Green at the End

The world outside had turned into a forest. She had not been out in weeks and had not known, but she was running out of all food, so she tied a camo tank top over her face and stepped out. It was quiet. She walked down the stairs and outside and into it: tall trees stepping into the sky, moss beginning patchily on the street like an early beard, small red beetles, decaying logs, mud and unknown puddles of water. The supermarket was a hothouse, flowers lining the shelves. There was a purple flower that she thought had risen up from the inside of the earth, exposing the inner, shivery part of earth, the fullest and most muscled part. She held out a hand to pick it but pulled back. She went home again to open all the windows, in case the flowers would grow in themselves, perhaps winding around the radiators, up the walls, the curtain rods, nesting in the cool dank space under the sofa and behind the refrigerator. She locked the door behind her so that they would stay inside, maybe, so the secret would not overflow into other apartments, though it was all over the world. She put her keys in her jacket pocket and left.

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When the End is Near

I don’t know what to expect
because I never died before.
Maybe I will be greeted by
A pair of blue unicorns or
a rainbow and a waterfall
or colorful birds singing my
favorite tunes or I might see
a night sky filled with stars
I once saw on a summer night,
only now I will finally get to see
the man in the moon releasing
all those silvery shooting stars.

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The Girl Who Wanted Soup

She rose at 3:15 from her plastic chair,
the wooden desk carved with curses.
Her bones began to sing.
She ran home to unwed shoes,
lost socks, and blue shadows,
chores to complete until dark,
criticism swallowed like bites of tough meat.

She focused on the bright stars,
the winter air, crisp as a white shirt,
and soup.

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Sky Communion

Last night the sky was a child
coughing into a blanket, drawing
itself from a pale aurora jabbed
with another storm on the sun,
as if it’s got a circle of old friends
jumping tombstones. There might
have been a tribe of younger stars
dropping empty green rose-stems
through our curtains. Except last
night the child slipped its ghost
and stretched the sunrise against
the river trees.

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Last Known Location of Snr Wil Flowers, Director of Intelligence, NWF

You always want it to make sense, 
Like knucklebones, like how swallowing works. 
Simple eye of mechanics developed 
Over millions of years of failure. Humans
Are the success of their failure time and time again. 
That’s whats truly alien. Truly unnatural
As the sky opens up, the black roll of stars, planets –
Some like necks on the gallows, some like an arena stage. 
The maw is the medicine with death as a common side effect. 

Then, nothing makes sense. Its a fugue state, lips dripping 
Words over delayed relays. Mission specialists
Still sitting in Ohio struck mud like American-made pigs, 
while you snort down wildlife powder and hope the TOG adaptions 
They gave you don’t go liquid in your stomach. Survival 
Rates of surgery in orbit aren’t what they used to be. 
You, your own scalpel and organ donor, doctor, and lawyer. 

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Dear Type-A Friend,

This is to let you know I’m newly funemployed.
I’ve grown weary of the restless noise
of earth, so I plan to gadabout the universe
in search of alternatives to humanoids.
Perhaps I’ll terraform an asteroid
and confirm the latest scientific claims
it contains quintillions in gold.
I’ll appoint myself its CEO
and send you a prospectus once
I’ve penciled out investment strategies.

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Ode to John Ashbery

One day you finally knew
what you’d been put there to do,
and did it
while the loud voices rang louder
and tugged at your sleeve,
each cry a death cry, a flashing red sign.
But you knew.
You knew what you had to do,
though the thread unwound round you
leaving you nakeder and nakeder,
its melancholy terrible.
Then the queerest thing happened.
Being almost already too late, and too dark,
the moon threw down
a bird, a
shining wild raven and in its mouth,
a flower of life.
The stars burned in its brilliance,
at first saw themselves shyly
then danced and shone round to
find themselves extraordinary.

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Rocket Man

I said my goodbyes, turned back to the shore, stopped trying to find you. It took me awhile, took me a few more pink striped skies, a few more mountains, a few more years. But I found my way, wrested my skin from yours, saved myself from going under. I talk to you still, the way we always talked, close and deep without platitudes or pretense. You know I have forgiven you for all the ways you almost took me with you. You didn’t mean to, never meant for me to get swept into your undertow. You tried to stop it but I was desperate for a reason to fade away.

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Former Self Release

Jennifer Lothrigel is a poet and artist residing in the San Francisco Bay area. She has just published her first chapbook through Liquid Light Press, titled ‘Pneuma’. Her work has also been published in Arcturus, Deracine, Rag Queen Periodical, Poetry Quarterly, NILVX and elsewhere. Former Self Release She was feather drifting into the night. Her […]

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