LACUNA
Another sun unfurls
over chewing gum
canyons, long gnawed
by your foothold.
A corpus colossus,
hippocamping: you couch
in fault lines, hammocked
white matter.
Stroke me
with each toss-turn —
a neuron-starved bender.
Hypoxia will choke you
out, but you insist on
montauking.
Manus anchors score
muscle under marrow.
A snap of plasticity —
you are my damage.
Atrophize our prophecy:
my manic pixie pipe dream,
a clementine kiss to rot.
Isn’t it funny how “infamy”
and “lobotomy” both end
with “me” — not you?
A bleached sunrise,
gaining on your shadow.
You burrow in ruddy
clefts, hiding out longer
to masticate:
“Meet me at hemisphere’s end.”
Plant your flag in
remains of my mind
field. Don’t assign me
yours.
PSYCHE’S ODE TO EROS*
O, we pretty things
rest under rose beds:
barbed fences feel like home.
A hideout, our love language —
your wings are plucked
to meet me in the dark.
Wake up, you sleepy head —
your hyaline stare creases
inside a gossamer shade.
Muff me in seams of your shadow,
calming the caws that close in overhead.
Corvus hooks gouge our whisper roof —
All the strangers came today.
O! Oracle, his eyes are a pitch
too pure to drown. Mine are inspired:
make me his aurora,
his crack in the sky, his wonder.
Unfeather me, you wingless boy,
‘til our scars are parallel, rooted under zephyr.
You are the whisper altared inside me.
My mirror-heart streaking across your dusk:
a wish sewn into viscera.
*Corrupted from John Keats’ “Ode to Psyche”
Emily Webb is a DC-based poet native to New York City. Her first poetry zine, Whip Lash Girl Child, explores the personhood of women through an aesthetic love of Warhol, glam rock, and the Chrysler Building. She recently performed with The Inner Loop, a DC literary community that spotlights emerging local writers and hosts a monthly reading series. Her work has appeared in Opus, SUNY Geneseo’s literary magazine, and earned an Honorable Mention for the Mary A. Thomas Award in Poetry.
“Artistic close-up of worn paper sphere creating an abstract pattern with light and shadow.” by Francesco Ungaro free to use from Pexels.
