by Lana Bella
Augury
If I forget to cradle your last dying
volt like amateur of frost, forgive
me your lungs of night I’ve curved
in the giving of red. If I curl away
like the pulse point on your neck,
forgive me the memory of breaths
to the flashes of gold on your skin.
If I halve then halve the hinterland
to the heartache drowning limbs in
dark water, forgive me your heavy
wind circling the dovecot, spindly
and worn from your struggle to rise.
If I raw voice into shadows of night
wiping away the sleep, forgive me
your tethering map of dreams from
which you came lost ashore through
the retching sea. And if we call this
narrative love, forgive me to intend
long ago the reflecting still in season
staid, hungering for what once was
and no longer is with you.
Bipolar Brings with It
Sometimes I woke in the dark,
familiar as a night’s touch sought
shelter inside those tiny breaks
of an old house. Tonsil sang
home for a melody on the radio
winnowing heartbreak, every
consonant fleshed me alleluias,
furtively splintering my calico
shape, fizzing with the wreck of
being torn.
What if my heart doubled back
but I will die? What if I left me
behind on the weather of black air
feeling the claws at my wrists?
How one day long ago there was
the comfort of light growing down
from white to gray, something
like a diurnal night meeting day
in a feud; its mouth round to feed
me in.
A four-time Pushcart Prize, five-time Best of the Net & Bettering American Poetry nominee, LANA BELLA is an author of three chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016), Adagio (Finishing Line Press, 2016), and Dear Suki: Letters (Platypus 2412 Mini Chapbook Series, 2016), has had poetry and fiction featured with over 500 journals, Acentos Review, Comstock Review, EVENT, Ilanot Review, Notre Dame Review, Rock and Sling, The Stillwater Review, Sundress Publications, & Whiskey Island, among others, and work appeared in Aeolian Harp Anthology, Volume 3.
Photo: “Bubble Dark” by Simon Stamm
Psaltery & Lyre 