Three poems by Savannah Slone

collectibles / commotion

open my old trunk, find my trinket ruins
fish for vintage brushstrokes
find that confession is a church
is a cosmic captive

here are my handfuls of stars
this is an eruption
these are my telescopes for eyes
my dust drenched fingertips

this is my buried conservation
this is my shape shifting commentary
my galaxies of gaps, my private pathology
my worn quilts, my worn breaths
my accordion lungs, my indifferent mechanics

see the shade of concealer I wore was called cadaver
witness my quarantined attachments
feel my swarming thrusts
wade through my limp bones

decay / detain

worship gnaws at my swollen throat
i dig through recycled jukebox songs
fingernails at my veins
powering my marionette arms
pressed flowers
weaved into my palms
my ugly, inverse,
inscribing a musk I can conjure
a possession, a primal hunger
an erasure of a vanishing
ribboning me out of wounds, hollow ridges
pendulums for eyes, halted in molding
pinned, framed wings
my desire in resin
i unveil my own decomposition

misfiring

cut paper dolls
with unsteady wrists
from my opal skin

your quivering slices an elegy

welcome our imperfect shapes to
the sea of two dimensionals

this is what it’s like to own hips that slice
to have freckles in places only those who’ve
loved you know about

this is what it’s like to be renamed after
every place you’ve called home, after
every person you’ve called home

this is what it’s like to glow
this is a drained pool
this is one snaking streak of tail lights
this is an orange balloon, slipping out of your clammy grip
this is how you sprout flowers from rust
this is a paper cut

this is precision