautiful.
Does that make me a good man?
What makes a man?
I don't know.

I'd make her mine if I could.
As far as she's concerned,
She belongs to the weeds on her front lawn.

When she was five and three fourths she picked a dandelion,
And her father told her no matter how pretty it looks,
It will always be bad,
It will always be toxic inside
She never got over that.
So now she looks very pretty,
But she fills herself with ***** and ******* and all things
Toxic.

Dec 2013 Emma Amme

The Puberty of Christmas

Dec 2013 Emma Amme

Molly Hughes

The Puberty of Christmas

There is nothing more unsettling
than a teenage Christmas.
The coming of age
when adults find their inner child again
and you have to try and get rid of yours.

11 is fine.
Part of you still believes Santa put the presents under tree.

12 is also okay,
just a little less pixie dust stirs in the stomach on Christmas Eve.

13, 14 and 15 are tricky.
You don't want to look babyish by getting too excited,
so you shrug it off and ask 'Santa' for a mobile phone,
a laptop,
a TV,
until by 15
you ask for the most 'grown up' present of all.
"I just want money."
The words burn your lips and tongue like acid,
a yearning for the sensation of a gift you can unwrap
tugging in your rib cage.
You can't buy that.

16, 17 and 18 are Christmases tinged with nostalgia.
Little ghosts of the younger you run down the stairs on Christmas morning,
feet clad in slippers and Power Rangers pjyamas askew,
whilst you follow in procession,
almost a funeral.

It's not that you don't like Christmas.
It's not that you don't love your family.
It's not that you don't feel a fire light in your belly when you bite into a mince pie,
it's not that the battered Christmas videos your family replay each year don't still make you smile,
it's not even that you've gotten too old for it all.
Have you?

Slippers and tiny fists batter against advent calender doors,
begging you to open them.

When you're 19 you do.
You let them out and let them rush to rip open their presents under the tree.
You let them eat their selection box first before dinner.
You let them cry when the Snowman melts
and you let them laugh and not mock heave when your father chases your mother with mistletoe.
You let the ghosts become holograms you can play in your mind like a projector and slides,
no longer a need to leave holly by their graves
but a chance to remember and smile.

You let them be happy.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Dec 2013 Emma Amme

Trampoline

Dec 2013 Emma Amme

Claudia Shaldervan

Trampoline

A large red elephant jumped on the trampoline.

Somewhere in the distance a blue eyed babe cried.

Rednecks clad in Paul Bunyan shirts inhaled the fumes of their barbecues.

Moving gracefully, a trapeze dancer tip-toed across the river.

My wife slumbered on our couch,

And wind blew a kite out of my hands.

I fed a goat nectar from my hands.

A crowd encircled the trampoline.

My family purchased a new couch,

And later that day we helplessly cried.

Our wailing could not be heard across the river,

Where rednecks continued to inhale the fumes of their barbecues.

Neighbors massed to celebrate barbecues.

I looked down at my blood stained hands,

Then joined the beautiful trapeze dancer across the river.

My red elephant broke the trampoline

And we were surrounded by infinite crying.

Nobody sat on the new couch.

Many problems arrived with the new couch;

There weren’t any more barbecues,

And my teeth crunched on granola as we cried.

Silky fabric embraced my hands.

Ingrid, my wife, dies on the trampoline.

She was buried across the river.

Some guy drank all the water from the river,

And started living on our couch.

Who would have thought I met lily on the trampoline,

And who would have thought I took up barbecues.

Now I felt warmth on the back of my hand

And I no longer cried.

Only the winter wind cried,

Howling over Ingrid’s grave across the river.

I slapped an elephant carcass with my hand,

Proceeding to cook it with salt and pepper on the couch.

I bored my wife with barbecues

So she went to jump on they trampoline.

Lily died on the trampoline; I always cried.

No longer did I host barbecues, the wind continued to howl across the river.

I gutted the couch, and killed myself with the back of my hand.

Nov 2013 Emma Amme

collision

Nov 2013 Emma Amme

Jill Stinehart

collision

my physics book says
since atoms are mostly empty space
nothing can ever really touch
contact is just empty space
upon more empty space
if this is the case
i do not know what it is like to
hold your hand
run my fingers through your vibrant hair
or feel your lips caress mine in a moment of passion
but how can this be true
when i can feel the way
you have
changed my thoughts
healed my mind
and resuscitated my heart
how can they say
my life has not been touched?
even so,
i long for the gap between our atoms to close
for your laughter and kindness and gentle kisses
to fill the crevices of my atoms.
i want to find a way to fill your atoms, too
maybe then
our perfect love will defy physics
and we will collide.