Poetry by Anna Mukamal

Light Refracted, Truth Collected


chill pill, for lack of a
more scientific term

I've heard they're manufacturing

a sanity-saving innovation these days,

something cosmically important.

A saucer-shaped innovation

to alleviate my massive headache.

It's just a theory with relativity, but

what would it be like if we all

orbited around our collective insecurity

like planets around the sun,

relinquishing control to an unseen force

like fate, or something equally discreet?

If we let ourselves float interminably, a

certain centripetal acceleration pulling us

radially inwards yet our incredible

velocity keeping us in the outer

layers of the atmosphere, far away

from the planet's otherworldly worries,

the galactic gamma-like dangers,

the immensity of human folly.

I believe we'd be unstoppable satellites,

following elliptical paths, never being

brought down by the world's vast array of

problems, regardless of their gravity.



A Pair of Jeans

Jean is staring at Jean

with recalcitrance.

You'd never guess her

anger had faded,


especially since she'd been

washed, hung up to

dry and left alone on

Saturday while Jean


went out with Levi.

"So Lucky!" So

Jean branded Jean

a bad sister.


"Aren't we supposed

to be a pair?"

Jean exclaimed, but

Jean didn't listen so


Jean gave her the boot,

cutting and flaring

her temper, leaving

holes in the fabric


of her size zero patience

and making her

resent her sister, since

she'll always be


just one of the

pair of Jeans.



1:28 a.m.

Now you're holding up

a piece of me, a shard

of shattered glass, and

you're waving it in the air,

moving it side to side,

refracting light in colorful

prisms of enigmatic meaning,

capturing like a dreamcatcher

the light from my weary eyes,

my irises exhausted from all

the searching and focusing on

him, of singing hymns of no

real religion and listlessly

praying for someone to

understand me, to recognize

the value of stained glass

even though I'm broken, even

though I'm either dangerously

jagged and hopelessly imperfect,

or I'm the perfect last piece to

the mosaic you must complete

to see the beauty in yourself



Mollification


There is the most satisfyingly continuous stream of

consciousness pouring down in waves, in sheets

of effervescent memories, in a deluge of dreams,

a watershed of wishes and a downpour of desire.

I cannot catch my breath; I cannot flee, yet

this type of waterboarding is torture-free.










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