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 Jun 2015 lizany
Claire
thunder
 Jun 2015 lizany
Claire
why is it that when I have found happiness,
my urge to write begins to cease?
and as I stare at the crease between your eyebrows I wonder if perhaps the reason thunder trails so far behind lightning isn’t a matter of science
but instead, hesitation, as if this sort of happiness is noncompliant in which its outcome is simply consequential, but I doubt one second of my day is spent doing anything less than adoring that crease, i need not express the happiness you bring me through the lines of a poem but instead through the storm of emotions that constantly rise and fall, yet all in all, not once have I hesitated.  
the happiness you bring me never falters.
I have yet to witness that thunder.
jack.
 Jun 2015 lizany
Megan Grace
1.
 Jun 2015 lizany
Megan Grace
1.
i had hoped that by this time i
would not be scared of you or
the way cups look nestled in
your hands or the rumbling
down deep when you flash
me that grin, but i feel like i
am sinking
      sinking
      stuck to someone else's
fingertips, even after all this
time. i thought that i would
be able to give you more but
there is nothing left in me for
anyone else. i have scraped
down to raw tissue and tendons,
and i'm sure that if you opened
me up you would see the scratch
marks from where i have been
trying to find even flakes to
give to you. i'm so sorry that by
the time you came along all the
parts of me worth having were
gone.
 Jun 2015 lizany
Joshua Haines
I see how white light startles.
I snapped a pic and she spun in circles.
She wanted a photograph
to cover her mother's epitaph,
so she could have a laugh.

She smoked to get away -
but this isn't what'd she say,
exhaling, "All we are is carbon
and a lack of empathy."

We blended into hues of
microwave dinners
and church alters.
I used to tell her to go
just to halt her.

We prayed to get away -
but that's not what we'd say,
whispering, "Help us be more
than carbon and a lack of empathy."
 Jun 2015 lizany
Joshua Haines
My brain is a factory,
producing every toxic part of me.
******* until my hand gets lazy,
fantasizing about Lexi Belle
and being Martin Scorsese.

My blood is a vacuum,
alone in a crowded room;
my white blood cells like to
travel to my *****,
so I can someday infect
designer uterine walls.

Locked and loaded,
my heart exploded.
The tissue and issues
attracted crocodiles
that swam from the mall,
for miles and miles.

Store-bought baby, my body isn't ready,
to be stripped down to the bone,
and sold to teenage radios,
that'll broadcast my American moans.

Caucasian nightmare:
my skin is not fair.
Peel enough off with chemicals,
until I decide there's no more,
and hide the layers in bathroom stalls,
located in the bleach of Baltimore.
 May 2015 lizany
Joshua Haines
Elizabeth and God exist in a sunflower grave. Her mother and father slit her stomach open and watched the contents pour out like
spaghetti confetti.

Tommy, Elizabeth's boyfriend, rode his ocean blue Huffy, until the tread on his tires grew bald and until the grips were blanketed by dead skin. Looking for her, panoramic views of the horizon leapt beside him. Silhouettes of his legs, churned and kissed the orange and caramel dusk. With every tear in his hamstrings and calves, the **** in his sky grew and swallowed the memory of Elizabeth Mendenhall, Honor Student.

Margot, Elizabeth's twelve year-old sister, was an idealistic soul. Taking a Sharpie, she wrote on her sister's wall, "Liz, there is no death greater than the loss of self, and no life greater than one where we continuously search for what self is." Margot struggled with concentrating and frying eggs - but focused on the sunflower garden, dangerously and perfectly.

Hilary and Brendan were thirty-five and thirty-six years-old. They stabbed their daughter thirty-seven times. They don't know why they did it, they just couldn't think of a reason not to do it.

She begged for her life. The yellow petals of the sunflowers caught blood-drops and, after enough struggle, floated down to kiss and lay on Elizabeth's slow-twitch body. Hilary looked at Brendan and said, "What does this mean?" Brendan shrugged and said, "This is new to me."

The garden was an oven, and digging her grave was like pulling back on a cheap, plastic latch. Elizabeth had pale, pre-cooked pie crust skin. The slits in her stomach looked like peeks into a cherry stuffed filling. Crinkled lips looked indented by a stainless steel fork, back and forth, side to side. And the soil rained upon her like the reversal of hot vapor, returning home.

Elizabeth and the Sunflower Garden.
 Apr 2015 lizany
blankpoems
full circle
I'm laying here with the window open listening to the rain for secrets or something or waiting for you to tell me what you haven't been telling me
like maybe there really is a girl out there with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair and her eyes are the kind of blue that is never mistaken for grey
she touches your chin before she kisses you, real softly or maybe she traces the spot above your lip where we all know angels rested their fingers before we were sent down here to rot or thrive
maybe you talk about gardens with her, how you'd never ever own an orchid cause that ***** ex of yours demanded one every hospital visit
how flowers aren't for boys but you'll pretend to watch football while you're really watching her bend down to touch the dirt like she used to smooth her baby brothers hair out of his little eyes
before their parents decided that it was more convenient to buy them a little apartment and keep money in the safe while they spent their pensions in Florida watching alligators and Dolphins and toucan ******* Sam but never at the same time
you see, I don't drink earl grey cause it tastes like fruit loops
and I don't eat fruit loops cause it tastes like the childhood I erased from my memory by forcing myself to dissociate
maybe this, is something else altogether
maybe this... is not true, another delusion, maybe your hands are busy counting change out for cardboard signs
maybe your feet move a little bit faster, not because you're in a rush to see someone who isn't me but because you're so scared of ending up back where you started
 Apr 2015 lizany
Joshua Haines
The girl and I
were tickled by sea foam,
our ankles wrapped in
diamond studded leeches--
We are the
yellow-bellied *******
in a porcelain nest of water.

Our running is stunted.
Our heels are bouncing
off the beach-face
and we are distracted
by the butterflies
because they look like
flowers floating before
the orange
and purple bled sky.

The girl and I
are in love,
but we laugh at feelings.
There's a polished
wrecking ball
swinging between our
chewed lips.
And we agree
love is for tin birds
in a flame cage.
 Mar 2015 lizany
Catrina Sparrow
she exhales in outcrops of lilies of the valley
and cries with the echo of a landslide
     but when she laughs
the sun himself rushes to brush against her burial mound cheeks
and pretend he was was the spark that launched her into bated birdsong
shoutout to the sun beams, and mom's mossy gardens.
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