Spring 2018, Volume 24

Poetry by Lana Bella

Dear Isadore,

Marked by ocean, kissed by storms,
I was something feline eye turned 
down to a tinsel slit. A ship-wrecked
girl cusped wings in a house of glass, 
I broke jaw when mouth hungered
sand, a collage with black writhing
over feet borne in the seasons of dry
loam and cinders. Dearest Isadore,
how I sailed on the clovers in which
memory returned kinship, heartache
worn smooth as a boat’s stern. This
moon, tonight, coppered by cedar
rust, gurgled on my window sill like
a phantom ground down to bone dust 
small, where I left me beside too-
sipped tea overlooking a sea of quiet
steps, smear of lips holding your name.

 

 

 

BIO: A four-time Pushcart Prize, five-time Best of the Net & Bettering American Poetry nominee, Lana Bella is an author of three chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016), Adagio (Finishing Line Press, 2016), and Dear Suki: Letters (Platypus 2412 Mini Chapbook Series, 2016). Lana resides in the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps.