The February Selected Poet is Donna Dallas
Please feel free to email Donna at: nickidallasinc@aol.com
NO PLACE LIKE HOME
I miss the vultures
when they pick
and pull
at rotting corpses
along the road
I need to go back
get home bled
we all need
a good bleeding
There’s a taint
I need it sucked out
before it spreads
Stare at the lines and
deep crevices in my palms
how long is my life-line?
how long to my end?
I want my mommy
to lull me to sleep
before the vultures arrive…
Bats in the shed
never afraid
they eat all the bugs
there is a purpose for it all
my bleeding heart included
ASTERAL NAVIGATION
Every night I die
fall into my astral self
float out my ass and back in
through my eye sockets
to feel connected
fully integrated
While
this yellow
oozy
moon
creeps over my head
I linger in my own scent
bloodhounds sniff a dried turd
there is nothing here but an osprey
she will gouge out your eyes in
protection of her young
Screams push to be released
they lurk in the crevices
between lung and heart
some sound—like a moan
trickles out
It’s just my death
over and over
in search of my naked self
DEAD BLUE JAYS
the Garden of Eden
in my backyard
enter if you please
please me if you enter
don’t step on the dead blue jays
how lovely they
remained blue
for so long
while their grayed oozy
hearts soak
into my earth
my hearth
my rotting heart
Exit when
I get this way
this awfulness
buried beneath pretty
under blue jays
there’s that rot
it’s a kind of addiction
this dirt carries me
this overgrowth covers my dead
I am so lonely
I bed the earth
Donna Dallas studied creative writing and philosophy at NYU. She has recently appeared in Red Fez, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Opiate, Beatnik Cowboy, Burning House Press and several other publications. Her recent novel, Death Sisters (Alien Buddha Press) has just hit the market. Donna serves on the editorial team of Red Fez.
You can find her on Twitter at @DonnaDallas15