about the author
Savannah Slone is a queer writer who earned her BA in English: Professional and Creative Writing from Central Washington University and is completing her MFA in Writing at Lindenwood University. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in or will soon appear in Manastash Literary
Arts Magazine, Creative Colloquy, Heavy Feather Review, Boston Accent Lit, PaperFox Lit Mag, The Stray Branch, and The Airgonaut. Savannah
lives in Skykomish, WA, where she works a handful of part-time jobs and cares for her toddler with autism. She enjoys reading, writing, knitting, and hiking.
∧
font size
∨
Two Poems
Savannah Slone
The Evolution of Enormity
unfocused black and white checkered floor seen
through poor eyesight: spectacles long lost
you see her, Mother, cut through sunflower stems with rusty scissors
her ocean of hair sways daringly in the manmade breeze of the cheap
rotating fan
in the bedroom, you apply bark for wallpaper
life, for you, a Monet painting
peach acrylic paint singes
into your nostrils
abandoned car idles, driver’s door ajar, in a vacant
snowstorm
aroma of gas and metal,
snow covers bloodstains of the ones who presented you
a single cupcake lit by a match (it took three attempted matches before one
would take)
scratch pad abrasions make you itch all over
a silent birthday song sung by a room of tongueless nobodies
mouths smack, but no words come out
you blow out your single candle, a gust
that disrupts the hush: room, fades to black
cactus makes skewers
of your blueberry stained fingertips
Mother lays upside
down, adorned in violet lace that hugs, on a velvet armchair
her hair caresses the hardwood floors that you carved
around her numb body
you paint a whale on the seafoam
brick wall and smile a orange-red lipstick teeth-stained smile
that tastes like the crayons you weren’t supposed to eat as a kid
dusty moth flaps wings in slow-motion on your tongue
single cupcake baked with salt instead of sugar
she licks her thorn pricked finger and you can taste it, too
To Late Night Apprehensions
swallowing smoke through the whistle ruins
uncaged bird skeletons catch fire
furnace bones a memorial of cologne stench
dissolving hospitality
taking flight with phantom wings
that you dreamed up, but forgot to check on.
iron alignment
aching for a shift
pianos keys’ mouths sewn shut
only threaded murmurs that no one can piece together
cello body, rotting sternums
covered in dust
plucking at your inner workings
fingering your shape shifting,
esophageal disassembly of grey,
speckled eggs
that you can’t identify
you rub fern underbellies on stinging nettle leg
sky murky from weightless body
malleable marine surface from the great below
turning pages, newspaper flinch
hostile arms that can’t wade
your verbal sorcery latches cage
door shut.