Category: North America
Visions
by Josie
I keep my eyes open when I look at you. Your lips read: espresso for here, please & my fingertips tap against the plastic screen & I slide it to you with my eyes open. You criss-cross your skin, diagramming the name you’ve owned for years, & before you leave for the corner table, you reach deep into your pockets. I’ve met you before– … Read More Visions
Autonomous Outsiders
by Josie
Praise be the autonomous who sit, crumped upright in a land of red Mountains. The ones who eat, food dripping from loose corners, at a table of stone, who lay, facedown on beds of Earth shards, listening hard for the rare sound
Skin Sounds
by Josie
Joy arrives soundless in a cool morning breeze; sunrise rattles through oak palm trees, cooing as she goes, swishing through the drooping leaves. Infinite moments heard by skin only.
Hawaiian Twilight
by Josie
Mustard-patched sweat on skin damp and oily, suddenly licked wide & clear with a salty breeze. The rose blooms tonight. For my part, I shall bear witness; there is nothing quite like the blooming of a rose.
Let There Be Ease
by Josie
Mahalo, my love for your blue eyes. For the soul eyes impressed on my own when I rest & let shoulders lie easy. Let all the palm trees be breezy. Let the waves on sand shores crest.
Yin & Yang
by Josie
Dance dark against the moonlight shadows; the dust will take you deeper– digging down to shaded levels of acrid denial tasting like dental floss. Dance light upon the meadow tresses; the sunbeam spotlights like braided rope. Fading numbness from the fingers out and suffice to say– the world takes hold.
Moonlight Here-I-Am
by Josie
A little bit of moonlight here-I-am as breath surpasses finger count. That which is positive grows me; that which is negative grows me. In attempts to remain level, we remain level; manifesting intent.
Advice
by Josie
You could go sterile on a seat like that, he told me, jiggling one dusty finger at the black cheek-shaped seat of my bicycle, which rested with me against the cafe umbrella stand. I didn’t quite follow his reasoning— which he gave in file-folder eruptions of statistics and news articles clear from the research department of his mind.
Non-Complexity
by Josie
If the hair on your head heightens and heightens, enlarging like the alarmed housecat frazzled by herself– and if the clouds that swim between the curling ferns of our sister, Mountain, swimming like ancient phantom-mermaids, reach toward us– and if the lizards, brown and green, with knowing grins and lithe bodies, dart and scale the box air conditioner that bulges from outside the … Read More Non-Complexity
Credo
by Josie
What I yearn for—like you—is a just a notch of catastrophe. Rising up from the soul like pewter rainbows, swimming golden lead, funny and relevant all at the same time—catastrophe. Secret substance of hope, infectious balance; if nothing’s broken it’s all boring. Boredom is safe, too secure. Too responsible. So predictable. Left handle of balance, tipped so easily in this modern day of … Read More Credo
Filter Queen of Hawai’i
by Josie
She took her bow low and sweeping, languidly squalid, barely breathing penned up in honey and exhaust she caught their fumes with her soiled mattress. Trade winds swept up the dust that lingered in street corners; I biked past seeing the drafts crown her brow.
