She was mid-sentence. Mid-bloom.
\nHer youngest voice emerged\u2014a mustard seed
\nshoved deep in her throat\u2014when the arrow
\nshot straight through her eye. The audience
\nfinally heard her. Our hearts erupted when,
\nfrom behind, that arrow tore through an eye so gorgeous
\na shade of green. I can\u2019t look at the kelly crest of a fruit-dove
\nwithout grieving. A composite of queer survivor,
\nexpunged. Her girlfriend was pregnant.
\nShe was trying to be brave, to shuck away the skin
\nshe still carried from her days inside the last room
\ninside the last trailer in the park. Dad\u2019s shotgun
\n& its torrent of shells pelting the floor like a rosary
\nsnapped in half, the beads scattering
\nway too fast while her mind flashed girl-on-girl
\nstigmata, repeating: this too shall pass. But this was
\nthe apocalypse. End times stanched the guilt
\n& we watched her drag her body into the light
\nonly to have a goddamn arrow force her
\nback down on the train tracks. Clutching a can
\nof orange soda pop, her story scattered,
\nunfinished. A moral compass pointing us
\nto our lifelong fears: coming out
\nof our torment is just a 360 turn
\nleaving us oedipal & buried
\nbehind the church while the world
\ncontinues to roam.
\n <\/p>\n
LET THE RIGHT ONE IN<\/strong><\/p>\n Right now, we aren\u2019t She was mid-sentence. Mid-bloom. Her youngest voice emerged\u2014a mustard seed shoved deep in her throat\u2014when the arrow shot straight through her eye. The audience finally heard her. Our hearts erupted when, from behind, that arrow tore through an eye so gorgeous a shade of green. I can\u2019t look at the kelly crest of a fruit-dove [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4561,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[235,236,237],"class_list":["post-4546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-carlos-botelho","tag-naked-flower","tag-wlkicommons-share"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4546"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4580,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4546\/revisions\/4580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/narrativenortheast.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\ntwo neighbors, undressed
\n
\n& tapping Morse code
\non the wall that divides us.
\n
\nA slab of ceramic is eggshell
\ncompared to the osmium forest
\n
\nringing states between us.
\nThere\u2019s no pearl of glamour
\n
\nin our distance, only silence
\nas I press my ear to the floor
\n
\n& breathe, wishing it was
\nthe channel between your neck
\n
\n& clavicle. These days,
\nmy icicle heart rushes
\n
\nto thaw & I\u2019m afraid of the
\ncatastrophe you can see
\n
\nin its pool. Fear is often absurd<\/em>
\nyou say. I should be able to share
\n
\nmy fears with you.<\/em> So now,
\nI\u2019m in the attic, mauling
\n
\nold boxes, like: how could I
\nmisunderstand what loving
\n
\nsomeone means? This whole time
\nI just imagined my face
\n
\non the bodies of your monsters
\n& when I tell you this, you laugh
\n
\ninto the telephone because
\nyou somehow think
\n
\nno one has a face
\nquite like mine. I am 127
\n
\nyears old. I just discovered how
\nto touch my fangs
\n
\nwith fondness instead of
\npleading for retraction, how
\n
\nto smile in a photograph & let
\nspringtime erode my snowy cage.
\n
\n
\nJade Benoit’s poetry has appeared in Black Warrior Review, LUNGFULL! Magazine, H_NGM_N, Phoebe, Nashville Review<\/em>, and many others. The poems submitted here are part of a larger project focused on horror. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"