Thursday, October 11, 2018

you can tell a warrior by her eyes (a snapshot in greyscale)

she is posturing, her rage an
excuse and shaky definition, the
bottom line is dotted and it is fragile
it has the insult of good hair
it is a thieving liar, trailing
backward from the fulcrum

she is fighting with disgust on
her tongue, sweet or bitter, no one
will heed a bent archetype
in a rocking chair murmuring
“power thrives in unity” from
a mouth full of quiet wisdom,
while her fists are full
of fury and loathing

in the very center, beauty still knows
truth without her intrusion, hope
frames shadows on the wall as
gradients of pure grace, despite a
past, the future is rushing in, and
she is sick of this shit



© 10.10.2018 heather brager




Tuesday, September 18, 2018

evaporate.


the splinter of ice is vanishing in her palm
hands of magic, hands of stretched
alabaster skin, hands with pale fingernails
that were once painted reflection pool blue

this shard is nothing of importance, your
scent of autumn as cyclical as burnt
leaves, as barren as an empty table, as
pitiful as division you contrived, the
remnants wiped away on her soft thigh



© 9.18.2018 heather brager

<3

Friday, August 24, 2018

life began on a morning after forty.





upon the realization that your memoir has
written itself, life will begin again

after you have taught the children to
walk and speak, and take the train to work
by themselves, after the original husband
stands posturing back somewhere beyond
your threshold, and the ashes of the arduous
lover have dissolved into the cold northern
Atlantic, you will rise an hour after dawn
on a cool morning, and stand in the
middle of a room that has carefully held
every human emotion, with a soft cat
pressing against your leg, and a
warm cup in your hands, you will finally
recognize yourself for the first time

upon the realization that you will
struggle until you no longer fight, you
will drown until you learn to swim, you
must love yourself in spite of fear
and hatred in the world, you must continue
on instead of giving up, you will suddenly
own yourself like tarnished brilliance,
the paragon on a forgotten shipwreck


© 8.24.2018 heather brager

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

still human.


for year after year, our pattern
is still driving with a flat
tire, somewhere south of
the metro, courage as diluted
as our clarity of the truth, and perhaps
for a moment, the clouds snap
into focus, backdrop shining sapphire,
sun spraying hope, and
with momentary breath, beauty
clings to the hood of the car, shining
a honey colored pool, though we
did not train our mind to
capture the tribute


© 7.17.2018 heather brager


Thursday, July 5, 2018

less than.



the summer months are a
culmination of lines
blurred, memories become
an animal, I look to my hands to
study the lines on my face, a mirror
in several dimensions, I can see right
through each sensation

I am still longing for
imperfection, again or for the
first time, I  know the heaviness of
the air from august, we have come
nearly full circle and
still my palms know who you are

how often I wait
for the future
to catch up

so many times to start and stop.

I pause to read the hand I have
been dealt, peer into the same soul with
a different face, knowing I
have never been half. 


© 7.5.2018 heather brager

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Untitled.


your hands left plum colored 
remnants. but not because you wanted 
to hurt me. we both cried about
your mother, but not because we 
hurt each other. you are so afraid, and 
you know that I could love you. you know 
I don’t understand, so please 
just remember me.

Friday, June 8, 2018

the gift.



insignificant
hours compose
a treaty in
poetry, and I find
myself wanting
your energy back
in my myth, in
the one we
press side by side
turning pages, the
perfume of cellulose
and lignin on
our fingertips,
tracing the faint
rise of what is
unwritten, the
careful overlap of
interludes, as we
close the covers


© 6.8.2018 heather brager


Wednesday, June 6, 2018

there are moments that time does not.



your blazing eyes at 10:43 p.m.
glancing across the kitchen table, and
her hair damp with southern
humidity and restrained hunger

your tears, Sunday morning drunk,
exposed until you fell asleep, her
hands removing loss like dust from a
tabletop; you have no idea what you lost

your mouth saying nothing, standing
at the corner of Summer and
Atlantic, on time for a southbound
train, but much too early for her comfort

your pallid cheek in lamplight, weary
with conclusions of the Yankee Inn, asleep
when you said you could not, faint scent
of lavender, and murmured invocations

  
© 6.6.2018 heather brager



Vladimir Fokanov.

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

sorry, not sorry.



I have lost my shit in the grocery store
a damp list of items clutched in my right fist

blue ink bleeding onto my skin, grief
pushing my face to the floor with
1000 psi, next to a stack of beefsteak tomatoes

I have posed solitary and stiff-backed in the front
row, the hue of death melting around my face, feet

aching and cold from standing six hours in the
pumps that a dead man bought me as a birthday gift

I have cowered upright on a hard courtroom
bench, teeth clenched and heart held firmly

in the hands of a judge, the faces of my
two children projected clearly on the wall

I have lent the same heart to broken men, sewn
them back together with my own shaking fingers

delivered them a glass of bourbon, and stroked
their damp cheeks, while I laid down penance

for desiring a full basket of eggs, abandoned
home for just one more year, offered bowls

of sliced ginger, turmeric, garlic, and thyme
for the affection of an indifferent lover

I have drawn the beauty of a soul with a
solitary stick of graphite, to open my
abdomen for examination

for just one more fucking chance.

so don’t you dare demand
arbitrary time, or tell me
that I need to be patient.
don’t tell me how it
works to love, or explain
to me the writing
on the wall, when you
don’t even believe in
the same language.

© 5.30.2018 heather brager

(art: Erika Kuhn)


Monday, May 21, 2018

question everything.



the first night
she traced your 
silhouette for 
three days and nights
as you breathed out
her manifestation, white
light illuminating the outline
to remind of the spaces
in between true 
focus, following
your every move,
even in dreams
they lie side by side as
slices of impermanence 

the last night your 
eyes quickly flashed 
hot, and for one second 
she peered inside a 
dark space, after gifting a 
mirror of everything,
what was left of a beating
heart, vibrations 
through fingers splayed
wide open before you, and
yet, you did not yield 

you said nothing was tossed aside,
you told her to wait, and she heard 
stop, because she is too much, too 
sensitive, never quite enough  

for now press your hands 
against her flesh
hold tight to
lend a piece of 
yourself for safe keeping,
yes, just like that, 
pour, pour yourself 
into yet another soul, but
she is made of copper, humble 
goddess, prepared to
nourish and 
swallow the fated,
holding tenderness in 
oiled palms, but she is not
carrying the talisman you seek

 © 5.21.2018 heather brager


Patricia Ariel.

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

are you listening?


there are forgotten stories
inscribed in words, symbols and
images scrawled across damp
walls, under decaying floors, a
history buried far beneath the
earth, steadily uncovered
in rhythmic codes revealing
time and future, queens and
their kings, records woven in
intervals boldly above their crowns

and where have you been hiding?

your mother, the goddess, ancestral 
force, father sky and his cavernous
soul, strong hands shading a gaze
across the fields, cold dark
water rumbling, backs
straight, then broken and bent
over torment, again and 
again, abandoned

they are yours
they are ours, the 
agonizing beauty, now an 
antiphony pulses in your 
very breath, celebration twined
to your cell memories, a living
history writhing within
your skin
your eyes
your own voice

there is primordial hope hovering 
over the seas in echoes of oars
and copper mettle, above the
bird songs, beyond the
lands that steal and
petrify courage, there is
harmony and cadence, lying in
wait in your open palms, throbbing 
in your feet, grasping at your
heart, pleading to escape
its prison from behind your 
teeth and tongue


 © 5.15.2018 heather brager



(Ben Hodson)


Thursday, May 3, 2018

Broadway.




I may not understand why you closed the door quietly behind you that night, hesitating over your shoulder for just a second. I somehow hoped I was enough, but always knew better.

I speculated for weeks, looking for you at stoplights, drawing your beautiful shoulders and arms behind my eyelids, feeling lost for words, knowing I really did ask you to leave with my eyes.

Perhaps there were too many women without boundaries, too many women who worshiped your body, too many women who were afraid to challenge your lack of commitment, too many women who knew there was a revolving door. Too many women who didn’t have demands like I did.

I saw you this morning driving west on Broadway, your skin glowing in the sunlight against the white. I watched your lips as you looked right through me, and I smiled at the young girl staring at me as I passed, your arm across her shoulders.





© 5.3.2018 heather brager

Saturday, April 7, 2018

magic and lipstick.

she finds herself 
again, seared open, 
tender enchantment  
standing solitary 
in the corner 
she finds her 
skin is still soft
hair still falls carefully 
over shoulders and 
arms angled 
gentle like hooks 
for capture, 
weapons to love
with burning 
anticipation
that can only 
disqualify her

she finds herself 
again and again
hands empty, blue 
wide open, putting 
lipstick back on, and
that bra, those boots,
the mask that will be 
thrown aside next 
week, or next year
again, uncovered 

and she feels 
the magic before 
it enters the room, 
after it has faded 
away, again and again
disbelief turned to
emptiness, possibility 
left smoldering
then gone tepid,
the lost and the
found, and lost again


© 4.7.2018 heather brager



Monday, March 19, 2018

valediction.



daylight slips across the smudged
walls of an empty room, when you find
yourself twisted in an echo, afraid of north and
dragging south, when your entire life is
at your feet, two pieces of stone abandoned
under her pillows, when another year
presses your skin with fierce fingertips, her magic
will fall softly parallel to another, when you
tell yourself you are a solitary being,
she will still send you pale light with
hints of sandalwood and lavender



© 3.19.2018 heather brager






Tuesday, March 6, 2018

the healer.


please lean in
bend down gently my
beautiful apparition, our
adverse complements
lurk deep within a
story that neither
can amend

leave it there, or give
it back, but let me in

now I am crawling through
the damp lines, licking your
voice as I slide down
your throat, I am  
curling around
your solitary heart


© 3.6.2018 heather brager




Wednesday, February 14, 2018

falling, short.

too many midnights
recalculating the
balance of fear
over devotion,
totaling fragmented
panic minus
affection, the delta of
my heart in
your hands

© 2.14.2018 heather brager

Chiara Bautista.

Monday, February 5, 2018

contemplation with a ghost.





did you try not to flicker, an apparition coasting with his
hand pressed over hers, morning sun reflecting
off the Zakim bridge and she, wondering if you
were still hovering on the outside, peering in at strangers

night after night she bent beside you, a lamp
quietly illuminating a corner of the room, she
would watch your mouth, wondering if those words
were for her, or someone you had lost years before

she handed you the key without pretense, though
abuse is a vigilant perpetrator, and how could she
ever take back your childhood, how could she
ever wring out the darkness that lay within your bones

who do you miss when you look in the mirror, beautiful
man she loves still, broken fragments of a man once loved,
the remnants of something forgiven, or something
abandoned at the curb where you left her that night


© 2.5.2018 heather brager



Antony Micallef .

Monday, January 22, 2018

bend like a willow.



with an echo in the chamber
let go of loss, its empty space is not
a foundation, the notches carved
across your breastbone are not
the only way to hold space

dispel the value you have
tied to his verses, his mouth will tell
tales, memories will twist knots
around your wrists, the spaces between
will creak and moan with each exhale

stop leaving breadcrumbs
let him find his own way, tracing back
from north to south, you were not his
woman standing in the doorway, as the
moon dove deep inside the mirror




© 1.22.2018 heather brager

Zdzisław Beksiński

Saturday, January 6, 2018

breathing flora.

in a dream I 
planted a lily 
at the bottom of 
the sea, with pale 
cupped hands, I gently 
placed her roots 
beneath the 
shifting sand, dark 
water churned against
my skin under light 
refracting from 
above, and I awoke 
to drowning 
before it had a 
chance to bloom



© 1.6.2018 heather brager