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Autumn Lala

The February Editor's Pick Poet is Autumn Lala

Please feel free to email Autumn at: theautumnlala@gmail.com

Autumn

INESCAPABLE INTROSPECTION

Today, I could avoid it no longer:
like the rest of them, the shivers set in,
the tingling began, first, in my head—
temporal twitches, parietal pandering,
occipital occasionally obtrusive or opprobrius,
frontal fidgeting, flighty—fading
between one identity and another—crisis
averted, subverted, converted?—we have
formed a colorless corpse de ballet, infected
by our electronic environs—we
dance in digital, mindless time, feet
light as they frolic through the field
of 1 0 1 1 0 1 0—nothing more
than pawns and pixels—not feeling
the wires as they slither around our
throats.

MASKS

He peels the face back with pastry precision,
Careful not to nick the lips, clip the ears,
And the eyelashes fall, lifeless like a doll—
He grins, happy with his vision.

The skin curls more at the corners than he expects,
And the hairline, tinged fuzzy and red—
With a little doctoring, it might match up yet,
Pleased, he picks up the scalpel once again.

Once more, he steps back, takes in the face,
The mouth does not pucker prettily, frowning flat—
And the nose is a little lopsided, a little jaded—
He sets about, fixing this and that.

It is not perfect, not quite correct,
But he knows every mask is a project.

ETERNAL TEMPORAL TANTRUMS

She spews selfish soliloquies
as if I am not listening—strapped
to a chair, knotted wrists her own
making—madness is
a term invented specifically
for her—I have had
plenty of time to think
it over in her dank, one
window attic—occasionally
interrupted by the tap tap tap
of a woodpecker—but I
have also wondered why
I am here—hidden between
dusty boxes, creaking wood, shifting
dreams—fragile to reality—tap
tap tap—questioning
sanity—symmetrical
soliloquies—the tap
tap tap resounding through
the slight spaces of
the straps, savoring sinking
into my skin—and at last snow
shrouds the window, each special
snowflake smiling up at me—and
still, the tap tap tap is never
ending.

MON COEUR MORT

I shiver beneath the onslaught of
your bludgeoning gaze—assaulted
by the intensity of your irises.

You come during night, through
shadow doors, silhouetted by
stars—the dark conceals so much:

The hovering heavens from your
hadean touch, my eyes from
the caking blood—and yet…

Your searing eyes are kind, full
of blooming love—I have yet to
learn I am blind in matters of lust.

Autumn Lala is a young writer earning a dual-English degree in Rhetoric & Professional Writing and Creative Writing Fiction at the University of Cincinnati. Autumn enjoys writing poetry and various forms of fiction; regular updates on her current projects—including a YA, mainstream novel titled FINE and her first YA trilogy, a non-traditional, dystopian-fantasy series—can be found on her Facebook writer page.