Hannah Dane
Creative Writing Editor
The silence on my paper
Stays intact
Through the empty cans
Clashing in my lungs
And the un-un-un
Of grinning furnaces
Who cannot see yet taunt me so.
This dependence I have
On the unreal, the untruths,
Will never suffice in this
Beaten profession,
Vertebrates curling in,
Trapping escaping breaths, two sighs.
Every tense tooth snapping
At these pages,
Snapping, slobbering,
Inside the coal mine of my mouth
Might just collapse within me.
Pens pierce through tense tendons.
Pencils sharpen on snagged
Edges of my ribcage.
Paper cuts in thick cuticles.
These are lines I have written before.
Two fingers pushing lightly
On the cherry pill on my tongue,
Overpoured rhum dripping
Its leaky faucet down my throat;
Can’t sip or chew what won’t dissolve.
But a bad rhyme will push
A bubble up my throat
Unpopped ‘til I chuckle it out,
Unclasping my thorax.
See the space left unwrinkled
Between your eyebrows
When your fingers ache just right?
Inch those blue lines closer
To see them not much clearer.
Take a bite.
