Home, skipped with every symptom
known to fifth-grade-kind,
sick of every re-run
and trapped outside of storybooks,
what adventure could be better than emptying
the overflowing closet?
Even the sickest faker
would clean if they envisioned
a clubhouse in a 3 by 3 foot space
Author: Alphabet Ravine
Lydia Rae Bush (she/her) is a poet exploring themes of embodiment and social-emotional development. Her work is Best of the Net nominated and can be found in publications such as Corporeal, Querencia Press, and Bleating Thing. Her chapbook Free Bleeding is out now with dogleech books.
Unspecified Note
Your good-bye arrives devoid of return address,
all well-wishes and finality.
I do not yet know your meaning of good-bye.
So I check obituaries for ghosts of present, future,
or past, that may never come.
That shifting mirages will haunt my dreams
is my only certainty:
Fathoms
I don’t know that we are quite so mundane as the diamonds,
rare,
nor like the snowflakes:
Unique,
or merely multifaceted?
The light inside our souls’ zones
goes down in shades,
Sugar and Acid
I’m sorry to your craft beer, but I scan the cocktails.
It’s not that I want a fruity drink— I just can’t pass the citrus.
I’ve seen berries turn what’s sweet to sweeter then melt to nothing,
but my mandarin soul could make a stoic pucker.
Sharing the Trash Compactor
The man, whose phrase translates
to my grammar if not my custom,
reassures me literally,
Skinny
Dip with me into the lakes,
immersed in murky water, which covers
how far we
have yet to go.
Trust Displace
If I have said the truth permitted and nothing but the truth permitted,
have you seen, in my navigation of social convention,
my honesty? My openness?
Adaptation
Strong and small and fragile and soft,
and always still standing-
#ally #enlightened
The stranger said, “My name is Ken.
What can I ask the god of the universe for, for you?”
I said, “I need my husband to land a job
that pays some bills while preserving his health.”
Ken said, “You don’t understand your plight
as a woman in our sexist world-
Opportunity
I can do
anything,
but sometimes I do
nothing,
Alphabet Ravine 