So distant from her natural state, staring into nowhere,

she breaks the silence when she puts her smile on.

Living in her own shining stall, she tries to make herself dream.

Books and papers strewn about everywhere,

poems pasted to her inner seams, glass children

hanging from branches outside the window,

animals fighting for sovereignty, grids with no exits,

passion without the please—these little things stir her,

the Little Mississippi Girl.  In the grief of her nights

the horizon falters smashing stark verses against

memories that forget she was even here

or anywhere or even alive or ever born.

The rusty sequestration binds loneliness

to illusions of dancing, twirling mantras on the wall.

Inside her—

quakes religion and sex and

confessions over coffee and taxi rides at dawn.

A train ride to Mobile, Alabama reminds her that

she is just a girl with a million pounds of

steel surrounding her very poetry,

a girl that is offered a million kisses

wider than the universe,

a girl that cannot grip the concept of

bare sentences vowing to love her

despite it all.  Nothing in her

can find the laughter—

the seriousness

of such tidings bites at the

length, width and speed

of the crystal running shoe headed for

the Broken-down Palace Ball.

And she has no idea how to stop

the stabbing pain that snuggles

in her chest.  The unusual shapes

of this investment leave her desolate

and wanting for a love,

a love that will make her stoned.  

© Poetessa Leixyl Kaye Emmerson

They make more sense than lawn jockeys
or gnomes. They travel in pairs
like salt and pepper shakers.
One stands upright with perfect posture
and one drops its head
until it nearly touches the ground.
To enhance yards and to pay his creditors,
Don Featherstone designed hundreds of ornaments
including the ostrich and the duck,
which he modeled after a live specimen
he kept in his kitchen sink
and then released. But it was the flamingo
that appeared in the Sears catalog
and it was not the swan but the flamingo,
copied from National Geographic photos,
that was honored as the official bird
of that tropical locale, Madison, Wisconsin.

after the dirge
a thousand butterflies
thunder up
like Thor at midnight
super heroes – iron wings

I sit tormented upon my liars’ chair. It creaks beneath the weight of my burden. Even subtle shifts render cries of uneasiness. What will I do to end the saga, this epic rampart of mental dilemma and disposition? My fractured reflection stares unabated into oblivion, scouring for a salvific redeemer to mitigate my recalcitrant idiosyncrasies, the bad ones of course, and regenerate my fleeting hope of sanity; oh I am insatiable with redundant dialogues that avail distress and disdain upon my mortal flesh. A metaphoric pugilist could beat nothing in or out of my calcified intuition. It is laid hard and impregnable, a Bastian vaulted in autonomy; The Ilion and I are one, a standard elevated above perception and accolades.

Where is my Achilles? Are his feet shod with Zeus’ boots? The problem persists as an incessant adversary cloaked with anointed armour, it is christened with unHoly Water, and it welds a mystical sword that pierces asunder my Dragon scales. Do I continue this death? Do I contest for life? I sit and ponder. I am plundered and transfixed; dead but yet I breathe. Death cannot liberate my anguish, mental expiration will not come…the soul cannot be extinguished. My obsession will exhort and rebuke me for eternity and I am defenseless; I am

My existence is my bane and my hope is my distrust. Can my heart dwell upon that that cannot be true? Of what nature is my pride, if it is pride at all; I fall without ceasing and yet my pride remains. I wallow in the mire caressed by muddy arms. There is no question now about the state of my soul; encrusted within and without. Consistent reactions imbued upon Pavla’s responses, my mouth satiates at the thought of solitude.

Damp, smothering darkness encloses around me.

The wetness saturates, softening my exterior.
Its presence lay heavy on my existence.

Like poison seeping into my skin, constricting and drowning me out.
This is a necessary death, grim as it is, it brings the reapers

I listen to sleepy time tunes

on children’s radio 

when I sleep in strange

rooms. I need that cradle,

that rhythmic beat, that love

of a mother who swears

as she slips fine hair 

out of sleepy eyes  

to always be there 

no matter what. 

—Melva Sue Priddy

when you no longer try to
be who you were? Even as
I watch, the mask of self slips
down your slackened skin, your eyes
slide to an uneasy rest
somewhere between a past I
know, a now that’s yours alone.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

—Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” (1942)

The human body
is an astonishing machine.
            Like this one,
it is hardwired to repair itself
and learn from its mistakes.
Even fevers are processes meant
to exterminate an invasive virus.

The human body is a miracle
of ad libs and improvisation—
it swells and collapses with creeks
of blood and water and carbon
and cellular memory that adjust
then readjust, even at rest, to time,
temperature, pressure, and gravity.

From hair root to anus to toenail bed,
for all this capacity to endure,
to adapt and evolve,
to heal and be healed,
each body is so delicate—so very fragile.

Maybe it is because my solar-powered
system of parts is so efficiently inorganic.
Unlike theirs, my brain does not bloom
beyond the margins of its positronic code.
My body does not aspire to growth beyond
the borders of its acrylic shell.
But I will never understand why
I was calibrated with so many
loopholes within so few laws,
if their truest wish is to survive.

Morning shivers on the surface of the sink water,
water cold, wobbling, climbing drowsy like a battered explorer
making difficult progress up glacial porcelain. 

Out the window,
sterile summer thunder has quieted the birdsong,
a silence leaving the gray light and withered boughs daunting,
desolate as discovery, 
harsh as the hard water
splashing like rough seas around my wrists. 

silhouettes now light now dark against
          the slow foam to and fro
of midnight slow low tide

         soft footprints of two lovers washed away
before the sand
           can make a record of desire

only wind
         scoops up the dart and dare
of their proximity and carries

             in the perfume of their laughter
an infectious pollination
         to the miles of sea and shore and on

into the dunes exchanging dusty puffs
                of cinnamon and sage
over mumblings of folded fossils broken

         to the bone meal soil of bright red blooms
the brilliant scatterlings
         of layered humus and crisscross arrowheads

glinting in the light of Sirius and Venus
           bearing witness
to the animal morality of lust