Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
i still look at the recipes you wrote about me.
you told me that baking requires trust—
maybe that's why my macarons burnt.

you were the most sobering experience.
sample
A thousand wind turbines stand like men
on a hill in Texas. Each with a red eye which
blinks in the night. A thousand men stand
like wind turbines on a hill in Texas. Each with
two blue eyes, shut the entire night, the entire
day. There is a chapel on the hill.
The amount of anti-black, anti-gay, anti-abortion billboards I saw on my road trip was ******* insane.


My second to last poem "Sunburn" was made the daily poem of May 25, 2017. Thank you.
 Apr 2017 machina miller
brooke
quietly, in the mornings
with only your fingers
shades tilted in, the lapis
dawn that barely makes
it through, door ajar
studied, an open book quiz
unmentionables, spoken in
water drops
melted butter
shower steam
vanilla
milk
cinnamon.

before the sun
before breakfast
before the earth opens up like it does
take it with a grain of salt, with an ounce of optimism
the glass ain't even here, we have lakes
we have amber canopies, other hands that shield
lovers that reach for us mid-dream, us
they reach for us in sleep induced affection,
they may as well be reaching across continents
who knows how far away they dream,
fingers sliding across cello strings
they make beautiful music while
they are here, traveling limbos to find us
but we're here in the morning, in the quiet morning.



how to eat honeycomb.
(c) Brooke Otto

i'd been looking forward to this one but it was nothing especially inspiring.
 Apr 2017 machina miller
brooke
there was once a spider in
my bathroom who wove
a thin globe around itself
for who knows what reason--

I've felt it slide over me,
a thick film, it happens
the way something suddenly
becomes a scar, you're there
for every moment that it
is red and puckered but
one day you find that
your body has taken
aim and fixed itself.

i imagine this is how
people go blind, like
someone has etched filigree
over my lungs and now I
breathe a little easier--
but something has gone
missing, i've always seen
my thoughts as people
and she is no different,
swaddled and taken away

i don't think there is a word
for the process, just the faint
inclination that some things
never existed, or did in another
year, another place, i've always
found myself here,
healed over, maybe
the single tremolo
wavering over my
shoulders, wet out
of a monsoon
usually
box elder leaves
like schools of minnows
diving and plunging

me.

there.
(c) Brooke Otto 2017
I drunkenly wingman my dreams to my realities.
But you don't look like the clubbing type
I sprinkle the salt of sadness over the steak of my life
because salt brings out the flavor
salt brings out the flavor
i am at fault.
kissing pinot grigio,
i am at fault.
"everything you are
is a product of all your interactions.
you mirror your friends
or you mirror yourself."

heaven may not be a place on earth
and you may not be oppenheimer,
but now you are become death:
destroyer of worlds around you.
 Mar 2017 machina miller
brooke
i  c a n n o t
be l i k e my
m  o  t  h  e  r
high strung &
domineering
callingallthe
s   h   o   t   s
loading all of
the g  u  n  s  
have held the
trigger in fits
of   epileptic
shock, crying
please. *******.
save. me. from.
myself.

had a dream she
was a white horse
standing in the middle of
blood red stream, silver
hooves beating the earth
around my head, trying
to be the savior I didn't
want but always had

and somewhere along
the way I decided to deboard
the maternal train, stop trailing
her coattails, cause her faith had
gone stale, and mine was hid away
couldn't find an inch of myself
that wasn't stamped with
her approval and I guess
everyone caught me at
a the worst right
time when I
decided an
old me had
to be extinguished
so here I am all
raw and naked
as the day I was
born as they
saying goes--


all raw and naked
and waiting for some
clothes, the saying is lost


all raw and naked

all raw and naked

all raw
a n d
naked
(c) Brooke Otto 2017
I am not mother, just lover,
to legs never met. Housewife, I once dreamed
of sweat over ovens, oh only to love in,
places I was told not to go. I am wet for another
touch, weak knee for ****, low self esteem,
I am student supreme.
da da
do not ****** me
as i sleep and i will not
try to ****** you
steve the drunk
Next page