push your fingers into the barrier dig deep until your hands have gone in up to the wrists feel your hands choking by the thickness of the barrier push until you can’t push and then push some more up to the elbows now and asked yourself is this a barrier is this a wall or…
Author: Clio
Air (memoryland trilogy #1)
let’s begin by floating the wind in our hair the sun bright above us we are as light as a feather but we are not flying we are floating let’s begin by watching the world moving pulsating vibrating contorting moving breathing choking undulating moving rushing rewinding recoiling so far out of reach that it’s a…
Intermission
It was intermission, so I got up to stretch. I walked into the lobby, considered the popcorn line, decided instead to stand in the lobby and look out into the parking lot for just a few moments. Before I knew it, the lights had flashed, and it was time to go back in. — Clio…
The Citadel III
I found myself walking in a wilderness where people had once lived. The road I was on, once proudly paved with cobblestones, was overgrown with weeds. It was raining lightly, just enough that I could smell the languid threat of lightning. At a place that seemed halfway between where I’d come from and where I…
under the gaslight
in the haze of the gaslight you crafted masks for me to wear and told me when to wear them you warned me to never take them off, to always hide myself, because the world is full of monsters there was one for when i was sad: an ugly face full of rage and violence…
melt the guns
the still of the night was split by the sound of a gun spilling its violence out into the darkness the lightning and thunder followed by a rainstorm of blood on the sidewalk was it a traffic stop gone wrong? was it revenge for a broken heart? was it the demarcation of territorial lines? was…
the return of the glass(people)
i remember the glass(people) who shimmered in the light their shattered shards coalesced under the hot sun i lost touch with the glass(people) and let their memory fade but they lingered and they linger and they will linger they were lost among the static a memory just around the corner of my consciousness waiting for…
I Never Metapoem
When I was young and learning how to write, I was taught that poems had rhythms tight. The words, the lines, the rules — they served as walls And that without these strictures all would fall. The rules, they said, were there to form a spine — The art was how the writer, so confined,…
The Citadel II
From the window of the citadel, high above the trees, they could see the village below. There was the house they had lived in as a child. There was the chimney, a wisp of smoke idling out in the still of the springtime air. There was the roof they had climbed on as a child….
somewhere in between
somewhere in between the evening and the dawn as the rain clouds settled in and the moon disappeared i saw your shadow i whispered your name i felt your presence for a moment everything was serene everything had stopped all my fears were quieted in that liminal haze somewhere in between the evening and the…