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 May 2016 heaven
Joshua Haines
Your crooked smile flows upward
and I can see it from the ground.
Haunting myself with
a film teacher's creature feature
in black and white,
an old orchestra for sound.

You said you'd get nervous
when on our clunky telephone;
saying that customer service
could hear the fibers
in your voice
rustle like tall, dry grass,
with a wind whispering through
confirming, with every breath,
that you feel alone.

We'd recite fifties sitcoms:
Honey, do you --
do you have the keys?
Well, gee whillikers,
I could use someone to
open me, close me, and
dispose of me, please.

I write this for no one,
which is the category you fall in.

Sincerely,
signed Issues,
P.S. The television
is in color,
and I don't miss you.

- There ain't hope in the U,
the S is for Show me your soul,
the A is for Always forget:
the United States of
Killing it, Killing it -
 May 2016 heaven
Joshua Haines
Yellow soap for a yellow me.
I don't feel like being pure
means being happy.

- I scrub scarring
with more definition
than a dictionary.

Moldy bread kissing
gravid navel oranges,
in a cherry plastic rib cage.

- Can you find me altruism
hidden in the heart  
of ecstasy and rage?

Satellite bobbing above
the air supply,
are you out of reach or am I?

She was taking pictures
of us in the aphotic zone.
Saying, it was the only way
to capture me vulnerable.

Extirpate my species
to save my life.
I am saturnine for
the only adoration I accept  
is mine.
 May 2016 heaven
Hannah Anderson
Tricky and sticky
hard to get out of
but easy to get ****** in

how do I tell the difference
are you love?

you are empty promises
you are the relationship with no labels
you are the late night getaways
the text messages I hide away

you are the heartbreak
you are what makes my knees shake
you make me tuck my morals away

as I dance among your lips
I feel the grip on my hip
my wrist held down tight
I blossom into the queen
of the night

Can't you see my body tremble?
Finding pleasure there
Finding love there
And my body
My heart remembers..
As I wait thirsty

Hungry for the next time
hungry for you

This is not love,
this is not what its like
this is not what I longed for every night
it's a trick but it feels right


It's a trick, right?
 May 2016 heaven
Hannah Anderson
don't be confused
I was just your muse
and you can't take me that way
because I know
that's not the way to play
 Sep 2015 heaven
Joshua Haines
Old men fascinated by teen *****
and the hues harnessed by high school hips,
I ask you to look at something corrupted:
yourself, this town, this world.

The town's lumber supplier has died
and daughters fight over dollars.

Greasy haired women, wearing denim,
smoking menthols and bruised with cheap make-up,
stand on fractured sidewalks.

I walk, wearing a Native American-ized fleece,
the Chippewa crush their cigarettes
and blink like lizards at me
because I wear bastardization,
but wash it.

Half the town smokes,
and if you ask the pastor,
the whole town smokes
because everyone's going to hell.


All the girls read John Green
and flip the pages because it's a cheaper escape than a bus ticket.

Plato said that everything changes
and nothing stands still;
these people will suffer,
their bodies will break down,
and they will die --
but what never changes is their hope
in eventual death.

What cannot change is my hope
in something more.
Ashland, Wisconsin
 Aug 2015 heaven
Joshua Haines
The sky looks like cigarette ashes in a puddle of milk,
and I, almost 22, am unsatisfied that I have not won a Pulitzer.

And I, on the borderline of delusion and confidence, am unsatisfied I am not crazy or cocky enough to submit to The New Yorker.

I hear the voices of the pastors,
telling me that God heals all.

They say 'He' is the only absolute.

The people raise their hands towards the water-stained ceiling,
as if He'll push his arms through the copper-colored scabs and save them.

Grabbing their wrists and cooing,
I am the remedy to the anxiety of death.

I am six foot one and French, Irish, Cherokee,
some sort of Anglo-Saxon,
and a lost **** in a drowning garden.

I think about all those who had to ****,
in order to make my cheekbones,
eyebrows, lips, and ****.

I think about how I'm good at *** and bad when it comes to forgiving too easily.

I wonder how I can sweat on another body,
but only feel naked when I have to be myself.

I watch the elderly chant words:
******, ******, ****, and Half-Breed.
I study if their dry lips reflect the hate in their eyes.

Not all are like this,
but I am surrounded by tables of them,
as I pretend to be Christian,
just to get ahead.

I don't speak,
just sit like an unfilled bubble,
waiting to be marked out by graphite.
I feel like a *******,
I wish I had a Pulitzer.

The sky looks like a stretched grape,
covered in kisses of ******.
And I, white American conformist,
am unsatisfied
that I have succumbed to the American Dream.

I wish I had a Pulitzer,
I wish I had my mom and dad.
Ashland, Wisconsin
 Jun 2015 heaven
Elena Clair
Tell me, do you believe that soulmates exist?
I could almost guess that you don't know if you do

Because I would feel the same way too.

Could God really have taken all the lovely things
Made it into a passion and built it into two separate beings?

I was a girl with a treasure map
Filled with self-made marks of the treasures that I'd find
You came along with your own atlas, when our worlds collided
And our worlds aligned

How strange it is to not feel like a complete stranger
Whenever I'm with you.
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