You Got Away Jeni Schaibley

"discovering a crumpled reminder" by Christina Abbott

the nerve of you, to leave your Marley tie-dye crumpled, mocking me, behind my dresser where you flung it last fall, arced past The Starry Night snagging on the corner&

falling

like

ash

Sherlock Holmes investigated, puffed his pipe and proclaimed Marley to be MIA. We laughed about it later when I sent you home, your borrowed cotton back withering into the abyss of the parking lot, bright flecks of fractured emerald grass glimmering starts reflected onto dank cement until any sense of up & down, heaven & concrete

gone

back to the vibrations you gave me that day briefly after stripping, running back to bed, indulging again- pulsing and half madabandoning me afterward with nothing left to experience, our honey-mouthed fling crumpled behind the dresser, an outline of the past, where you flung your t-shirt last fall.

You Got Away by Jeni Schaibley

You got away from me. I'm glad for you. You know I know you wanted to or needed to. You don't need me and I don't need your charity.

So now you're free from everything that's wrong with me. From all of my insanity. Lucky you, Lucky me.

Run away from my obsession, crazy girl with her confession of undying love and passion in a fashion that came on too strong and scared you off.

Your tender, soft affections, much too gentle for this Masochist who had to turn the lovely into fright. I chose this lost direction at the start. You'd catch my fists when I would swing with them in the air at you at night and held me close and whispered softly it would always be alright, but after long, it was all wrong.

And though I figured I was strong enough to keep in all my burning and my yearning, your discerning of my codes was always right. And you could tell. you knew me well, far, far too well.

You can smell my fear and all my happiness and fright. You see my contradictions and what I say that might or maybe may, I know that won't or never will. But you're not fooled. I know that won't or never will. But you're not fooled.

This silly girl who likes to think she's lonely, who needs to be insane, who thrives inside her worries and her wanting and her pain.

Crazy girl, Crazy for you.

I'm not as crazy as I say, but enough to just pretend.

You caught the shots I send and you tell me you're my friend, but then you only let it show when we're alone, just so that nobody will ever have to know of your capacity to care.

You hurt my heart, but from the start you hurt my head.

I'd hit the wallwhenI

would run to you. I saw you hiding, saw right through the wall. So clear, just like a window. There, but no one knew or ever tried to break on through.

And like a fly, I'd try again, until it broke my body and the hopes I held within. I'll never be the same. I'll always limp from all the pain.

I doomed us, and you doomed me. The silly Masochist's last laugh. I didn't want to ruin this I needed to. My brain tricked me. The Masochist that ruined this is laughing in supremacy. Again, she's had her way with me. What's pain to me, to her is glee. It's all she ever wants to see. Be glad you got away from me.

Untitled by Jaclyn Zawacki

What can be better than this... Heaven can't possibly with art and music that moves our souls paintings that transform our visions and instruments that scream our emotions.. .put to lyrics that speak our deepest thoughts.

A moment I wish I could freeze in time And put in a crystal ball (like a snow globe) So I could shake it And look at it And it would forever remain constant and preserved, But I wouldn't be able to live through itIt would only be a memory with me to the end.

Don't forget to be beautiful, Don't forget to be skinny, Don't forget to be happy, Don't forget to be intelligent, Don't forget to be perfect.

Why can't we all be like Santa Claus? merry and fat with rosy cheeks and an ever-expanding belly.

Constant expectations Make me feel inert Like a statue Being carved by people who want me to be something I'm not.

shakespeare said... by Erik Gibson

arosebyanyothernamewould smellassweet, but would not be a rose and would fuck up all the poetry. my name has always been a little useless to me, like serial numbers here is your cell, here is your life, clearly labeled like a jar in a cabinet to differentiate the sour from the sweet.

Gibson: reminds me of an old guitar, broken down and half strung which my older brother will play for the rest of his short half-strung life; more reminiscence of appliances, stained and only used at maximum capacity, in my parents house, their lives at maximum capacity, stretching the syllables of their lower-middle class name to stay afloat, despite the excess baggage and weight over maximum capacity. my younger brother will not waste his life there, i have promised myself.

W: not a whole name, an initialthe origin of something, boiled down to almost nothing. it does not represent me, but rather, equally jagged as the letter, the scar above my lip, the hard work of putting myself through college, putting mind over body, putting skin, muscles, eyes, lungs, all on the assembly line to get back to the place where i callmyself home.

Erik: always tripped off my tongue stumbled like a four-letter word in a foreign language. so strange, but i respond to it not unlike a dog, seeking affection, seeking a new toy to sink my teeth into, seeking someone to protect, slobber with kisses, lie next to on cold nights.

what's in a name?shakespeare asked. how often have i really used my own, aside from introducing myself to strangers? but i know it sounds better off some tongues than others. i know it is more me in a cry of a particular other's passion, her anger, tears dripping over an honest smile than in a simple straight from the tag, "Hello, my name is..." the cold DMV emotion responding promptly to a nurses, "Next." i know there must be something in a name: i keep compulsively scribbling it directly underneath the title of all of my poems.