love as metaphor.

these flowers we prune,

water, expose to the light,

then string up to die

© 11.20.2017 heather brager

aurora, aurora.

lent to the autumn

gusts, jeweled trees

murmuring truth under

an expectant moon, months

pregnant with probability, rich with

faltering grace, left tangled

in silent spells and threats of

darkness on their heels, oh

breathe, breathe the absence 

hunted and held down

by a silky dawn

they are filling their

cups, hands in milk and

honey, palms upturned

to a charlatan, piercing

all directions at once

aurora, aurora

the truth north, the

transformation a

lightening birth

© 11.3.2017 heather brager

Tatiana Plakhova.

October, begin.

and just like that, all of the endings were

drawn to sea, imaginary burdens pulled deep

under the morning tide as it succumbed to

the shoreline, unlimited power sucked against

my boots, with both feet firmly planted, the sun

finally reached me, warming my skin and hair

and what if truth is actually universal, love

synonymous with struggle the grandiose lie, what 

if pain and sacrifice were only fear hunting me 

down, dimming my irises to pale, sharpening

each edge to arm me against my own quiet

nakedness, my own space under a vacant sky

© 10.13.2017 heather brager

time, doors, and nothing.

I haven’t written you a

poem for several weeks,

not because there are no words,

(but lord knows you never listen)

because broken clocks are only

right twice a day, and broken

clocks are always right, twice a day

I spend a lot of time thinking

about doors, and one morning after

another morning, and how

open doors are something

entirely different to those frightened

of lost time, and of the dark, and for those who

long for damp air on their skin under the

moonlight, wasted time is terror, personified

these doors often lead to secret

passageways, perhaps only

I can see the doors with steadfast locks,

with keys that are not really missing

and you, you are everywhere, standing

in each doorway with your own key hanging

around your neck a delicate noose, around your

neck a clear escape, because an open door 

is just a broken clock

© 9.11.2017 heather brager

every step echoes.

she will not speak of 
clemency, the remnants of 
your intentions have 

clearly cut scars along 
blue veins in her hands

your poems still sneak 
through the stillness, late 
into the evening, pages

of your handwriting beg
for love, or some relief

with your shirt pressed 
damp against her 
back, she will see you 
standing, waiting for 
joy to swallow, or cleanse time

© 7.26.2017 heather brager

the only thing to fear.

"Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken." Jack Kerouac 

I once thought that I

would love every man

I ever loved,

carry his DNA in

my molecules, his words

would gently fold into

the recesses of my

grey matter, imprints of his

hands on my skin like

footprints abandoned in

dried clay, though

I did not account

for wild-eyed fear, that which

drew the lips back to

show his teeth, the

agony of injury that leached

rapidly from his every

pore, the echoes of

desertion rumbling through

vacant space between

our intentions

© 7.12.2017 heather brager

Zdzisław Beksiński.

take a bow.

perhaps I should not admit how

many times I read the words you 

doled out like cookies 

to a family dog: 

here, sit while I neglect 

your adoration, stay while I repeat the 

patterns that have worn grooves 

in my brain, come to me, come

to me while I dangle affection like 

a delicacy you will never 

place in your hands, let alone between

your soft lips

and there is truth, whether it finds you 

sulking in a corner, or

hunts you down within the 

chapters of a book, because

truth finds us all, in the end

I will never be the monsters who 

abandoned you, I will never be the 

scornful wasp that stung when 

you were convinced that you were trying, 

and I will never be the loving 

woman who brings you coffee and a pastry 

while you sleep late on a Saturday morning,

no matter how hard I long to be 

this story is not really about you

these words are about my willingness to lie 

in the dirt and wait for permission 

to leave, the urgency I feel to restore 

beauty to broken things, the desire 

I use to weld pieces of cold metal together to 

construct a pair of loving arms 

that don’t push me away

jagged little pills.

the wreckage has been surveyed

many times over, an itinerary carefully

deleted, line by resonant line

the dark ring inside yesterday’s porcelain

cup left on the kitchen

counter, diluted bourbon on

the bedside table next to the Ativan

when did we learn that love was

currency, attention meager

crumbs for starving

beasts, when did we misplace our

own fragile beauty with remnants

of shattered hope and reconstructed

dishes, following each tragedy

you divert your eyes but demand

to be seen, cry out but desire

solitude behind walls you built, but

they will not keep you safe from the

ghosts you have protected

within your rib cage, the terror that

runs you until shadows swallow hard

© 6.22.2017 heather brager

Rafael Duarte Más.

windsor street.

as I stoop to pick up a 

tarnished penny, time collapses

I am a funeral’s pace, fingers slowly 

scraping the pavement,

hair falling forward in a 

fluid motion, gently

stroking the back of 

my freckled hand

from behind my eyes I 

am watching, blurred sparrows stealing 

crumbs from beside the curb, a bus stop

woman fanning herself with a 

crumpled magazine, I am

peering across the baked-hot parking lot at 

myself, an anonymous woman, lost 

and still losing, a little girl finding

a treasure among discarded

wrappers, next to an empty whiskey bottle

© 6.20.2017 heather brager

your lexicon.

my heart is unraveling  

the symbiosis, while you

are writing a melody

in the shape of endings with

words resonating to the corners

slipping through hidden

cracks in the foundation

meeting my humid dawn

with nothing at all. 

© 6.13.2017 heather brager

edit, ad nauseam.

 

oh lover, please

domesticate this lonely

little ego

she’s been waiting

for your hands and

your fingers

to become

tangled in her hair

she’s been waiting

up late into

each night, aching

for your

admiration

your shimmering,

silver tongued

praise

please, take this

scantily clad poem

in all of its

vulnerable nakedness

slide it slowly across

your tongue

licking

every

last

word away

oh, sweet amylase,

this malaise

reduces her to

a complex technical

process

© 6.5.2017 heather brager

Julia Randall. 

may.

a dark branch, a cup

perhaps it was mislaid 

with everything else, a 

starving nomad’s gamble 

for adjacency, a tender

metaphor for wandering

down pleasant street

© 5.18.2017 heather brager

presence, or pretense.

it is long before dawn, she is naked

and he is fully clothed, this

is the way they often present, distant

mirrors and white space, soft

as her inner arms and belly,

vacant rooms, a payment with words

here and there, please take this offering

accept this tenderness, on mute

it presents as contradiction, that

surreal and abstract, or organic

art cannot physically harm them, that

art cannot leave them financially

destitute after dying, or abandon them

on a corner with a plum colored

cheekbone, and a scarlet

right hand of knuckles

it is beauty that draws them both

possibility in each image, patterns

spread across her thighs, in black and white

forgiving tongues, and burdens lost in

connection, and his dark eyes

juxtaposed against the white

space, a backdrop of violent landscapes

leaning patiently against the wall 

© 5.4.2017 heather brager

acceptance is a blank page.

the loose ends you leave behind and

how you disappear show the ones

who love you everything they will ever need to know

the first stage of grief leaves you standing in the grocery store a

forgotten child, the face of loneliness wielding a knife

next to local produce and a bent woman

who shouts “dear, are you okay” as you crumple to your knees

staring blankly at the empty space

you relive the fear in your stories as a reminder that you can,

to justify what your clever mind will not permit you to release

terror follows you across the parking lot to your car

anger clings like a wet dress tripping you up

exposing the truth, spinning the truth

helpless as a spider circling in a bathroom drain

loss is drowning at the bottom of a bottle

re-reading words written by the perfect lover

who never could have existed, but in your mind

pain is a silhouette with his back to the

wind, looking over dark water in a soundless loop

though you are not permitted to see his face

because he is always turning away

the fifth stage of grief slides over you silently as

morning splays across the cat at the foot of the bed, sliding

up the wall and over dust that covers a smiling face in graphite

maybe you remember being content then,

but those eyes are no longer yours

© 4.25.2017 heather brager

the ocean starts at the shoreline.

this is you, you seek solace in raw demise

you accost by adjective and verb

burying it under allegations

of beasts for slaughter, fish gasping at the shore

discarded and digging in the dirt for forty

some years for the source

detonation at the helm

wanting, lurking, mining for the simple hope 

to catch a fish

this is you, but hope emerged carrying freshly cut flowers,

sweets, poetry and your blame like ancient talismans

vibrant as butterflies on the cover

pleading to carry you out of the picture,

if only you would release the dead weight

but why fly, when you could sink or swim

this is still you, inside of twenty years or more

bowing to a shrine of solitude that grips and holds

you back from beauty so exquisite

it would kill you the moment you heard the song, a song

vibrating from its tender soul

but who are you, really?

are you hidden within the heart she sent

one of two birds, not beautiful enough to soften

hatred so sharp your hands were crimson

before you even attempted to touch her skin,

because artists love contrast, though

you never pressed your lips to the water stain

in a promise, before you commenced digging

this is you, but fear was not your fault

and hope is a solemn beast for

you are the fisherman, and the fish

casting, gutting, drown by air

and now it is all you have, crimson

abandoned at the shoreline

everything at once, then nothing at all

© 4.20.2017 heather brager

Hans Kanters.

tidal.

she opened

her eyes as

the shoreline gasped

outward beneath

her naked feet

frigid pools

swallowed hard as

she stood alone

hunting past

the sight line

a lone gull wailed 

and wind stung

as she stood 

down an airless 

insignificance

© 4.18.2017 heather brager

cambiata.

when it has been a hard year, indelible

patterns wear down the floorboards

daylight presses an imprint against
the film on neglected window panes

limbs remain where limbs must lie in

wilted angles, measured in sepia

when alone is a place to dwell, bitter as a

worn chair in the middle of the room

tolerantly pending the comrade of

umber, who bears a smooth glass of medicine

perhaps time has unveiled a hushed

melody of imminent contentment, watchfully 
tending to deserted spaces with conciliation

leading all of the voices in conversation

until the heart skips dissonance

© 4.15.2017 heather brager

shadows of ourselves.

there was meant to be a moment when

you looked back at the wreckage and the

motion of our lives slowed to a crawl, and paused

a carnal beast could be seen climbing, a steady

silhouette from beneath the still life you drew,

with its frozen cast of characters in waiting

you the protagonist, you lying next to the

emotional in our bed, you walking across the floor

to our living room, you writing our story

and you wished to leave the newly

constructed frames, succumbing to whispers

of cruelty and odium, imagined from the depths

there will be regret, but it should not be ours

when time is released from the grasp of

bruised hearts, your character will always turn away

© 4.5.2017 heather brager