Two Poems

By Lindsay Hargrave

Renter

But isn’t all ice water ice? I argue with atlas cedars and

locals who refuse me—but

who can blame them, rolling their eyes

as I drive on the rails and trample sacred dandelions

with shaky footing.

I pretend to be like the weeds, respirating through tragedy and persevering yellow

through concrete, iron roots netted through glassy soil,

but I am less than silk.

I am polyester cheaply cloned and slowly bleached in windows.

There is wire at my core to remind me where I bent,

it pricks the craft store florist, but it is neither thorn nor root.

I cannot see the sun or drink the rain,

I was merely packaged and distributed at

an opportune moment resembling nature.

The city’s frame was warped around wires like mine,

this much I know.

But I have kicked the hard and ringing pipes beneath the sidewalk,

I have seen their blueprints,

and when I have made the neighborhood pilgrimage a

thousand times I will walk among them; I will be

a pebble in the concrete.

all there is

Searching for the first blood

sugar and what fills your spine you rise,

half-clothed in loose construction dust and

suspicious of the sunlight. 

You draw comfort from your lingering vasculars as your

fingers flatten out and blow away.

Free of skinny anchors, you begin to walk the world.

Planted firmly on your feet you pound away your planet,

making steps like reincarnation ladders from your ancestors

and ballooning lighter than the spirit that turned you green.

With a head far above any neck the view is backwards but

gaining clarity, cohesiveness, singularity,

folded ass to heels to forehead

making sense, saturating the collective,

welcoming near extinction becoming

or splitting to billions,

infecting neighbors with blind force and

filling them like spongy high rises.

With your nose to the earth you smile to yourself and

inhale the clay as a last rite of taxidermy, and you die with the knowledge that staying buried in rot is

all there is to living .

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Lindsay Hargrave is a performing poet with recent and upcoming publications in giallo, Maudlin House and Armstrong Literary. She performs with the improvised music group Oarsman and the indie pop band Mỹ Tâm (@sunflowerintheeast) and serves as editorial assistant for Rejection Letters. Follow her on Twitter @notporkroll or find her running around West Philly.

Kyla is a Visual Artist with a focus on drawing and painting. Originally from New Orleans and now lives in Toronto. She uses art as a way to intersect her passions and escape from reality, stemming most of her ideas from the subconscious. Her style is abstract with a psychedelic touch. Kyla tends to combine realism within her abstract work as well. She hopes her artwork sends a message and provokes conversation among viewers.