poetry

three poems

by Daniel Smith

Incurable The rose gold papers from the pall of sickness and expendable hallways, flutter and encircle the people walking into the empty room. Empty now, that is, apologies. Rose gold from the hour, ochre and protective where a mid section would have been, down to the tangent floor; succumbed and juried as every little word then moment is prepared for you, eventually, to be. On the floor misunderstanding the art of the sun as something beside loss. The sun dripping by the blood of thinking too much, traveling never the same heart twice, honestly never the known heart once. The sun unkindles the flame of the window and you, an excess of the fallen papers, rustle them with abruptly invisible hands, in what years the night. Rose gold has not followed the final arcs of your paper pillows, can’t unpaper your numbing toe. We all know what manner of sheet these sheets will become, but don’t write it upon a single dry page. The scribbled ceiling consumes. The rest of the people file in and the person is the furthest thing from rose gold.   The Sun Burned Through Loneliness and its rituals to rain the summer endlessly into the breast. To rewrite the gathering mist as upon us and cause in the downpours the possibility of warm skin, among the glints and baling crystal heights of water not quite commiserant. To see from the lightning wound windows, once the curtains are back to being the color of August and your blush, held to pensively, that the ensuing quiet changes nothing in the mind of day, yet to adore it and the trembling wash of pieces mirroring. Dew created from everything carried away, slightly colder than is invisible. Persisting in the grass because the sun is spinning loose a million times that don’t matter, but then they do. A season dying but not quite on this trailed hill. Maybe attainably a summer, at the lingering blades of difference, becoming alternately golden and dark in the consequence of staying. In the after effect night walk out again, following a random rain or amid rehearsals for the still far off morning, and find the blank dew always a cause to summer grief.   Earned Who has the time and money? Strung across the doorway the spirit sees it is as weak as the ruled amiss melancholy; shelves a future and wonders a ledge. The modest victory of the fleeced vignette conceals its nature as luck and dives as deep into the heart as a busy street. Face how no one is recognizable on that street. Face how many compliant lines have been shown on to the guardrails of stars that only become more steel, once touched. Who the fuck is a person when they can’t afford the correct dawn with correct frequency? A blue the sky could never suffer, the greeting gate falling to prescribed cartilage on, if it’s not perfect and, crucially, can’t call and respond the lie of expertise. Better to disappear and occasionally paper over the divine right of clouds. Who immolates a sun to be sure it was one? — Daniel Smith is a poet from Lansing, MI. This is his first publication. You can find him on Twitter at @badgeofmyworth. Artwork by: Gabrielle Spear Gabrielle Spear is a poet and community organizer based in Queens and raised in Northwest Arkansas. She was named a Goucher College Kratz Summer Writing Fellow, a finalist in LUMINA’s 2017 Borders and Boundaries Nonfiction Contest judged by Leslie Jamison, and a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Sukoon, Juke Joint Magazine, The Indianapolis Review, The Matador Review, Sonora Review, and fields magazine. You can find her on Twitter @gabsters93 and Instagram @verycuteasparagus. Links Twitter: @gabsters93 Instagram: @verycuteasparagus
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