gravity always wins.

pluck the imitation bird from the branches

with stinging fingers,

smelling sickeningly of flowers

the tentative winter, wretched and floundering

clips your wings and the decrepit limbs

cracking loose, losing only to reach skyward

slumped low, sewing unbearable wounds

to wounds, and to the wounds

breathing fetid and discarded things

we walk away from ourselves

a recurrence, the approaching

steps echoing through a hallway

with a likeness of the way out,

just pluck me from the branch.

© 12.29.2014 heather brager 

slip knot.

this is who you are

we paint colors on the walls

your blood, or the sun

© 12.16.2014 heather brager 

...

playing our song.

you are a forgotten verdict

the familiar place for a pessimist

you fondle our dissonance

like a naked talisman

my lexis bent in your hand

left against my teeth

echoes from dusty rooms

that I am worthless and weary

we sweep up the glass

ruins in incoherent fragments

the years writhe into idioms

as I drive against the wind

© 11.25.2014 heather brager  

evanesce.

the fields below are empty

the sound of high prairie

and faraway birds

               sifting

                       sifting

words and steps are muffled

on another frozen landscape

her face and her limbs

are hovering above sparkling soil

over the tops of dead wildflowers

with eyes closed and chin tilted skyward

listening for an ounce of truth

now the streets are mostly vacant

faint murmurs of pedestrians

finding their way to daybreak

she looks to see them vanish 
            and reappear

                        into doorways

© 11.11.2014 heather brager  

life without parole.

these promises are

run-on sentences to yourself

slinking through one ear

and out the other

the time you owe

constructed of inconsistencies

and regurgitated regret

how far you have come

in an effort to warrant

the quivering fabrications

that you refuse to own

slitting your own throat will

prove misfortune is hunting you down

armed and foaming at 

the mouth, clutching an 

already bloodied knife 

© 11.3.2014 heather brager