Poetry

Her Oblivion

in , ,

There
see her
shallow breath

sternum contracted
she makes small movements
careful not to breath 

small smaller 

never perfect enough
tethered  to a leash

she tries to heel

having grown dog arms

she lives without love 

shadows move easily

within her like a song
see her crown of razor blades
her robe of mirrors

dry heaving on the bathroom floor
a sanctuary really
she is tracing the lines
on the tile’s grout
tiny roads to the River Styx
to Devil's Gulch and the Maurice Cemetery 

she hears things now
and pretends she's a widow
the ghost pine behind the house 

are her sisters 

beckoning her at night

he's hollering again

about how she ruins things 

she mumbles under her breath

cussing him in her languages
he calls her mad
sometimes she believes him
and keeps various powders

hidden in a compact, lines up the Xanax 

along her inseam, tucks them behind her ear

tiptoeing through the formal garden

chugging the vodka

dreaming of oblivion

she lives in the 4th sky

followed by birds
and knows how true monsters

despise what they love 

- Jolaoso Prettythunder

Cool Water Tonight

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It’s after midnight here. I just turned on the water to wash my hands and it’s ice cold. I bent down and drank from the pipe and am so grateful. Images pass through my mind of times water was so scarce. Toting water deep in the bush in Wassembo. There was a narrow dirt path in the village. One had to carry a Bamboo pole about 12 to 15 feet long, with a bucket at the end of it. Once at the water source, you had to put it down the hole, catch water and bring it back up. Then walk back to the village.

~Pretty Thunder

Happy New Year

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May each and everyone one of you be blessed beyond measure. May you see and experience joy in all you do and if joy eludes you in hard times, may peace and calm enfold you with the knowledge that challenging times always change and you will live and you will still be able to dream and celebrate all the veriditas of the worlds. May you walk out of history you no longer want or need. May you draw boundaries effortlessly when you have to. May love find you no matter your current state of being. You, are stars and cool water and always have been. You are pure magic if you want to be. You are myth and what weaves myth. May the winds of change be gentle. All is well, all is well, all is well. Hekua hey Iya mi! Heykua hey Iyansan

Love, Jolaoso Prettythunder

12AM

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screams like an animal Is animal

strange being wrapped in the fur of a lynx belly Face painted with camwood powder and charcoal

she climbs the walls while you all sleep and feeds her orchids ice cubes

this all means nothing This all means everything

she is eating raw bison and sips a demitasse of white rum Talks to her beloved through a day moon

there is no grace here

where a lover can be seen in the black arc of a swallow’s feather

3AM

you lover

i see you on the moonglade

you lover On my tongue

you are my languages

i cuss and praise you equally You dissolve as clouds at daybreak tomorrow

you arrive as rain over Nea Bay

Vigil 3

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Don’t speak

send me the arts

music poetry photography paintings Offer me magic and the West horizon Offer me incantations and prayers that require singing Bring me 8,000 candles and wood to burn mesquite piñon palo santo red cedar Bring me ceanothus root bring me chaparral for my tools set alight the resins breuzinho white copal and ghost pine i toil day and night searching for a place where’s he’s not gone from this world i do not rest i do not sleep i do not eat Bring me psilocybin DMT and iboga Bury me far beneath the Mourning Ground Send the Pointer and Shepard away Wrap me in my colors of annihilation

the colors of hurricanes and the endless road Wrap me in brown Wrap me in burlap

i have surrendered all my names and my foot print has changed

feed me small pieces of raw liver and salt Feed me the morning star

feed me glass from the collision at the crossroads

see me in the shaking earth

see me in the descending wren

see me walk among all that composts

summon me with your endless silence

summon me with your long gaze

you too are this

you too are oblivion

you too Are me closing the roads

Vigil 2

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where

i seek a vanishing

to be pure essence Where i have no name No memories

more than exile

i seek oblivion

a nightjar lives in a starred sky

a nightjar lives in twilight

make the appropriate offerings

resin. vine. your hands. reaching. be my perfume.

i am a violet at the crest of spring Waning Turning into a traveling song Turning into paper under the sun This is delirium This is grief and longing This is a grocery list and a forced march through arduous terrain This is already tomorrow Dragging the mezcal bottle from room to room

votif rain

votif flame

votif petals on your palms

you are the rose

Vigil 1

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this grief has me equipped for war

my eyes have no more tears yet still i cry Is this how deserts bloom?

i am plowing my little acre with a buffalo horn Season of violets and lupins salute me as i drive through the vineyards Pills tucked under each nail Hashish lined up like soldiers Tulips tired in my bedroom bend towards the sun How could i not simply dissolve and sink into the earth

It’s easy for me to stop loving you

in , , ,

it’s easy for me to stop loving you

The way the bobcat becomes rattlegrass on Inverness ridge The way a footprint is the mainsail then the lost visa You’re not new I’m datura along I-5 A ghost rattle This is how i came to Bloody Bay Tobago and to a husband who made sure the cupboard was full but dragged me by my hair from the bed to the joining room This is how women become fog and smoke and 1000 starlings leaving the city before you awaken