#rust+moth

[danielriddlerodriguez]

WHERE THE HEART IS

—Beth Davies

It was a useful definition of home until I realised I’d left a ventricle at university, along with my raincoat.

There’s one aorta in my childhood bedroom, a chunk of cardiac muscle in my friend’s pocket, and another in my housemate’s rucksack.

Arteries stretch out from this body like tripwires, connecting me to small towns I only know by name.

From your end of the phone I hear this scattered organ, beating louder than ever.

[bostonpoetryslam]

When my mother died she broke the bowl of the sky; I stretched a soft cloth across the gap, covered my nakedness, my rage. The limits of that gesture were slowly revealed as all things are, but tell that to me then.

Michael Mercurio, “The Bowl of the Sky,” published in Rust + Moth

[words-in-lines]

Lisa Huffaker, “Murmuration”

[bostonpoetryslam]

In the cornfield, I found the body of a girl next to mine, and she was the first time I’d hidden myself in the sweat of summer, and I’d forgotten the where and who, questions answered by another question, why, until we stood to brush the dirt off our backs, unbending our starch-stiff Peter Pan collars into the crispness of a straighter shape.

Erin Jin Mei O’Malley, “Virgo,” published in Rust + Moth