Lost O’clock  By Jezzini 

boats | julie zlo

french kiss : expat

hard to explain how i never thought i would end up in france. hard to explain how this country did not choose me to come live here. funny how romantic it sounds to blame it on destiny; as if this country & i were the lovers whose glances first crossed amid the urban chaos of a subway station. no. this magic has never existed in my love affair with this nation.

in spanish: amor apache (or the art of both passionate love & vivid hatred between two individuals). i can't articulate my speech as i seem to have lost my words somewhere in the flames of our burning love.

some days i rot in the frustration of not belonging; a result of frequently trimming the rough edges of a red existence in a blue world. some other late nights, i get to my apartment half drunk on red wine & half drunk on happiness; i lie on the floor of my tiny 19 m2 & feel my neurons marinating in french slangs & tones. i look back on the olden days when french first came dancing on my skin; how it then gently climbed up my spine to waltz on my shoulders & later infiltrate my brains. oh god i wasn't even looking.

tu me fais oublier ma langue maternelle, chaton.  

but tell me, france, why have we been so rough to one another? i know this ain't no love story though i certainly did run straight into your arms. please, france, confess to me: how did we become the enemies who suddenly fell head over heels for each other? like the fighters who mysteriously found love in the corner of a boxing ring; & lost in their yearning for a stormy fight, they now fail to draw the line between the infatuation & the bloodshed.

france, just tell me where the loving ends & the punching begins.

s'il te plaît, petite tête.

should we move on with the fighting, may our battle warrant the presence of deities. should we sail off into the open seas of our love, may the wind tell us her secrets on how to flee.

On a pitch-black night, we stare out the window at the emptiness of space. eye to eye, fear to fear. & for a split second, life seems to be all about the safekeeping, the kissing,

& the screaming.  

- @skinthepoet

Dance is a body’s refusal to die. But, oh, your gone hair. The flame & orange flare. Our forms, our least known selves— barrel, sugar, & stench. Your pleas, looped in writing, the stutter of a body’s broken grammar. —Cathy Linh Che, from “I walked through the trees, mourning.” published in Poetry Magazine

Overlook by Rob Hauer

skin the poet

skin open the poet to find out how books have been deceiving you: not all hearts pump blood; some, expand in rhymes & contract in line breaks.

skin open the poet to confirm the rumor that between the liver & the spleen lives a tiny being; an imp, absent in daydreams -a social drinker- & a lover of the sax.

1.- take the poet's arm, & rip off a tear of skin. behold a waterfall of metaphors soak your shoes in summer's breeze.

2.- on a surgical table, lay your poet down in such way that his pointy nose threats to drill into the ground.   & with the help of a sharp knife, split the meadow on his back into two nations that might have lost it all in war. proceed then to spread open these lands, & discover that a poet's spine abides as marble columns once did in falling rome: oh the burn or the glory? 3.- light a match & heat the poet's earlobes to 95 °. careful, the smoky smell of blue winter shades might stupefy your brains   whilst the poet's head gets caught in flames. if so: no stress, your poet's mouth muscles might stretch into a smile, but do keep in mind it's just an involuntary contraction. or not.

4.- once the fire's out & the buzzcut's ready, grab your baseball bat & crack the poet's tibia by the half. hollow bones & secret chambers. see that rolled up paper hidden in there? take it out & read it to the skies; correct, it is nothing but the transcripts of the poet's conversations with the moon. tally marks for bleeding hearts.  

5.- as a final act of this medical extravaganza, severe the poet's head & hold it between your hands. do you feel it slowly floating, as if being drawn toward the clouds?   stitch the head back in place using a silver needle & a thread of slurred speech. remember poets heal on empty illusions & broken things.

that is all for poetic anatomy 101...   ...now wake up the poet.

- @skinthepoet 

A lesson in forgetting:
 the past always heals faster
 when you’re not looking. The way we try and hold
 onto memories like they are more
 than water. The way we look 
into the pools of our past
 searching for minnows, searching for fish. A lesson in remembering:
 the water is always smoother
 in retrospect. Where are the waves? Where are the currents? The way in which we tell ourselves we could do it again. Dive in again.
 Make it out alive. Last night, your voice touched me in my sleep;
 I woke up thinking about waterfalls.

Kelsey Danielle, “A Lesson in Forgetting” (via pigmenting)

Sober like a face slap, obvious as the morning after, I saw you for what you are: a woman, cruel and imperfect, a fighter who tried everything to protect her one and only heart, how it didn’t matter, it was torn fresh from its root anyway

Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, excerpt from Lilith (via theoryoflostthings)

It is cold in this thing we call a body. / Who will tend to the fire with so few hands to go around?

Alison C. Rollins, from “Skinning Ghosts Alive,” published in Tupelo Quarterly (via lifeinpoetry)