
ON BEAUTY by Amber Burke
I don’t mind when men talk and talk; then I don’t have to do anything. They fall in love all by themselves.
I don’t mind when men talk and talk; then I don’t have to do anything. They fall in love all by themselves.
Momma’s bones are broken in so many places that the images look like fins in their oceanic blue-black glow. She’s lost so much lately.
You, waking from dreams of dinosaurs, exploring deep in the ocean, worlds where Care Bears and Popples are real, listening.
You mutter “Fuck you” under your breath at his daily counting routine, for the apathy it shows for the hell the world is girdled in.
List To-Dos. Vent secret frustrations. Compose abominable poems. Dream impossible fantasies.
As our postcoital conversations pushed us further and further away from each other, I lounged in his bed, nibbling on a melting L or Q or F.
Frogs are thought to have a simplified version of our anatomy, which makes them all the more reasonable subjects for high school dissections.
What’s it like to die? To stop being. Gone in a moment, carried away on the wind. Does it hurt?
How a mother could be so? Why when she’s in the same room with me I feel swallowed up by a heavy coat pulling me down?
I’m in California now, where bees die in the light. Where everybody dies first, then lives forever.