Sabotaged Flowers
TW—Domestic Violence
Sinners and rhinestones have always gotten along, the jingle of my handcuffs in broad Latin sunlight Crashing the beach wave alone with my ubiquitous mind, replaying the apex of female rage How she screamed, and how she fought, her battle raging as her world beneath her second brain relapsed, Her father's screams glimmer across the pianos, bottles of wine whose corks still gleam wet from when he poured just a drop on her tongue; How narrow the world seems, just seams of battered dish soap in a world brought down by video game yelling fanatics Crooked lights track down her mother's face her eyes look up to a moment locked in vows Bouquets and baronesses, Wedding gowns and ripped bows, kisses that strung the air with intoxicated blows of romance, their extended honeymoon—the cupboard crashes down on her, her soul falling beneath the depths of her underbelly, the monster snarled, she falls pitts down into her abyss, an abyss she foresaw but clammed hard to wish not —Their second year in the white chapel of Paris, him whispering over her while the gargoyle loomed over their bodies, like the sunlight jealous of the moon shining her love on the stars, like the seas kissed by the tides, its foam latched on to the shore to destroy all of creation or like the fire lights whose clandestine wings buzzed near the moths eyes to pry them to a night of Skyfall —Their trips to the Russian Advocacy, his eyes, glances that tripped her falling heartbeat, directionless moments in pure unscriptural Ekalavya, his slow moments in time catching her like a droplets of sand lingering on an hourglass after its final hour, whispers of debates on a couch, whose springs court the thorns of hallways adorned with black and white folk, whose invisible seams that he turned emerald to remind her of their inventory cascades, experiments wounding up in chemical folklore and ambulance drives to a publisher's house, their minefield of ideas, vodka blizzards to rosaries in bowling balls —"My dear" he said one evening to her, the news of their first born a stinging message in the air, he stared at her like she was the embalmment of his daughter, he saw the future in her, her eyes beating the images of his next life, her hands holding the room of their family portraits, him and her and their light glorious in his eyes, family potently powerful in love; But that love is potent, that a father's constant life and love could melt into a river in the heart of shatters, a storehouse of memory so ancient, its scrolls rusted from beauty —How could she know the man she married , the father of her child, the keeper of her miscarried heart, the soulful laughter that welcomed her home after a long day of service, tasted her bile for ripening, knew her waking hours to glorify the absence of their abacus memories, memories that cloud the air and fail to latch onto their soulless minds, a mind grown into the love offered by man who was a husband but then grew into the very man he'd sworn to never become, who treated his wife the way his heart broke to, whose notes now rang ringlets of trembles, each step the sindoor of her fades away and he stares away from his life, lost in the alleyway that presents himself now Her father is gone, the maestro who taught her poetry has faded into the rust of his books, his imprints have been translated into motherboard of her forgotten memories, His eyeroll that crept over her and her mother over the years, his jeer and insecurity now overshadowed her thoughts, his actions written on hieroglyphs of their portrait, the frames of gold and black tarnished, the man looking down no longer holding his reflection. The sunlight draws into my eyes, a blank canvas for what she is about to show me, my eyelashes, signing my cheekbones with an anticipatory audience, but she is alone, I am alone. Encompassed alone in the nightmare winter is her beauty, bringing death to her knees is her sunset, the cries of rain that litter her enemy's cheeks, shadows of a game of tetris she enjoyed Silhouetted in the glass-fitting of the moon is she in Cinderella Gliding along the sculpture of an eric is she in the little mermaid The hollow trees with the spirit of the ancestral forest is she in Pocahontas The rose whose sister was picked by the beast is she in Beauty and the Beast Darkened eyelashes never belong to anyone but the wearer The bookmark shall hold most of the heart of the maker Why should she border herself because of a societal requirement The skies never sailed for a duo, it was an individualist loner in the middle of a platinum sky Like a john wick villainess whose mind led men be feared by Like the Syrian snake who chased away a religion to the fiery fruits associated with a harlot She's everything the world never saw fit, like the first spark offered by the cigarette as its fumes camouflage your sadness just to burn out heartstrings a second later Her pearly ringlets of hair sway from her temples to across her lashes, like the latch of lust in the initial encounter of arms playing sonnets and eyes entwined in matrimonial vows, each lost in the mirage of emotions within as they longingly inch closer as the frost beneath sizzles into fire, and the sharp intake of breaths hitches to a halt, a world of parrots and doves climb out, To be lost in the ecstasy of one and another, with screams that terrify the night and soundless moans that collapse into a collision of aphrodisia, with each other being the delight and pain, each body being drenched in sweat and seeds of Persephone's stay in the underworld The world shifts into a glimmering fog, of charring oneself with the rust of an old photo frame, with memories to comets soaring past the yellow sky In a world of blood and mud she became their wine In a prison of symmetry and infidelity she became a crossword And in the mornings of glitter and maksath she became the black and white chessboard Her bangles now gleamed silver in the sunlight, ivory etchings decorated her vision She is the queen on the checkerboard She is the rewriting on the rosary She is the air that breathes your sight upon blowing the conch She is the pause between fear and a new moment The etching on a Shakespearean book bind Contested by her face it moves switching from emotion to power In her hand the hourglass tips into mercenaries Each grain of sand an entry of a nightmare Each cry of a child the laughter of a cliffhanger Each hollow heart a welcome for her residence Intelligence so forth and wise like the mermaid on winters eve Dives into a state of emergency, absorbing each emotion by logic and detaching from her pillar to the darkness I walk free shambles burning away my skin to a void empty by detachment and hollow by mystique Prudence and Cowardice go hand in hand one for a queen's power and the other her brocade For it was never the subjects who she wanted to rule Why fill the coastline where I can deprive myself to perfection Why fulfill the burning desire between me and him when I can succumb to the frostbite and destined solitude Why protect the flame when I burn the incandescent ice as my crown My crown is heavy with the seams of my endeavors, my head crowned bloodless with the ember of anklets, copper with the taste of my own I look up to the heavens, their cloudy majesty draws sunsets across my pleats My anklets drown in their beats Each mudra flows through my blood My head feels throughout the evening of pictures and emotions of my fortitude My sweat sinks down like the pearls of a necklace so brittle by its value and seemed priceless by its nature Like blood-money valuable only to the wicked and not to the poor
©2023 Tina Rimbaldo
pencil drawing
Kissed Marigolds
Coffins splattered in between seams of a sisterly pinafore Anklets dripping in blood, blood from the eyes, as she glides across Elysium, Blood from the elbows, whose bones lay marked with caricatures of a brawl painted with red dye Blood from her heart, as it drips down her face, shrouding her last breath away from them; lest they see her fall Lest they believe that she cannot withhold it all Lest they believe that her heart outweighs her mind Blood from her hair, its curly braided locks crowned in a thorny veil, Her heart cuts into a stone, ready for atonement Ready to succumb to her life She sees it chasm, her mind edges her on She jumps… Her crafty plan is awake The woman she created has demanded her release She welcomes her She glances upon her mirror, little pebbles of light stare back The pebbles that set her mind to day Her reflections to night The foamy ocean that engulfs her whole as she feels her heart The seashell dresses her mirage, inviting her to join them Only it's not a mirage She soars across the land, her neck craned like the subtle tilt of a sword Tattooed in vengeance and lit aflame by roses The wind chimes soften their blow against the wind As I turn away, chrysanthemums in my hair, drowsy from vigour I don't stop My feet are palm less as I venture into my window of fantasy The frigid air of my memories mellows the air My anklets tinkle through its seams Callous in its wreckage, I carve through the words Painting its shards with my pianos, its white teeth chipped with golden lint
©2023 Irina Tall
rhaba’s Zaraam
Pinecones of fervent cider wreathed the skies, a mirage of dewdrops and accolades, a mirage of Persian mabrooks and Albanian mashallah's forewent her thoughts Her hood pointed low to hide her eyes, dewdrops of pint rain mixed with the winter ball had sewn for her a cape, devoid of her expression Her eyes deserted her passers and stayed on the abal trees on the path The gazelles in Tasleem The mudras escaping her tongue in Navratri The angelus in the dewdrops of summer's ascension Graceful poetry lined her quill, shadows of summer rain awaiting their heartbreak; to fall unto the slow earth A Shayari of Maksath and Khwabeda, a bird whose wings, blue like the ringed octopus, death on heed the clattering rustle of the shehzadi tika beneath her hood; an eclipsing nightingale in the Atlantic Kohinoor The dewy grace of the blade against her Palestine skin, the jumu'aa of the masjid mornings the gossamer sunlight against her feet, angled against the angels For why should love be restricted to shame Intelligence viewed corrosive in a world acidic to their corpses Symbiotic when one's shelter and entrust, the samaitic mercenary of solace in the angelus of one's conscience Her horse stuttered to a drawl, caramel eyes a glare in the Aafreen of the black of hers, glaciers against the rising sun Her Nazakat, an aroma to the tamanna of Persia, a ringlet in her minaret bangles; A Sukoon amongst her laughter.
©2023 Tina Rimbaldo
paper on canvas
©2023 Selene Vina
All rights reserved
Selene Vina…
…a writer and poet who publishes her works of poetry on her Instagram has completed seventeen years living on this planet. She lives in the Emirate of Dubai of the United Arab Emirates,engages her time in reading—especially Gothic literature, fantasy, and other fiction. Likes thrift clothes to reduce her role in capitalism and adores writing poetry in the raven’s hours of the night. She is an Indian who loves incorporating her culture into poetry and plans to establish representation for South-Indian WoC in the Literary World.
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