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 Feb 2016 Imogen Grace
Tom McCone
curling up into all sweet confusions
that trickle down from
your touch,
we become the sky, as birds fall
from above. i lose
a tactician's leverage throughout
this fog; a descension
if you were the moon,
an aberrance,
if you were a single leaf,
dripping from this
tree coiling up to
the lights hung on
netted strings set under
the darkness of the sky,
where-ever you have been.
where-ever you are.

   so,
   do the stars still shine solely for you,
   the nights you most need them?

perhaps i have
gone blind,
just when i need to see you,
more now than ever.
perhaps i've just
been sleeping
a little
too long, inside this cave.

   does the sky still divide the sea?

but, undoing the buttons on your grip,
you build declensions on foundations
of realisation: with full authorship of
your motions, you know you could
go anywhere, love. you now know
away from i is any road, every treadmark
save this single one.
                             and mine is hardly treacherous,
but you'll still only find me in mountaintops,
so i could barely blame you if the path gets
too narrow, or too long-wound.

   do the clouds still turn images
   in full colour, late afternoon, to
   remind you of shapes i imitate
   in all fractured disappearances?

i've seen retreat from so
many sides now, the addition of
yours could
hardly make a dent. not that i
would not lament a loss like you,
more than anything.

   yet, don't
   worry, never
   worry, i can still stay in motion.

still, if you see fit to
collect all broken pieces of me,
and build up this cottage, or nest, you can keep
your heart here long as
you like, darling.
 Feb 2016 Imogen Grace
Pea
i
 Feb 2016 Imogen Grace
Pea
i
i am healthy
i am happy
i am full of energy
so strong
like a ship
and the storms that come to me
are just like slight wind
nothing can wreck me
and i believe
i am beautiful
no matter what they say to me
i am the butterfly, i am the phoenix, i am the sky
i am the universe
you all live inside me
i am unique
i am irreplaceable
such a gem i am
so special
i shine bright
my smile is sunshine
my eyes have moonlight
my heart is a home for everyone
my soul is sea tides
my brain hates ignorance
i am witty
and so funny
i am now telling
the joke of the day
not yet finished
all audiences gone
they do not understand
this is the real comedy
really, i really have no sense
of others' sense of humor
 Feb 2016 Imogen Grace
Pea
fragment
 Feb 2016 Imogen Grace
Pea
fragment
 Feb 2016 Imogen Grace
Pea
vi.

just how much love
which existence
should i lie about?
 Feb 2016 Imogen Grace
Pea
12
 Feb 2016 Imogen Grace
Pea
12
I become afraid
of the sun -- I just wanted
love -- she burned me twice.
 Feb 2016 Imogen Grace
Pea
didn't i tell you?
we cannot escape darkness
while avoiding light
Now listen
I think my lips are chapped because I've kissed so many boys who don't love me.
You ask me 'what do you taste like?' I don't think its very **** to say regret and sadness.
You say 'when can I taste you' My taste has been passed around so many tongues there is nothing left for you.

He tells me 'I'm here for you, I'll always be here for you' as he kisses my neck. The next week the bite mark on my belly is fading and I can barely remember the colour of your eyes.

My sister says 'you will change your mind' she says, 'all woman want to be mothers'.
I have stumbled in at 4am with the taste of strangers in my throat to see my mother sitting upright waiting for me, I think of the night I spent crying on my mothers lap in a&e;, certain I couldn't make it through the day, the way my brother scowls at my mother, my sister telling her that 'you could've done more, you could've walked away.' I. Dont. Want. Children.

My mum tells me she is old, she is tired. She desperately needs a man to hold doors open for her and carry her shopping. I am trying to remember that needing someone does not mean you are weak.

My grandmother gave me waist beads to encourage fertility. She says 'god gave you those hips to birth children'. Ive never told her that i lost my faith in god the year i lost my virginity.  And if there is a god, i don't want his ******* fertility. I want to break these beads and let drugs engulf me to prove my grandmothers blind faith wrong.
I laugh and pray before our meal and kiss her forehead, 'god bless'.

He tells me 'i know youre *****, its natural'. I laugh and play along for his delight. 'women are just like toys, television, easy puzzles'. I think of my father beating my mother, my fathers face all the men ive walked past in the street. My mothers face is my own.

'if you don't want boys to touch you you shouldn't wear tight clothes'. I think of all the boys who have run their fingers over my back when i was dressed in clothes from neck to ankle. I wonder if god is a sexist man. I wonder if there's any men who aren't implicitly sexist.

He tells me, 'I'll spend hours on you, I'll make you believe in god again'. There is nothing I can do but laugh. I ask him, 'does your mother know you speak to girls like this?'
He ***** his teeth, 'do you always have to be so difficult?'  
I kiss him but I think of his mother, foreign and lonely, 2 sons and no husband.

He says 'you need a real man' I think of all the other boys who have told me that before leaving me.
He wants to know why I'm in hospital so much, 'how are we going love each other when you can't tell me what's wrong with you' I don't want to tell him that I've cut my arms so badly I can see god in my blood, and sometimes the voice in my head screams so loud I black out. I kiss his chest. He doesn't ask again. I resent him for that.

I've been ignoring my fathers phone calls for two weeks because his voice sounds like absence and I don't want to hear another 'I love you' from a man who doesn't know my secrets.
 Feb 2016 Imogen Grace
cKHta
She was
not old enough
to have graduated
high school,
nor aware enough to
notice
how many eyes were on her,
sympathetic or
disdainful or
hungry,
as she struggled to push a cart full of
pull-ups
and cleaning supplies
in a cart with a broken wheel

through the warm and somniferous glow
of ill-maintained streetlights,

those obelisks of granite.

Don't call it
pity,

but
something
stirred my gut,
and burned my eyes,

as she trudged past me,
pushing a cartload of motherhood,
trailing a warm autumn breeze,
an aromatic telegram;

lilac and lavender,
a diffident bouquet,
accented by spritely vanilla,

withering before bleach-fumes
and mordant disinfectant.
here lay the bones that dry
in the desert Sun
alongside those of the turkey vulture
that devoured the skin
before it rotted
here lay the shoes
that dropped as she run
screams that ran along the sand
until an iguana
heard a faint sigh
here lay the rusted remnants
of his 56 Ford
only 6 miles away
and 12 miles beyond
lay the bones of this sick *****
who in his frenzy to ****
forgot to stop for gas
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