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wrists that roarmama says
pull down your sleeves
they'll see, they'll see
but no-one's even looking

i say mama
tigers are proud and strong
and tigers show their stripes
so today i'm a tiger

and who says
i can't be a tiger
when razors made me fierce
and secrets kept me lonely

who says
i can't tiger-roar
when everything unsaid
ripped my throat raw

i made my stripes
with tiger-claws and tiger-teeth
so damned if i'm not a tiger
and damned if i won't roar

mama, i'm a tiger
mama, hear me roar

she breathed out happy endings
she pressed herself between the pages of her favorite storybook
until her veins began to bleed ink. with her head in the clouds,
she wasn't sure of where she was and didn't much care as long as
it wasn't here.

confessionalthey say sad girls change their hair color
and forgive their monsters.

i change my morals
and become one.

Call Girlshe stayed
for a moment

with an arm
draped over by the shadow of a curtain
a dress folded in a half
in the crook of an elbow

one of her cheek twitches

you touch her empty mouth
tangled up beneath the covers
her lipstick gets under your skin
a nerve irritated by the shape of a lace

half an hour tops not longer
you kiss her onto the lips eventually
jamming a tongue up the tonsils

in the end a whore is just a whore

Heading HomeBitter-boned, I break and crumble to dust
My pockets full of keys to places that no longer exist
An oystershell ashtray full of butts and ashes beside me
Testify to dreams of green hedges and white picket fences

A tapping on the door, a rapping on the wall
Ghosts always like this hour just before dawn
A bird screeches and I wake again to the stinging day
And shufflestep towards home from a thousand worlds away

scar-crossed(my fingers are colder than the solemn blue
buried in her eyes. so much dead beauty,

like an ocean without waves).

she is fading and i cling to her,
and in this tiny little moment
between breaths

we barely even exist.

WordsmithsHow long did you think
we could pound our vocabulary with hammers
before it fell flat?

pigeonhello, pigeon,
he says with a smile
like somehow, he already knows
she's been sad for a while.

and she just looks at him,
with her brokenhearted bambi eyes
and she hopes that he understands
because nobody understands,
not really.

pigeon, he says,
I know.
and he does.

he knows that deep in her heart,
she just isn't happy.
not today, not yesterday,
and maybe not even tomorrow.

he knows that she wants to be happy,
wants to know what it's like
to be filled with sunshine

(and he thinks maybe that's why
she loves sunflowers so very much.
because she thinks they exude sunlight,
and maybe, just maybe,
if she were bright yellow

Love Poem for a Man Who Doesn't Get PoetryI buy milk as if it is the
most important
thing I have ever done; come home and
lay the bag on the floor
at your feet.

The meaning is lost
on you, a man

who is a snap of clean linen;
no, you prefer strait-line
talk, full-throttle motion.

Not wavering semaphore.

I feel silly with my quiet twist of metaphor,
Darling, Buttercup, My Angry Little Arsonist,
saying your name is the breath between
the waves, your heart
the hungry mouth of the bay.

There is a curve between the me and the you
We waited too long, hoping the pause
would not last forever, but just in case,
we hold hands in the dark.

I had forgotten how to give

Of Lost Causethey say every lonely sigh gathered from children in that city
pours through her body and redolent skin, read through
the ink of vines on veins and restless, small leaves- torn with
tired hands and god's lost smile.

they say our days are numbered, like the
creases between your skin and the break of waves on starving oceans. maybe
the fallout of a country drawn by prophets with cracked chords and
an endless list of listlessness.

they say happiness is glorified by the example of science: the reaction given
and reduction taken in a stretch of paradoxical lies of paradoxical truths-
sounds of simplified silence and their tenuous strains

Isaiahdid you hope with me, Isaiah?
or did I merely dream the days of our stand;
of red strings, of stardust,
of too-small hands & too-long hair,

& of the words, the words, the words

(the ones you had me
believe you were worth)

for it was you who said,
"go big or go home.
I will give you the world,
or nothing at all.

this, I promise to you."

so dear to me, the vowels & the verbs,
the air hissing through
your teeth: gateways
to a barren land

words

like wind through the trees,
like ghosts through the tombstones.

have you left me, Isaiah?
I travel north & farther north, still,
for humans do, subconsciously,
gravitate homeward.
b

1 am fantasythe morning is totally black with frozen paint,

and

there is black-blue frost branching over her milky skin,
that creaks softly as it forms,

that runs like a helmet down her nose,
like curling tattoos around her eyes,
like inky fingers down her neck,

and she is hooked by sky-cold silver,
through her nose and eyebrow,
that tastes like ice when tongues run over it,
that tastes like the way the stars look,

and she would look at you like a star looks,
with something endless and sparking with ice,
with leather boots scuffed because she doesn't care,
with colorful shoe-laces and muscled arms,

and behind her back they flex,
they fill

swallowsswallows
ennui
we see

swallows
a sigh
to the sky

swallows
emotion
sans caution

swallows
cries
by the byes

swallows

alone

or with

swoop and dive

internalize
seem more alive

again

he swallows
his sorrow

but never

his pride

llp - aug2012 - dA - DLD-8/28/12

blue and gold are not just colorsshe had been blue-sighted
since
dawn cracked her forehead.
it was the dress she wore on his funeral
the color of her school flag
the shine in her father's eyes;
she waited in blue and gold.

no, she refused to set a bar
because
life didn't just come to her.
she earned her place
in her mother's womb
when each blood vessel questioned her
each nerve ending, if she could live
and each antibody, if she was worth it.

see, she doesn't need new dresses.
she has a memory
for each of hers in her locked closet.
she may not wear all of them
(and most she cringes at the sight of)
but her heart
jumps enough
every time bits of her old

writer's blockstranded on an island scantily
dressed in moonlight, you stare
at roiling water resembling a
horizon of interweaving words

but when you lift your right hand,
spirals of silence shackle
the weightless sounds

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sinkingonce proud,
he lumbers and smiles,
unsure of who we are,
confused and
empty.

he still sings, though,
in his deep, rumbling voice,
the joy in his eyes
painfully bright.

he watches us forlornly
as the door closes between his,
his hound dog eyes
pleading to come with us.
we turn our backs,
go home.

every time he is worse,
like a ship with a slow leak,
sinking, sinking, sinking,
until there is almost
nothing left of
the man I
barely knew.

his lungs fill with water,
gurgle when he breathes.
he won't eat.
maybe he doesn't want to
or maybe he has forgotten
how
or maybe
he just wants out.

the days are tenuous,
not knowing if he will recover,

earthsometimes I feel the bones
under my skin, wonder what
they will look like when
they are all that's left of me.

temporalitytime is a curl of smoke
wisping out of sight

the thought of eternity -
touching an open wound,
tender. i recoil.

time and eternity
coil, snakelike, to nestle
in my chest and choke
me with their ineffability.

i can feel them
but i cannot pull myself free.

garbagewaste, piling high,
weighing down, we
are sinking,
stinking

RunningI fear that I will always be broken,
that I will carry this suffocating
blackness around with me everywhere
my life takes me.

A sun-drenched beach in Thailand
will be overshadowed by a sinister
dark cloud, oppressive, hovering.

A moment of creative victory -
publication, an award, the simple
completion of a beloved project -
will be trampled gleefully by a herd
of black-hoofed hell-horses.

A family barbecue in our sweet
backyard, with the kids in the sprinkler
and the sun playing peekaboo behind
a cloud will be marred by the blackness
hiding in the bushes, biding its time.
But I feel it already.

No matter where I go,
I

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by ~beautyinreview, Apr 30, 2012, 10:13:58 PM
Literature / Prose / Non-Fiction / Emotional

My father's hair is gray now.
I'm not sure if it was the elevator
or that realization that caused
the lurch in my belly.

There's a little plastic container
on the bathroom counter, housing
blue, yellow, beige pills, designed
to slow the body's inevitable breakdown.

There are lines around my father's eyes now -
I feel his loneliness echoed in my chest,
in the mirror as I prepare for bed.

A blurry, half-remembered moment,
smudged with time, of sitting on his strong
shoulders, laughing in the sun,
so sure that he would always be able
to hold me up to touch the sky.

We live this half-baked life now,
circling each other, moments intersecting,
brief, our real lives hours away, with our
other families, and his silver hair,
little pills, sad eyes make me terrified
that we missed our chance, started
too late, and I will never be
daddy's little girl again.

intersectionby ~beautyinreview

Literature / Prose / Non-Fiction / Emotional

This one is extremely personal, and I have a few concerns with it. It has gone through a few iterations so far, so I thought I would se e what you fine people have to say about it.

Specific questions:

What do you get from this? What do you imagine the situation is?

Is there anything that is jarring, seems out of place, etc?

How is the word choice?

© Jessica McGale

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~betweenbirches Feb 28, 2013 Student Traditional Artist

I am crying. My daddy has ALS; I understand this through and through.

~beautyinreview Mar 20, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

I am so sorry.

~betweenbirches Mar 20, 2013 Student Traditional Artist

=SilverInkblot Dec 28, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Hi there! Just a note to let you know I've featured this piece in my 2012 showcase of literature: [link]

~beautyinreview Jan 8, 2013 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you!

=Sammur-amat Nov 20, 2012 General Artist

Congratulations on the well-deserved DLD, lovely lady

~beautyinreview Dec 7, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you!

=Sammur-amat Dec 8, 2012 General Artist

Surely, sweetie!

~Somnolent-Droid Nov 20, 2012

This is heart-breaking!

I think that the situation is that father and daughter somehow lost contact or became a bit distant from each other as they grew older. Then the daughter suddenly realises how frail and old her father has become. She feels hopeless and lost as she realises that time
is running out. She desperately wants to reconnect with her father, but she feels that the gulf between them has grown too wide.

I don't think anything seems out of place.

I think the word choice is great.

This is a really sad and moving piece.

~beautyinreview Dec 7, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Thank you very much for taking the time to read and comment. I appreciate it!

I am glad that it was moving for you. I really worried as I was writing it that it was too oblique, that it would only mean something to me. Which isn't bad, but I find that writing is better when it impacts other people as well.

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