Lynn
2024-01-17 09:24 pm
though it has been so long, i have not forgotten you. i have searched for you among the crowded shelves of bookshops, the cobbled displays of libraries, the take-one-leave-one boxes scattered through town. i have dug deep in my jacket pockets for the notes and coins needed to take you home with me. i have cradled you close to me underneath my coat while i am waiting for the 6:58 bus. i have found you in tulip bulbs peeking above the soul for the sun, late august thunderstorms that pelted our new apartment, the january wind that brings ice and chapped hands. you have made sure your spine stands straighter when i roam through each aisle, saturated and dewey with books. you have pushed the dimes and nickels into my grasping fingers so that we may spend our time together that much quicker. you have squeezed me hard as we step off the bus at 7:34. you have flung yourself through the sky and earth to find me in the smallest of stolen moments. you kiss my hands and my head and flush them rosy with emotion. you have not forgotten me either, it seems.
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Lynn
2023-05-12 09:46 pm
Dear [insert name of co-worker or supervisor here], It was [insert positive noun or adjective here] to work with you. I always admired your [insert dubiously positive quality here, be snitty or passive-aggressive if you so wish]. My favorite memory here was the time when [insert vaguely positive memory here; if none, insert successful venture here; if none, indicate that there were too many positive memories to choose just one; or if that even feels too disingenuous, skip directly to next paragraph]. I wish you [circle one or more: prosperity / health / joy / all the best]. Sincerely, [sign name here] [remember: be POSITIVE! your time here was WONDERFUL! you gained SO MUCH experience! you made TONS of friends! you leave on GREAT terms! the BEST! ]
Lynn
2023-05-12 09:32 pm
Sitting outside the shop on a cloudy May afternoon, my hand scrawls on the back of a receipt a list of the aspects of myself: - the moles in morse code down the side of my face ($4.99) - the scars on my leg in bumpy braille ($12.76) - the skin covering my knuckles, shining where it has split so many times over ($29.97, sale price) - the soul filled with self-loathing, boiling, bubbling over the rim ($10.19) - my spine, doubled over and bent backward ($17.22, CLEARANCE) - the effort I put into eject all but the smallest parts of myself as a collection of trinkets, an amalgamation of dust bunnies ($0.99) I must have picked these up, absentmindedly, through my time in the shop. Where can I put these back? I didn't want them. Why did I pay for them, pulling out my wallet in a daze? I never knew they existed. I must have entered a girl and left a much older woman. How long was I standing underneath the humming lights? I crumple up the scratch paper and toss it in the bin as the sun waves from the overcast.
Lynn
2023-01-07 08:58 pm
Octopus language— a liquid whisper to fish. You would never know. Artificial dream made for a lonely machine. Logical blunder. These glimpses of you, neither invention nor collapse would be more lonely. Condense your rival knight into red and a warning under your shoes. Plasma forms a line. Boundary between light and liquid given up. Turquoise milk mixing into my porridge. Daily occurrence.
Lynn
2022-10-13 01:36 pm
It was cold & the sky was too red as the sunset came too early - my brain was spinning with those letters & numbers & they were falling out of my ears. I looked at the asphalt and I saw my past and future yawning out - both in the same direction on the one-way road but my ears were too cold to listen, to learn. It was too austere in the building & too frigid outside & too glacial in the car picking its way home through the ice and old snow. It was too much too few & not enough of anything at all. & it swarmed. Threes with wings and velocities out with compound eyes buzz & sting & leave me paralyzed, there on the curb.
Lynn
2022-08-19 12:46 am
ceaseless, i wait here in my hall of stone. my continuous, meditative, monotonous vigil only broken by the sound of a camera shutter or the scratch of charcoal over rough paper. my silence never ends, since my marble knees do not know the hour when they will straighten and carry me away, nor my spine knows when to crack and unfurl my body tall, higher than the skylight under which i am displayed, nor my dainty dress knows when to settle itself more comfortably over my shoulders. so here i remain, forever more statue than woman. one evening, out of the blue twilight the night guard saunters in, bold and butch and self-assured (her footfalls give her away) without warning, she leans in close, shining her beam in my placid face, and i cannot blink away the yellow light (and never would, just to glimpse once more upon her lovely face) hastily she whispers in my ear, instantly transforming my marble to rose quartz and slowly then, she kisses me, soft and earnest and fleeting and suddenly i am more woman than statue.
Lynn
2022-08-17 02:15 am
here i lie (not yet asleep) in my childhood bedroom (my soul to keep) under my childhood quilt (made by my grandmother) holding my childhood cat (could there by any other?) and listening to the cicadas cry over (mourn) the loss of my sister (come morn) when she moves away (just to our college town) into her tiny, adulthood dorm (someday to wear a cap and gown) with her adulthood newfound friends(i thought it was just the four of us) and her adulthood future portends (why couldn't it have always been the four of us?) and listening to her professors drone on (just like the cicada) as she compiles reports, and essays, in jargon (raw data) and- and- and i wonder, will she miss me too?
Lynn
2022-06-10 05:31 pm
espresso bean in the espresso machine located here in the mezzanine we serve your drinks with sweetness and cream a fountain of everlasting caffeine. espresso bean in the espresso machine and not just coffee, we also serve cuisine! the chocolate brownie is a hit with the teens huddled together near the register screen. espresso bean in the espresso machine here the noise is quite serene amidst those coming and going, a calm in-between come on over! help set the scene! espresso bean in the espresso machine week after month, to form a routine yet the tasks of today remain unseen ‘tis the life of those on the library team.
Lynn
2022-04-14 10:27 pm
to stop what you are doing and beg in a different way than before for a chance to change; to cause a beginning, a genesis to start anew in a parallel version of your life where you have finally shaken off the slumber, opened your eyes to start a new journey but can it truly be a blank slate if the dust from the eraser still chokes the air?
Lynn
2022-04-14 10:00 pm
away from work is time for family away from family is time with myself away from myself is time to write away from writing is time to work
Lynn
2022-03-23 11:45 am
I smear vaseline in the corners of my mouth with a cotton swab to seal the cracks that are carved there from smiling too wide from laughing too loud from speaking my mind. I smudge the nails on my hands with paint, pearlescent and pink to keep from moving to keep from creating to keep from fully living. I confine myself to an apple and egg whites each day to mold by body into what I see in waiting room magazines into what it was when I was a child into something impossible. how futile, it seems, to meter my joy, to suppress the wind. because, when one tries to obstruct what rightfully will pass, it gains strength, channels down one slim canyon, and blows everyone away.
Lynn
2022-01-25 11:14 am
the first time i heard the word was in the third grade as teacher taught us, piously, of the price He paid as He felt the spike rip though tearing his palms asunder, in two He pleaded, Father, why me? why must the sacrifice i be? the first time i understood the word was in the sixth grade as i started the decline into womanhood as I lay, fetal, on the bathroom floor and the blood soaked my legs and the pain a dull roar I prayed, a desperate plea, Mother, why me? why must a woman I be?
Lynn
2021-07-27 10:45 pm
what sleeps in the forest beside the highway? what lays its small head on dismembered takeout boxes and curls up beneath plastic bags emblazoned with ‘thankyouthankyouthankyou’? does it give thanks for small polyurethane luxuries? for the refuse it calls its refuge? what feeds on the grease and fumes from the roaring mechanical parade? does it lick its lips afterwards? what learns to cross the glimmering cement - first timidly, then wanton and triumphant after practice? what watches? what does it notice? what emerges from the forest beside the highway, large and lumbering, to repay the generosity of its benefactors in kind?
Lynn
2021-06-18 04:38 am
my god i’m so lonely so i set my small salt lamp on the edge of the window on the tiny wooden ledge i turn the dial clockwise and the light burns in my eyes sending a message to the dog across the street the only one who might be able to understand my mess of signals, signs indistinguishable from the clothes heaped on my floor nobody, nobody nobody nobody nobody, oh, nobody nobody somebody, anybody, nobody, again.
Lynn
2021-04-01 11:42 pm
sycophantic silhouette stalks into the room and the woman who casts it brings death, immortal doom she bids disguise fall when the man sees her through never a dame, but bluegreenbrown eyes, same as you you, who lives their life by ritual, routine will never see the cold, red blood or the glistening sheen of sweat on the brow of a new, soft corpse or the embers of the flame that drive you north your cadence keeps you pliant, your rhyme bids you no further! what drove you to this, to poetry, to murder? as the blade bids adieu through the back of his skull and the red of his head grows increasingly dull and the light bleeds out of the sword in his eye ‘any woman can see him orgasm, but how many see him die?’
Lynn
2021-02-08 01:19 am
quite literally they cannot spill out of my mouth into the toilet bowl fast enough green, neophyte, insensate swirling around in the clear, shallow water, they almost look like they are swimming ancient, ferric, turpentine its midnight on sunday afternoon and the morning never felt so far away verily, salt, halcyon pulling the lever, they swirl away, the letters sloshing together into a murky soup gestalt, vermilion, fear they turn into equations with no solutions when i bring my hand away from my mouth, wiping ouroboros, nineteen, baseless i know better than to brush my teeth golden, gale, corridor i know better than to go back to bed right after demilune, murmur, mirror linoleum, throat, nightgown listless, lucid, dreamer
Lynn
2021-01-13 05:29 pm
holding the box between two fingers so it does not fall the hand is not pandora’s; she has been dead for centuries inside the lid, an amateur’s attempt at a cumulonimbus the sky behind them greener than the clouds before a tornado the clouds themselves whiter than the dust after what will become of the box? will it house bangles and bracelets and small forgotten memories? will the hinges rust and the sky become separated from the ground? will it ever find its way home?
Lynn
2020-12-17 01:12 pm
sitting on the red couch eating rice and beans straight from the pot the rice is undercooked and toothy it sticks to my spine it burns my throat picking around green peppers while the south winter sun runs through the window and reflects off the floor and is blinding bright it burns my eyes it doesn’t feel warm at all despite the two pairs of socks and layered shirts and oh i’m so tired. might just. wrap up in a blanket and go to sleep.
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