Helen stands alone, drenched
in the ink of midnight punctuated by a few faint stars
and a proud, brittle moon sitting as the
unveiled and defiant queen of this landscape. A black
and unknown bard emerges from behind a fragile veil
of shadows: she almost recognizes his face,
a carved brown rock monument of deep lines and curves,
from the page of a book she’d read in high school. You will
need this to see and hear, he says as he
reaches a long bronze arm above his head
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Tag Archives: WWP
Debutante Emily Looks for Buried Treasure
They lived on Seventeenth. The Negro
steel mill workers, these new men recruited
by ashen-coated promises of gold moved into
these little one-story brick boxes with their
families: and Helen’s was no different. Helen
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Liftoff
The heels of Helen’s feet –
smooth brown apples in the sun
gravid with forbidden knowledge –
do not need wings. Humans are not
supposed to fly, but she will. She just
doesn’t know it yet. She’s running
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Helen R. Jones
Helen R. Jones watches the sun
crawl up the back of the sky. He smears a
trail of persimmon, gold, and cinnabar on
its sacroiliac; a small strip of lapis lazuli skin
peeks out at the world just above its waistline. She
has seen this happen at least sixteen thousand,
seven hundred and fifty times, give or take a
week or two’s worth of the missing the occasion.
Home
Tree, reach a bold, electric violet-white arm,
an arm scraped bare of skin, up to heaven! Let
your lithe limbs sing bioluminescent
against a thick pallu of sky which is
woven at dusk and studded with a single moonstone.
Let your nude body shine like a tall-shouldered ghost,
pallid and hungry for stars and souls – and all the while,
dear sycamore, curl your stiff, skinless fingers
around a few inches of evening silk and pull;
reveal the scandalous shoulder that Ratri hides
from the eye of daylight!
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The Difference Between Ravens and Crows
The word for me is wings, you dig? I have been
looking for mine since I was twelve,
trying to fly solo, riding dolo on the backs of words
ripped from the tip of an ink pen. My hands
are stained with the pain that I gained
from stealing morphemes out of ink, but I have
no regrets – given the chance, I would do it again.
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Sleeping Beauty Busts a Few Myths
I am not like other women. I try not to be
like other women. I have slept
on a mattress housed inside of a glass box
for years. I have never owned any spinning wheels
except a mind that whirls around in frenetic, dervish
fashion: because of it, I often see quadruple. But those
four pomegranate seeds in my stomach have caused me
more trouble than they were worth.
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