Little Galaxies

Roya Backlund. ©LA-based word lover and artist. Escaping is my strength and my weakness.

[bellydancingsmoke]

I’ve released my first full-length collection of poetry! It’s available for purchase in print as well as through Kindle format. It’s free on Kindle Unlimited! Thank you so much to the publications that first brought some of these poems to light:

@wordsdancemag for publishing “Jasmine Oil” @risingphoenixpress for publishing “Ink”, “Honey”, and “Blood” @polyesterzine for publishing “Tree Sap”, “Girl”, and “Tar”, and lastly, @thefemlitmag for publishing “Shaving Cream”. Thank you SO much to the rest of the team at @kings-zine for your help in bringing this collection to fruition! Your blood is deeply embedded in every page. And most importantly, thank you all so much for following, liking, and reblogging my work. It has been such a beautiful part of the process to exchange poetry with so many people from so many different walks of life. I truly hope this book makes some part of your world easier, as your love has made mine. ❤

[bellydancingsmoke]

Once I learned how to sharpen it / No became my strongest weapon / Once I figured out how to use it / No became my favorite word

Excerpt from “OIL SPILL” by Roya Backlund (via bellydancingsmoke)

[bellydancingsmoke]

They tell us: ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,’ but I’ve seen first hand how love has a body count, how the colors of its explosion are mesmerizing for a moment but I know I wish you didn’t pull the grenade so close to me.

Excerpt from “PEACH” by Roya Backlund (via bellydancingsmoke)

[bellydancingsmoke]

In Lana Del Rey’s defense: She is not the first to promise she tastes like Pepsi-Cola. In fact, I’ve always known my body is best resembling a bottle, plump at the bust and then squeezed tight at the waist, a perfect fit for a hand to wrap itself around. I’ve always known my mouth is a glass rim, to cap it red enough for him to know exactly where to place his lips and tilt me back onto his tongue. And when I get to his tongue, excite him with just the right fizz, leave him thirsty for more, and on the days I feel flat, shake myself up until I’m overflowing, even if half of me is wasted on the countertop. At least the rest of me will taste ready. Especially when Lana knows her eyes are wide like cherry pies, like buttons you push on the soda machine at movie theaters to give your girl an added kick, a specificity of flavor marking her brand a little easier to tell apart from others. No, she’s not the first to be consumed. Us girls know all about bottling ourselves sweet enough for him remember how good it tasted. It’s always been, so it’s no surprise.

“PEPSI-COLA” by Roya Backlund

[bellydancingsmoke]

I want him to remember: I’m making a home here. I’m building an altar in the blackest corner, erecting stained glass across the hollows they drilled into his back and the sky will rush through our story. There will be no denying I loved him here, that we weren’t afraid of the dark here, where we laugh knowing no one else understands the joke, where we are the dirt under each other’s nails, where we slaughter the whole truth and it’s enough to feed us for weeks. We live here until the candles run out of wick then seal ourselves together with hot wax. Our fingerprints: the only sigil we need. Someday, they’ll uncover our cave paintings and try to write about our ruins for the history books but we’re making sure no archaeologist could ever decipher what we mean.

From “CANDLE WAX” by Roya Backlund (via bellydancingsmoke)

[black-0rpheus]

RIP Carrie Fisher (October 21, 1956 - December 27, 2016)

[bellydancingsmoke]

💔

[bellydancingsmoke]

When I tell you that 'I miss you', it’s leaking through my pride and leaks need to be bandaged up. The words are in danger of becoming a constant reproduction until the original loses it’s meaning.

Excerpt from “QUICKSAND” by Roya Backlund

[bellydancingsmoke]

I want him to remember: I’m making a home here. I’m building an altar in the blackest corner, erecting stained glass across the hollows they drilled into his back and the sky will rush through our story. There will be no denying I loved him here, that we weren’t afraid of the dark here, where we laugh knowing no one else understands the joke, where we are the dirt under each other’s nails, where we slaughter the whole truth and it’s enough to feed us for weeks. We live here until the candles run out of wick then seal ourselves together with hot wax. Our fingerprints: the only sigil we need. Someday, they’ll uncover our cave paintings and try to write about our ruins for the history books but we’re making sure no archaeologist could ever decipher what we mean.

From “CANDLE WAX” by Roya Backlund

[champagnebreeze]

[webcomicname]

[bellydancingsmoke]

Women and men are still just broken boys and girls dressed in suits, embellished in lipstick, sending out resumés, trembling over bank statements, yelling “fuck" all throughout the day, gritting their teeth trying to convince the world they're a whole lot tougher than they really are.

“LIPSTICK” by Roya Backlund

[bellydancingsmoke]

They tell us: ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,’ but I’ve seen first hand how love has a body count, how the colors of its explosion are mesmerizing for a moment but I know I wish you didn’t pull the grenade so close to me.

Excerpt from “PEACH” by Roya Backlund (via bellydancingsmoke)

[leahberman]

If you let my soul out

Los Angeles, California

instagram

[visual-poetry]

[kalabaliikki]

the ones you have lost push you gently forward by india k

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

Do not be jealous of your sister: know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one’s lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.

Neil Gaiman, Instructions (via liquidlightandrunningtrees)

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

There are poets who sing you to sleep and poets who ready you for war and I want to be both.

Ashe Vernon (via liquidlightandrunningtrees)

[bellydancingsmoke]

I thought of the man crying 'I am a God,' despite being a man of God, showing us that all it takes to be a God is to call yourself one, cornered in a hospital room, the mortals outside, furious he had the audacity to prove himself wrong.

“When I heard that Kanye was exhausted” by Roya Backlund