December
And you bent your neck down and hunched your shoulders your thin-soled cheap shoes breaking at the ice left in puddles on the dirty caking tar
Author: Beth Cortez-Neavel
It Is Cold and I Want to Be Where You Are
(Kevlar in the inner pad: two layers woven
and two needle-punched –
but I do not really know what that means
because you told me through a fading
connection – but I know, at the least, that they will stop the blade)
Like Chocolate-Ice-Cream-and-Banana-Split-Sundaes
They are falling like onion rings and cheeseburgers. They are falling like oatmeal and orange juice. They are falling like roti and vindaloo. Like eggrolls and hot and sour soup. They are falling in love like chocolate-ice-cream-and-banana-split sundaes. They are falling like waterfalls and paint thinner, like apples and appaloosas.
Powder
The night is warm and in this city you can see the stars from the broken sidewalks and rutted tar. I stand on my wooden porch, the dirty gray paint flaky underfoot as my feet shift of their own accord; I cannot stand still. Every hair stands on end in its follicle. The slightest movement of a leaf on the ground next to me causes me to startle, intensely amazed at the ability for the breeze to pick it up and move it a half-centimeter after spiraling through the thick, end-of-summer night air as if it were nothing.
Words on the Page
Words on the Page By Beth Cortez-Neavel I am starry-eyed little pieces of joy exploding in your atmosphere I am happy tiny lovebugs crawling tickling
Real All of the Sudden
Real All of the Sudden By Beth Cortez-Neavel (For Allison James, Austin Chaffin, Sol Richey, and Alex Red) It was just real all of the
Moan
Tell me:
how it feels
when you enter:
Sextet
1.
You growl into me
Pinned down like prey, the rush
In controlling arms.
It Is Not That Makes Me A Woman
It Is Not That Makes Me A Woman By Beth Cortez-Neavel It is not the curve of my breast as it hangs low nipples
Staples
Staples By Beth Cortez-Neavel She had too many staples, she decided. They just sat there on her cluttered desk in her tiny apartment in their