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 Oct 2014 erin
brooke
(but will you) love me
in pigeon's pose when
my tummy rolls over
like rice paddies and
the dimples in my
thighs are as moon
craters on that 27th
spoonful of peanut
butter, orbit on my hips
squeeze the fat beneath
my arms to relieve all
your stress, when I'm
singing zee avi in the
shower and you realize
I once told you a choir
teacher said I was a high
soprano but my voice is
so low on that ceiling
mingling with the steam
in the silver vents, don't you
know that

heat

rises?
(c) Brooke Otto 2014

a love poem for myself.
 Oct 2014 erin
Tom Leveille
i love you this morning
it's a come home safe morning
fog on the road
& no seatbelt kind of morning
the sun is over easy
& nothing's on fire
there's punctuation
where i don't want it
and extra love
in the glovebox of my car
been thinking about being honest
how these poems are all me
but they tell the story
how someone else
might believe it happened
within reasonable doubt
no copy & pasted love letters
no 'who ever says hello first gets my attention for the day'
try a little tenderness
in my ears and today
there are instruments
in the back of my head
i think you love me
because i'm sunburned
felt it in a 'come hell or high water' kinda way, that 'touched from far away' kinda way that 'if i touch this piano one more time one of us is going to break' kinda way
and i drove over 17 bridges yesterday and today i'll do it again
and i think nobody gets
what that means except maybe you
i just tell them i love the scenery
that somebody must've made
these trees blush just for me
you know how i love
to change the subject
i bet they'd love the view
i bet you would too
and all these metaphors
for other things are beside the point
this is a metaphor
for why i don't wear my seatbelt
a metaphor for why whiskey
knows me better than you
could ever try to
all the buildings seemed to sag yesterday and all the stars
are doing that cliche thing
where they talk
quiet jet noise
& some lumbering giant
made everything shake
not those hand metaphors
not another one of those
& keep the sea to yourself
i think it was a train
it's sound hugged the embankment
for a moment
and then trailed off into nowhere
and that's kind of like me
how there's a town called 'rescue'
close to my home &
it's no coincidence
that i've never been there
 Oct 2014 erin
brooke
they say you should
fear flowers for they
grow in adversity,
adapt, and face
the sun, and
when we
were little
we ****** on
the stems of gardenias
like honeybees with our
nimble, sticky fingers. And
today I learned to ride a bike
with no hands and a sweat
plastered shirt clinging to
my spine, so, instead,

shouldn't you be afraid of me?
(c) Brooke Otto 2014
 Sep 2014 erin
Elaenor Aisling
Nostalgia: It sounds like a disease
And it has infected me.
Worming its way through veins and valves.
I caught it
from robbing the graves of memories.
Trying to gather
the silver linings from long dead moments
dusty laughs
that crumbled in my fingers,
moulding smiles that left spots on my hands
that burned.
out, out **** spot*
I lay down in the fresh earth,
cold, how cold it is.
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