My Very First Publication

Amy’s Poetry in Psychic Meatloaf, a New Contemporary Literary Journal

http://www.psychicmeatloaf.com

“Where the Wallpaper Rips”

 

There was the seed into me that sprouted an old chaos in the brain,

burning my sheets and leaving me in a panic-fixed-manic state where

I race and pace to chase away the tracing patterns–crumpled,

transparent paper I hold up to my eyes and see between the lines–I

see a woman in the white space who has no hands, looking

around herself so fast, waiting for a world of fact and substance

and material. But she sees noise creep across the floor sometimes–I

read it in her lines–and lovely poetry burns into a naked stash she wades

through to get to the doctor’s office, to get her prescriptions and the

brilliance of a psychotherapist. This is what aftermath lays down to.

Arrival, and then, where? Where to go in such space?

I am the cracked egg

finally a breaking shell

I am helpless liquid with a sharp eye floating.

 

 

Vapor

 

this body’s breath

caught sharp and held

I hold it and like water

it escapes my fingers and spills

over my toes

when I am thirsty

asking too much from my body

when I am not enough

I give it tea and fruit and poisons

I exhale the fumes of the vices

herbal or smoky and fine

licking at these wet fingers

that let a pen scratch

let a word be plucked

from a curl of steam

this body’s breath

will learn it can’t hold what is borrowed

and maybe then stop

cupping and drinking

hold and take nothing

it’s enough just to breathe

let the vices unthread from the seams

of the spine into origami wings

taking flight in paper vees

and leave it in the water

enough