she is fierce

Independent poet, fiction author, and freelance editor based on Long Island, New York. Author of Ready Aim Fire (November, 2016), Basket Case (June, 2017), and Exit Ghost (January, 2018). Twitter || Instagram || Facebook kofiwidget2.init('Buy Me a Coffee', '#46b798', 'Z8Z671VQ');kofiwidget2.draw();

[lexivranick]

Poetic Justice: Interview With Lexi Vranick - YA Indulgences

Hi! This post is a little late going up today. I had a bit of a Veronica Mars marathon last night, which is no surprise if you have seen my Twitter. Anyway, welcome back to the fifth day of Poetic Justice! I hope you have been enjoying the other poets’ posts. I know I have. Poetic Justice is a month long event, beginning April 1st to April 30th in honor of National Poetry Month. Throughout April there will be interviews, guest posts, excerpts and other poetic posts. I hope you will follow along. To read the introductory post, read about …

what does poetry mean to you? For me, poetry is the way I understand. It’s the way I process emotions. Putting words to my feelings, no matter how dark or confused they might be, and turning them into art helps me understand myself and the world around me. It has also, over the years as I’ve gotten more and more comfortable sharing pieces that more personal and intimate, given me a way to communicate. I feel like, when speaking out loud, I get anxious and trip over my words. When I write poetry, I have time to think and edit and rewrite and perfect exactly what I want to say. It gives me the confidence to say (or rather, write) what’s on my mind without a filter and without fear of stumbling over the words.

For National Poetry Month 2018, I was interviewed by Amber of YA Indulgences!

[lexivranick]

White Knuckles and Broken Cars - Poetry - Cagibi Literary Journal

A poem by Lexi Vranick, a poet and fiction writer from Long Island, New York.

white knuckle rush hour grips when the sunset should be beautiful but all I can think about is the rubber-burn and tire screech of car crashes; of smoke and police sirens and the creep, crawl slow of traffic. | White Knuckles and Broken Cars, featured in Issue 2 of Cagibi Literary Journal. 

[lexivranick]

Maybe this is magic; a quiet afternoon passed beside you, as the sun peeks out from behind a veil of clouds, you and me and a purple sky – that sounds like magic to me.

63/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

Sometimes I think maybe you were just a fever dream – fragmented in restless sleep, and gone by morning.

62/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

Wind whips the sand and waves into the wild – into a storm long-brewed in a sky turned dark with clouds, that tosses water into streets and makes oceans out of parking lots, I’ll wait it out with you.

61/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

The twist of muscles soon to be sore – arms bent behind backs and breath counted in fives, dim lights and eyes fixed on the floor, the sky, the floor again, until it comes time to rest.

60/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

Arms reaching – further, and further, and further still the pull of muscles and as fingers stretch for the sun, the moon, the stars and the chest filling, deflating, and filling again – pull the good in and push everything else out, draw in what you need and leave what you don’t in the air that drifts around you as you reach for the sun and ask the clouds to lift you away.

59/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

The forecast calls for rain and I wonder if it heard me when I asked you to show me you’re still here – because you loved the rain, delighted in the storms that crashed like fireworks outside your window, and I remember how you watched the drops collect and gather on the glass, traced them like you might draw their magic through your skin; I still think of you when it rains, and I still think, maybe, you pour those buckets out for me.

58/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

A RECIPE FOR A PERFECT MORNING – 3 rays of sunlight, sifted through broken blinds 1 soft breeze whistled through a half-opened window, a pinch of dog tags jingling and paws thudding across the floor 1 orange, peeled 1 cup of coffee, brewed black – no milk, no sugar a floor cool from a night passed quiet and glass doors warmed by the rising sun.

57/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

Orange peels, citrus stuck on skin for hours - essence of one cup of morning tea, the memories of this hazy morning linger for the day.

56/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

I watch the world flash by from a train car – people smudged to blurs train-track rattles and buildings warp, flags ripple in the wind; as if time, too quickens along the track.

55/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

I have spent so long chasing tomorrows – head high and starry eyed, always reaching for page corners, anxious to move on, move on, move on to the next step, the next day, the next – turned a life of yesterdays, and now each morning I gulp down sunbeams and try to learn how to live today.

54/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

We were morning coffees, bittersweet – We were white curtains and cotton sheets, we were fog and open windows and mist that hangs heavy - We were all the things that look beautiful in photo filters, that all the classics waxed poetic in those texts we read in class – We were, but not meant to be.

53/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

I saw you in a sunbeam on a mountaintop, reaching down into the valleys carved deep in the earth as if you might pluck something out, and I wondered what it might be that you asked the sun to help you touch. I saw you in golden light climbing down toward the horizon, pulling the night-sky curtain down slow, slow, slow. Blinking hazy on the green forest edge of the earth. And I didn’t want to leave because I didn’t want to lose you. But the world grew darker and you winked in that bright yellow ray and flickered over treetops and I raced back down that mountainside, following you. Following you. And I think I might have missed you, for when I reached the bottom I could not find you in the moon. The sun had taken you away, again. Pulled you across the sky and over oceans and how cruel it is that cosmos cannot just let us be. We have only daylight hours, clear-sky moments. And I will spend them chasing sunbeams over mountaintops, so that I can grab every glimpse of you.

52/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

We wander back to sun-kissed summers, beaches and pink wine; red cups stuck in the sand like flags claiming this land as our own – for the moment, for the afternoon or evening as the sky turns to pink, to purple, as the stars blink awake and the moon drags silver across the water, and we light the night with bonfire flames, and we talk as the smoke joins hands with the stars, as the sand gets cool, and then cold and the summer drags on into fall.

51/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

I sift memories like sand, build them into high-walled castles with towers stretched to the sun race the tide – dig moats to keep them safe from the roaring, raging sea – the waves that push and pull, ready to take them and sweep them away.

50/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.

[lexivranick]

You were like fresh frost: a world painted in white – postcard perfect; quiet, and soft, and radiant in the pink morning light, the snowfall we didn’t know we needed, didn’t know we’d love, until we saw it in the veil of purple sunbeams – and, like the snow the more we loved you, the faster you left.

49/365 poems in 2018. (l.v.) ready aim fire, basket case, and exit ghost now available on amazon or signed.