Disposable Life / Night Crawlers

Lynn Greyling

by J.L. Amos

Disposable Life
That lipstick smeared
Dixie cup
you drank from once.
Those roses –
snipped at the bud
and pinned to your lapel.
The paper veil,
merely napkins in the wind,
animated by the door slam
of your departure.
Cellophane kisses,
smothered by their very nature,
simply pins for cork board promises.

And that ring –
that ring on your finger.

—————————————————-

Night Crawlers
We took it off the shelf like so many cans of soup:
punctured the lid,
tore it off,
gazed at the contents.
Then we released the worms – let them sink
into our muddy hearts
where, writhing, they shaped our ventricles
and aerated the moist clay of our cores,
carving cavernous atria – a Siamese sinkhole of affection.
They reproduced, swelled, ate a home in the Earth for us,
entered our chimera veins and circulated between us
until they rushed my fever, filled me fast, left you a hollow shell.
Full and grateful, I called it love.
But you called it by the can.
The evacuated caverns under my feet collapsed, crumbled,
and falling,
falling,
I realized how deeply they burrowed.

 

Category: Poetry, SNHU Creative Writing, SNHU online creative writing, SNHU Student