The churches are full of gilded hunger, drunk on blood, praying with hands closed. But the pagans pray with their hands open, So I leave the rotten dogwoods, for the shivering willows, and spread my hands out, breathing so deep that my lungs could fit the entire world inside. The kids won’t be alright, but …
The morning air is so crisp that it crunches between my teeth like glass. Biting and bleeding. But my mouth is so numb from the cold that I can only taste the welling copper. I can’t feel the pain yet. When I exhale the bloody sand is a pale mist that the wind takes away …
And I am cold metal pressed against your skin in winter when the snow takes your fingers and ears and nose and the wolves and doves gather to eat their piece the sky is pale and full the earth swallows the sound And I am that metal again in summer when you lick it and …
Death and me falling into the pale— that inky whiteness fogged with a thousand tongues of flickering smoke. the mist tastes like ash. my fingers are choking and the only sounds I can hear are paper burning And my own unheard pleading. precipice, downfall, silence.
you ask me to make more art but the vultures have come and gone. My body has been stripped for parts, any gold or silver stolen for the pawnshops. My head has been rusted for so long that you can’t tell the broken parts from the living Coal and gas fumes choke you with the …
every poem can be about you if you don’t commit to a self. you can stay a shifting pile of neuroses, trapped between a coffee cup and wine glass. the kind of mess which stains. that you can never get out of your skin. cause you never had enough words in yourself, or a clue …
I have never once written a word I’m proud of. and I’ve never once taken a breath of fresh air. Or seen the stars unclouded. Or felt safe in my skin. I’m twenty years old And this country is the color of spilled blood, And the only metaphors I know are bloody, and I can’t …
And in reality you know this to be true: / you don’t feel any closer to this place on this floor / than you did on the second. / and it doesn’t feel like circumstance / or a choice / your wires are too tangled to connect / antennae too bent to transmit / lights …
you can’t hold yourself together anymore. the cracks spread further every day. making yourself marble has made them uncurable. even a helping hand can’t heal absence. there’s no glue for marble, no fix for burnt books. There’s a reason Victory is still headless, and you’re still not happy. nothing stays important, no one saves you, …
Your eyes are closed and I look out the window. The sky is drowning in crimson after someone tore out my throat with their teeth. Birds fall from the sky as if flight had just been a fantasy all along. I go to the ocean and watch the fish rise to the surface bellies-up, like …
these words are just a black box on a falling plane a drowned memory in an ocean plain. lost within a trackless train. stained with blood and promises now slain. lost deep in the shade. and there in that dark place laid, is the only light I ever made. you watch as it begins to …
the Door is as old as me.Sometimes I chip at it,And let a little through before ISlam it shut, and then I haveA story, or a poem, or a shred of somethingBigger, which I discard. i Know there is more behind it.An ocean ofSelf that I can never let through in case itDrowns me and …
There’s rolling text when I die— names who helped, names that didn’t. A startling construction of steel and thorns. Why I succeeded, why I failed. All written between the lines of those who built me. The backing music is a mocking drone. The theatre empties before the words stop. No anticipation of a legacy, no …
A path unhindered: plowed and lit framed in bright darkness. I know the way to go. But a shifting silhouette in the distance: between me and the end A lover? A killer? An end or a beginning? I go forward: trusting with eyes closed— A kiss ringed with copper on my lips. A rose-scented knife …
The firelight begins to dim. I see it, we see it. The splitting, crackling wood quiets. Sore sorrowful sparks make their last dance. Smoke rises like irretrievable hopes escaping us The charred logs lose their glow. I sweep up the white ash, we sweep up the white ash The fireplace sits dark and still.
Sidorenko’s Writing 