Haley Rezac: Favorites

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

Enchanted

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

mads

Like a demon
She'll possess you
Consume your mind
And betray you.
Barbed wire teeth;
A kiss with
Poison lips,
Rose stem necklaces.
Kicked metal chairs,
Cold hearted melodies
And a flickering lightbulb
Swinging you again.
Dust only a torment
And the steel rug
A comfort.
Do you hear her walking?

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

Maybe then I'd sleep

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

JM

Maybe then I'd sleep

One room away is a woman
who wants me to **** her.
She is beautiful, intelligent, and drunk.

I am ugly, intelligent, and sober.

Even though my highest and best
tells me to walk away with a smile,
my core screams for a ruining.

One room away is a drunk, *****,
dripping work of art who is also
very, very lucky.

Charles tells me to listen to
my **** and Pablo whispers a reminder
to remember the smell
of early morning wheat
and your eyelashes
while Walt and I gaze at the stars
and think of death.

I smile to myself,
soaking in the after glow
of vanilla chai, good ****,
and dead poets.

One room away is a woman
who's fate was in my sadistic hands.
Two rooms away is a twelve year old
who is dreaming of flag football
and Vans and getting to
level 37 of Skyrim
and one day,
after he wakes up
and after we have our
toaster strudel,
and somewhere in between
me stopping for coffee
and dropping him off,
I'll remind him
that good ***** is everywhere
so take your time and do it right
and when you just don't want to
look at their face,
make some tea,
catch a buzz,
and read some poetry.

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

double fake

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

Tom McCone

double fake

I guess, I haven’t handled
complex operations, like
the removal of you,
before:

maybe that’s why I didn’t get it
right,
and now,
there are still suture stains,
scalpel tips,
leaf litter,
floating amongst my workings,
etched with your syllables.

I suppose I’d thought of
what I’d say,
if you said “come back, please?”:

if I could, no.

most likely an uncertain shrug,
before resumption,
again, following each of your tender footprints.

but, no. definitively, no.

sure enough as the sun eventually slips,
I’ll find another shadow to drag across my aching heart,
no matter how your remnants last,
stinging, to remind me,
of what I had once wanted.

another quiet song I shall sing,
this one, upon newer ears.

hopefully, not another deaf set.

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

Battle scars

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

Juliana

Battle scars

The day you leave daisies in my pocket
is the first time I wore proper pajamas.
Right-handed scissors paint
with matching lip gloss,
attempting to stick words together.
My hands lay limply next to a wine glass
containing nothing but grape juice,
unhappy compromises.

Everything felt pinched and blue.

Last night I decided to write stories on my skin
with little holes in the paper,
nineteen socks under my bed.
I tried to remember the rain,
why it was lovely.
I ended up with wet shoes,
the smell of deserted food court
and secrets billowing from cigarette stubs.

Arizona breezes
carry the taste of hushed whispers,
making phone calls in the place of poetry.
The idea of pheasants,
tiny wrists
black ink crisscrossing,
hurried ‘X’s overlapping.
Flowers grow from stagnant air

Minted antibiotic breaths.

Heart monitors printed in newspapers,
your armada of pre-sharpened pencils
accidentally drip into coffee mugs.
Autopsies knit together,
authors of the curve of your spine.
You keep myths in glass jars
with intricate wire lids.
Why do we question the recipe for battle scars?

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

A letter to the eight-year-old who died in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

Alicia R

A letter to the eight-year-old who died in the Boston Marathon bombing.

i don’t know if you were in second
or third grade. or what your favorite color was.
i’m not sure if you liked playing dress up or soccer
or if you were an only child or the baby of six.
i don’t who you had a crush on and i’m not even sure of your gender
but what i do know, is that today you were scared because you saw white
and then heard the noise of the explosion, and the screams of the injured
but i’m not sure if had learned yet in school that light travels faster than sound.
i don’t know why you were watching the marathon, but i know that you were excited
and impressed
that all these people were running for twenty-six miles, which happens
to be the distance from your house to your
grandma’s.
i don’t know if you died squeezing tightly to your mother’s hand or
if your last breath was taken alone, while hundreds ran in a flurry around you.
i do know that when you fell to the ground, no longer breathing,
you tripped a wire that pulled out
your father’s heart and sanity.
i know that you hadn’t yet felt someone
trace their lips up the divot of your spine
and i know that you will never get to sneak out of the house at
three am to get drunk in a park.
you will never see the next president or even what your best friend will wear
on his wedding day.
and i am sorry.
i am sorry that someone was sick enough to put
an explosive in the trashcan and let it detonate
i’m sorry that your death was the product of human selfishness and greed.
i am sorry that today you had to feel a warm liquid leak from your body
and that you lost so much of it you
couldn’t bear to keep your eyes open.
i’m sorry that you were eight years old when you died,
and that you barely got a taste of the world before it was snatched out from under you.

I wrote this before I learned the name and *** of the victim.

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

Untitled

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

hello

Untitled

Part of this world
Is heaven
And part of it
Is hell
It's heaven when the sun
Shines through my window
And glistens on my skin
It's warm and sparkly
It's heaven when the wind
Whisks through my curls
Providing a comforting breeze
On my face and neck
It's heaven when cute little babies
Or cute little animals
Are born and everyone is happy
And innocence is restored
As well as hope
This world is hell when
People hurt others
When people bomb others
For no reason at all
It is hell when war is taking place
When we're threatening
Our neighbors
When they're threatening
Us
It is hell when loved ones
leave us
physically or mentally
It is hell when my mind won't
Stop thinking
Horrible things
And those horrible voices return
But soon the sun will shine
And I'll learn to dance in
The gloomy rain

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

God May Not Be There

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

BarelyABard

God May Not Be There

If you take a step into the water and sink towards the bottom, never fear.
God may not be there to pull you back up and the world may not notice as water fills your nostrils.
The void wants your soul and no divine presence can be found.

But you have arms.
You have legs.

You can swim and climb your way back to the top.
Be your own savior.

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

forgetting, or time's passage

Apr 2013 Haley Rezac

Tom McCone

forgetting, or time's passage

one day, you will fall out of my life,
and I will never smell such sweet smoke again.

the world will reclaim you, and make us
strangers, as we were born, once more;
and memory will never do you justice,
as your face becomes static.

you will not be a part of me, anymore,
just a faint echo I hear,
from time to time,
when I recall the concept of loss,
and all the time I waste, doing nothing.

one day, I will wake up,
and forget to remember
that I don't want to forget you,
the curvature of your lips,
or the way you try not to laugh,
and how it escapes, anyway;

it will be the same echo,
I slowly become deaf to, as my ears fail.

but, I don't want to lose you,
please.

I've already made too many strangers.