Flung de nuevo back

Lauren Mallett

            Todo era dread etcetera the stars.
Era as in continuous, insurmountable
pasado. ¿What was that I liked el sonido de?
Cristal mojado de un wand de copal
quemado. Wand porque oh resin and blaze.
Fue la locura, su grey caracol trail.
         The hills sin embargo aflame. Why not
change to the present? ¿Y abandonaría
mis tiempos verbales, let go my conjugations
for ese terreno, la amenaza de get fucked
or die horribly, tanta brumosa de sleep?
            Nunca estuve de acuerdo with my front teeth
knitting themselves together. The adult thing
to do: watch the trebuchets hurl fireballs
into the oft beyond. Las estrellas aren’t out,
carnala. I’m trying hard to keep them that way.
             Entonces all my ammunition flung de nuevo
back to the bowl como errores crossed out
kindly que todavía yo sé which were pebbles
set encurvadas y cuales eran bones baking
            en colores that looked right into my ears.


Like Jewels

Lauren Mallett

The trouble is words.

To get away from them
I walk the dunes with my blonde puppy.
In the neighborhood of deer scat and gull feathers
I speed up

to convince Murphy
such surprises are less interesting than
his nose would make him think.
The moss and leaves are parched.

The air is dipping into fall. There is little that’s calm
about carrying on.
Some of the feathers are held together by
                bitefuls of bloodied flesh.

Some days I step over the bits of my life soaked
            through with myself
like jewels I don’t have the clothes for.

I whistle out two or three notes for the company.
Other days I squat into my hips and take them up

from the sand, bead by glorious,

heavy bead.