Two Poems


Jessica L. Walsh


Colossal

Her teachers were fiction which is to say
not enough of one not enough of two

She stepped back when the lions came
but later orbited towards their twitching curious muzzles

She dozed on the flank of one and then two
She trusted hungry beasts she believed

yet all the fitful night her hands leapt to her neck
and she awoke choking on her shield

Instinct was all around

At dawn she read thick red pools tracked
a fading path and asked Who wrote this


***


Starring as Vigilante

A shrieking page holds
the note through the slanted hours. 

The year has ended, and she claps
palms together, alright, well, now,
enough of that. But then hands curl
fingers into palms—

and what of a shiny mouth? She wears
the slang beauty of her class: grid and cable,
filler. Manage, corners murmur. 

A party or a blackout never happened. Ice breaks

in the sink. The clank
of another chunk cracking
terrifies her again. She can’t sleep

for listening, even after

the new box of time opens its fresh minutes.

The ice the day the lips are the
red sock in the laundry, spinning. Today
is not a revolution: At year’s end,
she is nowhere to be found.


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Jessica Walsh recently received first prize and publication in the Third Wednesday annual poetry contest. Her work is forthcoming in Driftwood and has recently appeared in The Catalonian Review, Listening Eye, and many other journals. Her first chapbook, Knocked Around, was released in 2009 by Pudding House.