YOUR EYES AS HONEY ISSUE 1 - POETRY ₊✩‧₊˚౨ৎ˚₊✩‧₊
Love in the Time of Appalachian Spring
by Candace Walsh
When it is butterfly time in the wild carrot days, lady’s thumbs stroke and evening primrose blossoms cup the air. Chicory is slow to unfurl in the mornings, as am I, rubbing comfrey-calendula oil into the backs of my stippled forearms. Softening skin for her, yes but what if they hold incipient wings, soon to sprout and loft me away? I will hover to delight her dripping flower liquor, say Butterflies taste nectar with their feet— three pairs! and clouds with their antennae
half of my heart
by Rebecca Strack
keep half of my heart hold it dear, tucked deep in your pocket the left one because out of nervous habit your body cannot decide if your right hand should stay inside or out of the pocket keep half of my heart and hold on tight when the darkness of nightfall encroaches and the fears unwillingly leak out of my eyes keep it close, hidden out of sight because seeing is not believing having you - that's all the faith i need half of my heart is yours even if you break it, even when it shatters the last strand of me just holds on to the hope that it won’t be at your hands the part of me that i want to hate but cannot blame would not question the property rights of your half of my heart shattered, battered, and broken it'd still be yours
Jamais Deux Sans Trois
by Lauren Chase
I have less than half your right To at the same sun decide to cry At the dying of his light For I never knew him Quite like you did No, not like you did I never felt his light And I never felt his burn For time out of mind Discontent was I to yearn And maybe fortune favors patience And I only see its limitations Am I bound to possibility Frozen in petty vanity? I was never the picture of desire Never a contender for the pyre But you set yourself on fire And I could never do it Quite like you did No, not like you did
Ode to Emily Dickinson
by Taylor Newberry
I have words within me, a remedy for the soul from sickness, ills, and woe! It is rapture and exorcist, as I eschew the danse d’ecole, and follow, a mire crow, to admire Where words surmount syntax into ecstasy! I am too high in these noxious spirits stricken— which impart to me, eternity! Epitaph engraved, words immortal written this visceral mind consumes the sentence— cut the meter, slash the line, create the Form from a recess of the mind—transcendence! Liminal subconscious apt to transform, pushed up like a grave breaking the soil, compelling command throughout this vigil.
the smell of rain
by Rebecca Strack
a blank slate, like nothing in the most ideal sense fresh, not like flowers or linens but somewhere in between i suppose (yet completely separate) happiness in solidarity, different than falling in love or enjoying life’s moments it’s being at peace with yourself & readiness for whatever is to come being scared and brave and lonely and loud in the most seamlessly contradictory way it’s leaves falling without the crunch it’s the seconds before the microwave beeps it’s the deafening silence between songs that make you feel something real driving to work at five a.m. and doing something right and september or clouds or your dad when he accidentally slips up and says “i love you” it’s being completely and utterly lost and finally feeling okay in that because if everything made sense you don’t get to scream songs at the top of your lungs or cry or laugh with your best friend or discover just how much things really mean to you if everything made sense you’d be neat & simple and you’d be nothing, at least nothing that means something to you you smell like the rain. in other words, i love you
If I Believed/Dear Friend
by Ezra Allen
If I believed in sin I would be terrified for my life right now. But at least I would have the words To describe how I feel I don’t understand it. Something in my gut or my chest In your laugh or your vests In the scar on your hand I try not to trace In your face In your face Your face Those eyes Why do they smile at me so? Why do you sit so close If only to make me wonder, ‘oh no What would have become of me Had you sat closer?’ That hair It looks soft and you know that I know That I won’t know Until I find out for myself This is wrong I can’t keep acting this way I act soft and you know that I know That you know Because I’m a fool at hiding myself I’m a fool and a lover But only the former in practice I’ve no need for an “other” So why am I at this? Why, friend, Am I on my knees, friend, Waiting For you to pick me up Or push me down With the strength of your arms Or the weight of your body? How, my friend, Do you make sense of that? How do you make sense of what’s left me with none? I am but a thief, stealing glances I don’t get back A witch, cursing the air of mine that isn’t shared between us A traitor, for I have betrayed your trust in a friend A friend, and nothing but Someone to get coffee with from Time to time So why can’t I stop Taking in The Tapping of your tongue, the Heel of your shoe hitting the floor Hushed tones halting my heartbeat Hands not held but Gaze grasped and God I cannot Hear another thing in the room No matter how loud Hold onto me if you ever wish to And if you never do You never must hear a word of it
Claribel
by Anel Perez Rodriguez
I inherited this cast iron skillet from your great grandmother She mothered all boys none of which wanted to bother It sat in the cabinet when her body got too old and tired The shiny black coat turned reddish and brown When she got placed in the nursing home you and her granddaughter went scavenging when she wasn’t around Your mom picked it out even though she knew the work it would bring and now I look after this pretty little thing I tried my best to scrub the rust away the way I learned from my father But of course he wasn’t any good at it either That cast iron has a shoddy seasoning and everything sticks Each time I get meaner and meaner I learned that from my father too But that cast iron skillet just has to quietly bare it If it ever did talk I’m afraid of what it would say It would probably want Claribel to have stayed
yet-to-be
by Rebecca Strack
patience is a person with two gentle ears and a massive heart. understanding is a place and it feels safe even if she’s scared, even as her hand trembles softly. time is a contradiction, a puzzle, a gift all wrapped up in past loves and visions of the yet-to-be lived future the treehouses to be built and laughed in and repaired again. dinners to be cooked together and accidental fire alarms to beep in the silence between moments bad jokes to be made for which only someone who loves you can find laughter songs to be written reminders of the qualities in you, whispered truths in the seconds before sleep. ties to help undo every evening as the briefcase finds its familiar spot on the floor. and the dog yelps, claws clattering on the fight outside, god bless that squirrel the beginning of a life, two parallel lines no longer if they ever were art is a place i know the music outlining the figures the honor of making a smile soften with nothing but my mere existence. what is that phenomenon called? are there even enough trees to make the paper that could hold the words of it all?
Pink Moon
by Rachael Molnar
We missed the pink moon tonight an internet astronomer prophesized its peak at eight fifteen Where were we? Was it the bar with the saxophone man whose syrupy resonance filled the room do-da-do-da-da-do or the one with the drink you swore twisted face and puckered lips would crack your canines? Either way, you were spinning me round and round your skin was sticky-sweet and buzzing like the smell of a rolling sky before a midsummer shower Had you let me go, I would have taken flight become the eighth ring of Saturn Instead, your hands dissolved into my hips tea-drenched sugar cube bearing the fruit my mother gave me and her mother gave her cosmic collisions under my surface solar flare, dust storm If this joy is radical how could I ever be tame?
Girls Behind the Hedge
by Lauren Chase
Insipid mellow youth A hand on mouth, some will to shout Rejecting words beneath the fount I bid for something more than you A kiss on lips from roses soft The sacred love just women know So pure, consumptive like the snow Will die once we’ve been caught I bid myself on structured play No trophy, but I am its shelf So oft I peer outside myself Imagining if you had stayed From top to bottom, sky to road It is not death, but shame I fear Regret more heavy by the year Return me to old summer’s hold The girls you thought were laid to rest Will haunt you when we meet again Resigned to what we once condemned In rigid lives, we live enmeshed A chasm formed some years ago My talent for unfiltered words Your temper always wont to burn So fierce and flushed with summer’s glow I’ve found great joy in what I’ve built In quiet moments far from noise The secret wild of nature’s poise I hope you too have kept your wit I lost you in this crowded room And soon I’ll have to leave as well I’ll wait to give you my farewell And watch that chasm split anew
fading into fear.
by Rebecca Strack
it came upon me last night this realization not long ago it was a thunderstorm and a hurricane and a tsunami. now, it's just the weather on a really beautiful day and i don't even think twice seems so long ago, all of it all the days and years before everything i wouldn't let myself feel, refused to accept & forced myself to run in the other direction like a tornado was tailgating me like i was running for my life but for every version of who i am most of them were living that life and it almost seems ridiculous for what was once a cause for so much, just so much… is now as much a part of me as my left arm or my brain or my unwavering empathy and it quite simply isn’t as scary anymore and it never will again even if i face it all alone at least i’m standing with the truest version of me in my body
I Imagined The Lake Would Be Louder Than Constellations
by Denver Ferguson
I remember thinking I would hear the sloshing of water at my feet the cold wet tongue of a ghostly bison lapping at the clay of the shore over the crackle of a plastic covered picnic blanket under our warm bodies or the shuffle of shoes on lakeshore rocks. I think of the sound of river water, an expectation of sounds from the past where I found myself barefoot walking the sandy shore of the Ohio, fireworks above my head, loud and screeching in humid night, friends I no longer know sat on a fleece in the sand sharing gas station slushies. But tonight the sky is silent with gentle hot pinks and faint green that was brighter the night before, the colors I imagined when you told me you wanted to dye your hair. There are no explosions but people scream with excitement in the distance just the same and tonight is not a smoky night in July but a clear November evening so cold that space feels closer than ever before so close that a wet lake rock could be mistaken for the nose of a Soviet space dog. We whisper about how silly we feel through the canvas of Carhartt coats and knots of a homemade tie blanket because we are, in fact, facing South and the fading colors dance in the treeline behind us. Lingering in the dark, I can feel your breath on my lips but we are too focused on the seeping cold below and snuggling into our own coats to worry about touching, but I can feel your eyes hold my face between your palms. I roll onto my back and you follow, the camera set up in the dark, long done with the 30 second exposure, we are greeted with shooting stars and “Que the existential conversation.” you joke and I smile and agree that we are small but I’m grateful for it. When you’re small, missing the second night of the northern lights in Ohio doesn’t matter because you were small enough to see them even brighter the night before when nobody else noticed they were even there. Insignificant and laughing with pure awe on the gravel driveway of a veteran’s cemetery, openly in love in the presence of only ghosts and the colors of the night, a fenced pasture for city deer and those who dare to lie on their backs and listen to the water.
Thawing
by Samuel Schafer
When the world turns blue, I am the Ohio roads. The atmospheric indigo weighs me down and cracks me bare and brittle. And the heavy crystal cold soaks into me and hardens and pulls me open. And the bite of the air tumbles my pieces across my surface. And when all else is lost, your spring breeze brings solace to my frostbite. Your April showers bloom something new in the holes the ice tore in me. Because if I was winter, I never wanted to be. And you said I could be summer sun. You said I didn’t have to keep freezing myself to death, so I warmed up against your furnace. Your fire brought me to life, and I chose that life all on my own. I saw you bright, I saw you warm and heated- And I stepped into your flame. And I melted with you, for me.
Untitled
by Grace Vaughn
Simple drops fall Tapping on glass As my mind goes to you Angel of haze - Slightly out of view Will the fog diffuse? Will the softness of your skin; Rosey and pure Cling to the veil Between dream and virtuality Or shall you come into focus Structured curves Clearing the dreaminess; Of you My angel of haze.
all in a blanket
by Rebecca Strack
you handed me a blanket by reading my mind, and it melts my heart. oh, how lovely it feels to be loved so honestly & ardently love right back. my oblivion matched your yearning, and it all worked out for the stars in the sky giving me the chance to finally not think once, or twice, or eleven times, only in time fulfilling the prophecy pragmatism, fate, and our two hearts collided in just the right manner and oh, how violently has my heart endured the scrapes and bruises ripping themselves open again. and the months have been documented, and the weeks have been an eternity and you hand me a blanket but it’s so much more, the collision of you and i contains multitudes and so many band-aids, permanent methinks, me hopes, me loves you
The planets love and die like mortals do
by Samuel Schafer
They never much saw each other. For Venus was fire, held close by the sun, And Saturn was ice, bound to the outskirts of their world. And Venus burned bright- passion and warmth spewing from its surface beneath the atmosphere. Saturn’s rings turned crystal from the cold- ice coating it anywhere it could. Even on its many moons, icy oceans thrived more than any sign of life. Even so, they always did watch each other from afar. Even so, Venus, coated in love and dripping in fiery beauty, gazed on saturn’s glittering rings from across the abyss. Even so, Saturn, strict and stubborn and just, always wondered. But- they could never explore it. That’s not how things worked- for Venus was warm and kind and togetherness while Saturn was cold and fair and isolation. For Venus was just second from the sun, walking and spinning eternally around it’s tight summer circle. And as Saturn paced around its own, it remembered. This is how things are. This is how things go. You cannot stray your path. A gas giant is doomed to ice forever. But when the world ends, Saturn thinks, in the awfulness, sanity will have left long before it all. And maybe, just maybe, when all goes to chaos, then what is just will only ever be what is wanted. And Saturn is sure it wants it enough. If they all die like mortals do, Saturn can stray from it’s path at the end of all things. And oh, how it envies the mortal- who does what they please and chases beating hearts like the long line it walks around the sun. How it wishes it could someday chase a heart. How it knows and knows. How it feels the heart of Venus beating beneath its volcanoes even from 400 million miles away. Saturn looks across the abyss. Planets don’t have eyes, but it knows Venus is looking back. It always does. And Saturn hopes- when this sun dies and swallows the planets with it, Saturn and Venus can be born again as mortal on a nice planet far in the future. Venus feels the wish from across the way. Venus wishes too.
Accidentally Going to a Homophobic Church with my Ex-Girlfriend
by MSN
i find salvation in my devotion to devouring you, O Sacrificial Lamb. your pink cheeks and perked ears used as landing strips for my lips. deep in the Chalice, where the light slants and twirls distorting this Holy Water. we kneel together, holding each other’s tongues for communion. hands intertwined in hidden spaces between each hymn. your trembling breath on my chest; this container of worship. i will cleanse your body of all previous sin, and prepare you for total resurrection.
suddenly the clock struck twelve years later
by Rebecca Strack
and at the end, one answer the glass door exists in entities of my past lives and future lovers the silent conversations breathe in time tuning into my faded blue memories and the news articles, whispering into the shadows as i smile and dance with my mom, in the kitchen she loves me history relentlessly hides away our stories as we strive to collect even moments of one, glistening in the moonlight creating our own sunlight within and without side-by-side my heart is overflowing and it's held up to the sky's green screen i am the loudest invisibility i've ever met if one more of us is erased i'll throw all the textbooks out the window glass shattering, falling to the dirt, fertilizing the fruits of the earth
untitled
by Rebecca Strack
the hardest thing she ever did was leave, but the easiest thing she ever learned was how to be away the loudest thing she ever did was silence, but the quietest thing she ever learned was how to scream
Transformation
by MSN
The first time I used a strap-on with my partner, I cried. This cheap, rainbow silicone Cracked my ribs open and twisted the Knot in my chest, Revealing the intricate design Secretly carved in the wood That I had overlooked. This oversight was immediately remedied- My posture was soon corrected, My skin cleared, and I never had a bad hair day again. The first time I used a strap-on with my partner, I kept my eyes open during sex. Years of performing the Quintessential dance of mankind I realized I was Wearing bowling shoes to a ballet practice. The first time I used a strap-on with my partner, I loved myself. And made love to them. Creating our own form Of oxygen and stardust and creation myths. Glistening skin melting together. My twin bed began to Float through space and time- Notes of lilac and black pepper and Pussy Burned into my sinuses. My hips bucked a wild rhythm, My hands grabbed and pinched My lips sucked and satisfied. My being Contorted and Transformed. I was Icarus with adequate SPF.
chasing cars by snow patrol plays from my car radio as a sign i’m doing the right thing (snow songs)
by Denver Ferguson
you stand on the singular step down outside of your front door in my mind, the only sound not muffled by the snow is your shallow careful breath and the flickering of a lighter that will barely stay lit that I can only imagine as my own, which I know doesn't make sense. it competes with the weight of the finality of the year and the silence that comes with heavy snow, large flakes float down swaying hypnotically like the fall leaves before them that sleep underneath the blanket below. you hold an old mug and a bundle of ripped paper between your fingers and i cant decide if you sit and worship the silence of winter or if you have your phone in the back pocket of your sweatpants playing music. songs that only play when it rains (does snow count?) or that one song you told me you can only listen to in December. if it played through midnight tonight, would you stop it? the you in my head has no music, just the spark of a dying lighter and the visible breath from your lips. you dig a hole in the snow with your hands and place a piece of paper from your journal gently inside the mug and fold it towards you to “claim the energy”. the slightly charred edges finally catch fire in entirety and you quickly cover the pit, immediately forgetting what you wrote so the universe can surprise you later. you gather the ashes and step inside, freckled cheeks and nose red from the nip of frost. I imagine you wrapping your arms around yourself tighter and smiling, opening the door with another paper in hand and gently lighting it to the muffled songs of snow.
ivy grown
by Rebecca Strack
flowers dance across the balcony of the hard wood imprint, the same strings that tied my soul together late at night back in those days lead me to the flashbacks i will never forget when i don't have to whisper in tiptoes for i land on my feet my hand permanently reserved a spot intertwined with hers & my soul forever engraved into the stone of peace with my identity lying outside a volcano brimming with the heat only watching the disaster unfold possessing my own in the midst of our own little world
what’s a voice if not yours?
by Rebecca Strack
taking back the power is all the power i need to have valuing myself enough adds so much value to how i live my one life because it matters that i see myself as a worthy thing and so it matters that i can step away when i don't i’m sure there's so much to unpack for both you & i but i am not something you can drag down with you when i am just now learning i have wings and i hope you too can fly but not at my expense my words do not mean grasping the air from somebody else's lungs because that's not a voice if you're silencing others and i can't give them a voice if i’m silencing myself.
Because I fell for you the day my world was ending.
by Samuel Schafer
But you never stole my heart. You never stole it, I ripped it out of my chest on my own volition, delivering it to you in weak cardboard. I begged you on my knees in a tear-strained voice to get it beating again, to please not let me snap in half alone. And you didn’t steal it, because you heeded my request. You gently patched it back together and overnighted it back to my house in sturdy spruce. And you insisted that I put it back in my chest where it belongs. And of course I did, but I kept you like a lifeline. And then again, you didn’t steal it. Because it was torn apart days after I met you, and you came to soothe the wounds as they were being made. And you stitched me up and gave me back to myself, as you always did. Because you didn’t steal my heart. Because it took me months to heal and countless restitchings and endless lessons on how to tie good knots. Because you showed me how to fix it myself and you held me through the process. Because you never dared take anything that wasn’t already yours. Because you blurted out one day that you liked it’s beating and bruises. And I already knew, but I didn’t. And ever still, you never stole my heart. Because I decided one day that I was sick of you not having it. Because on an autumn night, I carefully plucked it out of me and set it ablaze so it would soar through the night to land in your hands. Because every time you had it, I tossed it carelessly to you. Because every time, you caught it gently and held it close. Because you were always meant to hold it, anyway. Because the next morning, I found a porcelain music box on my porch, pulsating from what was beating inside it. Because the note stuck on top was in your handwriting. Because I didn’t steal your heart either.
With you
by Samuel Schafer
Do we meet in the same place when you dream of me? Do we lie under the stars in a treehouse with no roof? Do we talk in whispers until our dream selves drift off too? Do you hold me tight even though you can’t feel it? Do I play with your hair deep in your subconscious? And is it lovely when I do? Is it lovely to you, too? Always summer under the sprinkled sky with you, Do you dream it too?
Nymph
by N.J Salas
My name means nymph. A personification of nature, I grew from the trees I spoke to And I learned with the butterflies of my youth, I grew to fear the world, what it could do to a nymph, Was I too easy to break? My name means nymph. Most of the stories of nymphs were love stories; I did not know how to see myself in a love story. The men and boys I met found no appeal in my eyes, I preferred to tell stories with the other nymphs, To dance and sing the days away in lilting tune. I stayed a nymph, And my companions grew away, Their branches stretched towards the boys That I didn’t care to entertain. The forest grew lonely as the trees I loved Left me behind; singing and dancing lacks joy When the performer has no ensemble. Then, I found love in the forest. With eyes like the river and hair like the sunset Branches soft and curling towards me, And a voice that held the wild in rapt attention. Skin like the stars and a heart that beat in rhythm with mine, I learned to dance through the forest again And side by side for eternity, we danced together. What is it to be a part of nature, if not to love?
"i love you to the moon &" by chen chen
"i love you to the moon &" by chen chen
Poetry Inspiration for 𐔌 .⋮Issue 1 .ᐟ ֹ₊꒱
"i love you to the moon &" by chen chen
"it was summer when i found you" by sappho
"wild geese" by mary oliver
"for willyce" by pat parker
"calling thing what they are" by ada limón
"i love you to the moon &" by chen chen
"i love you to the moon &" by chen chen
"i love you to the moon &" by chen chen
"the floating poem" by adrienne rich
"jessehelms" by audre lorde
"bisexuality" by hera lindsay bird
"banana hour" by elly belle
"dreaming of lesbos" by tatiana de la tierra
"the floating poem" by adrienne rich
