Fragile

 

Every ten seconds a narrow eye

       sidelong

hits your legs or

the angle of your neck and you’re thin

(not fat not not not fat)

 

Sometimes you’re

frantic and sitting up pushing up throwing up

(crunch crunch flex)

she thinks she’s exercising

exercising what

But you’re not anorexic at all come on

that’s just

you’re

you’re just

 

Keep going and space will murder you, Lollipop

(your biggest enemy)

It’s a blood candy gang party holding your throat

       and it kisses kisses kisses

       (fragrant tongue and nothing else)

              choke it down

 

I saw you crying against the wall

What you’re not saying is

I’m not I’m not it’s not I’m not fair

       (enough)

You almost almost are

(I didn’t quite say so)

 

Maybe what you say is

nobody knows what this is like

But come on, we’ve all all all got eyes

(wider than you)

and the skies inside are true

if anything is

I see real deep

into the shallow into you into nothing

 

You didn’t hear what I didn’t quite say

you’re beautiful

and you just keep on almost passing on

       wait

come back

be hungry for me

 

                           — Cal Cypher

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What it must be like to be a man

To be able to carry a basket of melons with one arm, while I scuttle

Behind with my basket clutched to my chest my body flung forward for

Balance

 

                                   — Ashley Albiniak

 

 

Spring 2008 Issue

Page 2 

Copyright © 2008 Wordletting. All rights reserved. All rights to the poetry on this website are owned by the individual authors, and no part of this site may be reproduced, published, distributed, displayed,

performed, copied, or used in any other manner for public or private purposes.

Mariam,

 

Heart suck

pull, mince into

tiny squares

thick Asian pears

for biting in the sun.

 

Light energy

colored lime liquid

in your chest you are

a wing inside a cold

shell

 

Don’t leave us without

balloon strings I will

always know

your breath caught

in between my teeth

ready for flossing, but

I never will.

 

There are times I feel you more

than you feel me

and it’s as it should be for now.

 

I will pull Lydia to me

in the nip of the moon-air

when she needs me to

for she lives in my lungs

the way you do.

 

My fingernails grow for

you in hope that you can

live but words are not enough

for me to pull this one out of my

hat.

 

Waiting for machines to make

you well, how could someone

say you are calling pain,

disease like a dog to you?

 

You dance with color inside your

winter coat.  You embrace the red corn

others don’t even see.

 

                               — Holly E. Dunlap