Featured Writer: Audrey Victoria Day 3

Thoughts of the overworked

Whatever reason aside,
I am tired of pulling the wagon of everyone else's skeletons, still.
The goats escaped from the ropes but one must still be around, somewhere.
One day, as I lower my stick into the wet, weakening ground below,
I will dress the goats up in satin! The skeletons will rightly be placed underground,
next to their erupted, blossomed
skin bag brothers and sisters.
Skeletons are only material but yet some continue
to carry them, afraid to leap into the abyss that which they
pray upon and think about continually. That invisible post
which has all of the answers yet none at all.
As virtual reality overtakes your senses and it becomes more normal
to be stabbed in the chest, I continue to eat apples in the morning.
Bodies, desperately trying to stay alive, soak up the liquid from
coffee filters. The bleeding caffeine is trying to run the heart again.

Featured Writer: Audrey Victoria Day 2

Seeing red

today i am red. i am a bull's target
a charging ram, a walking witch's brew
bubbling with charm and interpose and
calm, quiet shuffling, light rose
fragrance and the docile demeanor of
a fantasy-ridden dandelion.

hark! the light has gasped and the clank of the hooves
comes with a waddle and a yellow-beaked version
of fly me to the moon while running out of gin

sold! the last of my patience, my temper, to the wind
it goes through the red rocked cliffs
tobacco smoke rings and love from
my living room.

wherever you go, my dear, my love
my honey, brown-sugar
a trail of empty red hooves will follow you.
the last of the mirrors will meet you
along the way. your reflection will be
entirely too vile for your own, inflated ways

for the bull who forgets he is alive
is a child cowering the midst of a
crisis in slavery where all of humanity's treasures
were born. sloughing, pain and suffering
of your animal siblings has brought
you memories of your perceived freedom.

do you feel like a cave now? you were not free.
turn off your fucking phone before the charge.

if emptiness for emptiness sake
makes you feel alive
then the dawn, the mist of rising
primrose will beckon any last rounds of
forgiveness.

Featured Writer: Audrey Victoria Day 1

Twins

if i could watch the sun rise pavement
on your rested pores

if i could meditate on these words instead
of brilliance coming while sitting on a toilet

if i could make sense out of finger waves
and a myriad of choices in the movie aisle

i would dump this life smelling of my
mother's bad, coffee in the morning breath

i would settle in the lush white of
missouri winter's dappling skin in the morning

i would quiet the guilt of spending my life
separating from my reflection's responsibility

(because i know what's good for me)

i'd watch heaven instead
i'd drink less
because i made up a lie

if i could find solace

i would dunk my white lies in horseradish

if i could watch you undress
because of me, on repeat
then i wouldn't wait for the grass to get greener
to grow, to feed the birds in the winter

i'd sit maiming my hair
in born satisfaction to break open
a small, new leaf in this mid-location
of dreams, never fulfilled for normalcy

if my feet touched the ground and my skin
wasn't still contracting hives from this new paper
i'd brush my hair with winter grass instead

(all awful, this trembles me to the bone
as the last of us receive our awards to flood out into a new world
gasping like infants, we pray we receive enough to
even favor someone with a minute of advice)

i would quiet the guilt.
i'd separate from my reflection's responsibility