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UntitledWhen we went to Norway we killed slugs.

We ate dinner at midnight as the sun revolved overhead, spinning in slow concentric circles, never dipping beyond the horizon. There was no night.

We looked up at the clouds, and she asked us if we wanted to do her a favor-to justify spending the night in her garage apartment at no cost. We weren't freeloaders, so we said O.K. She told us about the slugs.

There were hundreds of them crawling around the garden area-small families leaving slime trails on rock walls. We collected them one at a time, placing each of them in a huge plastic bag. We saw them pile on top of each other, felt their collec

blue sluicecast off care like blue
snowfields into rigid water,
and wash with mud the thrust
of earth, our skin soft as salt mines.
built you are
of bitch and buttercream,
of soured elements in the blue
dot of a pin-prick spotlight
and windowed skull.

we can watch the fire fade
into a black rat canvas,
into blue gates that tumble up
and loose finger grooves,
smear eyes across your face like warpaint,
faster and faster,
momentum in the race to nowhere.

and once done, we turn,
we go aground and push
up the lines of blue backs
orbiting the moons of that
rising ass, around corners,
a shattered life in starshine,
the masks
beneath the

WingsIcarus eats his breakfast in front of the TV.
Balances his Wheaties on a butter knife –
Big and strong on jagged silver cliffs.
On cloudy days, he watches fireflies
Blinking in Morse Code,
Hollering help to the tree sap they're trapped in.
He scoops ladybugs up in the crook of his elbow
To count their spots backwards,
To ask them where they've been.

He doesn't understand the morning news.
He feels it like a nosebleed,
Like a thick intrusion,
And when the worry clots on his lip, he trembles.
He says, "Papa, I wanna paint the world for you,
But it just won't sit still"

Icarus doesn't want to be in charge of hiding the unive

Umbrella TermsThere are moments, sometimes, when he wonders.

Wonders in his white suit and wonders on his name tag. Wonders in the hallways about wonders in the mind. Of course, you have to wonder in Wonderland, and so he has to wonder as he plunges down the rabbit hole to scrutinize mentally ill rodents and roses. Of course wondering plays a large part in what he does, poking 'round in grey matter without even seeing it and asking questions.

But it is when he wanders as he wonders that things truly begin to unravel, when he can feel little stringy trails of thought and he knows that he's coming apart at the seams. It starts when his eyes wander and he l

SalemI.

the bright scarlet egg of dawn
nests in my head.

when it is time, it will crack my
skull like a shell
and be born.

II.

I have a witch's fingers and a
witch's eyes, rough pewter lenses
through which I see the world.

I have sabotaged their crops,
I have plagued their children,
I have eaten their livestock in the night
(so they say)
and I hear the whispers in the streets.

they will be willing to kill
for their conviction, though
I am not willing to die for it.

III.

I am no longer human.
I've been branded
with an ugly mark
of fear and desperation,

one terse syllable that cuts
like a switch.

IV.

a thin reddish line

The Thin HoursI.

Those of us here in this skeleton time,
this time of the year when the nights are thin
and dark, and dark with anxiety, peeling
as layers of an oyster shell, brittle and effaced
and somehow iridescent.
When the bell tolls out the time the sound is thin
and reaches into fractured air and softly
seeks the spaces between the atoms and
misses the vital Os and CO2s in a lasting,
failed pinball. The bell sound dies in
some space between midnight and thereafter,
and each tock tock of slipping cogs is
a repeat and not a moving on.
The air is filled with each dull sound,
each tock a repeat and a repeat again. And the
slip betwee

Birth of PoetryI tangled my fingers in the curls of the universe,
pulled. The earth fell out: round, warm, spinning.

Awkward and shy, she wondered how she got here; how
a rock that got wet and grew moss could be significant.

So I scooped her up in my fingers, breathed her scent:

(lilies and oceans and ozone and forests and fish and birds
and whales and rain and the empty elegance in wolf howls)

death and life. I found chaos
and knew beauty.

leavetakingi.
the world is brighter where
dregs of strangers' revels remain --
i keep this half-light for my own.

ii.
i'll stay until the wind sighs a scotch-and-smoke
cliché, til the Muscadet's slipped from the lip
of my wayward
hello.(i know you're there before you do.)
iii.
your night is told in
patchouli-pulse wanders; mine,
in whorls of liqueur-breath. come
close and i'll find the warp
through the weft, the trails telling tales
in synaesthesia --
Platinum Blonde's been 'round and gone.

iv.
(-- closer, find syllables strewn
in an exhale's wake; stolen from my throat-
ful of careless farewells, spin and sway

Street Corner DrowningI drowned her in her own regrets and moved her off my street corner. She didn't belong there, like that little turquoise car Matty once bought used. Yeah, it ran great and had power windows. But, it didn't fit. It was an eyesore on the curbed canvas of our street's patina.

That's what she was: an eyesore. She never wore her feelings on her sleeve because they restricted her range of motion, she said. And I wondered what she thought she wouldn't need stiff elbows for on this block.

When the dawn would break in such a fashion that light actually streamed, she should have glittered with the fine sheen of mistakes she'd made. But she was mu

O Dan Rot.Dan Rot, a man
of considerable comic timing
who came on rackety wings around the globe
in thirty days or so,
visiting once again with a night on his heels
copping feels on innocent ladies pillowed in bathtubs,

i.

i was black like night
and i was ringed in rainfall
i was so glorious

a spiraling psyche led me to one thing
and this town never could have contained me
a spinning science to my insanity

bends in the system and curves of the power lines
a beauty to plywood and splinter breaks that cannot be defined
bends in the path, a northward slide

strand you in a parking lot
i was vicious and viscous
and i was perfect

as i die

Caught DrowningFirst I notice her hair: dark and longer than any girl I've met, pulled back in a high ponytail and still past her waist. Since I'm following the line of her hair, I see her hips next, round and smooth like a bright red apple, picked fresh and rubbed against t-shirts, ready for biting. Attached there and growing like slender trunks from her hemline are two long, smooth legs. She smells like green grass and old wood.

We exchange the normal pleasantries. She is subtle and graceful; demure and polite. She speaks like an orchestra, her tones long and smooth, but there's a hiss there, like steam from a radiator. It works for her, and I've never d

In summer we all burnThe summer is coming,
I hear the beach roaring from here,
can see shirts hung over shoulders,
sunglasses, arms round waists,
can feel the earth's purrs,
breaking hibernation,
pollens tossed up at us in fanfare.

Ants are walking over me
because we're sharing a tree together.
Back to back, we're trying to
make our winter's pallour a warmer shade.
Is it some sort of personal sign
when you let your shoe-tongues fill with tan bark,
when it's driven you mad your whole life?
Or when you eat ice-cream in public (the sticky
fingers a mere afterthought)?

These trees though, they're not changing.
I can't help thinking they

Girl in the War It did get easier, once I started to imagine things were moving fast, too fast to fathom, too fast to see the stars but only feel them intrinsically on my skin—little pinpricks, little bubbles of air to touch my cheeks or take my breath. Or, you know. The sort of rambling things I was letting myself think, so long as it kept me distracted and living.

The window was damp with me leaning against it, and in that position the teeth-rattling rumble of the ol' greyhound's engines was churning my stomach much the same way a headache had been thrashing behind my eyes for the past month. I rubbed my ragged sleeve into a patch of fogged glass a

Fishbowlborrowing,
we breathe like
navy stripes on rice paper
and life for us is only
canary sidewalks and
shorelines like the
soft soft curve of
your parted lips,
but a gentle storm
is still a storm, and
this we know well.
and what do you think we are made out of,
star-flesh and street dust,
molded slowly into
spidery eyelashes and glowing
storm-freckles
and knuckles like crushed roses--
art is a human thing
even when you crumple
into the plush carpet
to lie for days
and days and
days.

[do not forget the things i tell you,
liquid whispers on harsh nights--]

we pluck nerves like
tulips in a sensory garden,
only for play and

HubrisThe world is not a skeleton. It does not ache bone-deep with our atrocities, nor is it fragile and ready for the breaking. It knows nothing so human, except perhaps to forgive our pride. Let me explain:

Young, I am a bright star with small, pudgy hands for guiltless flower-crushing. Before even that, I am a wispy squall for food, unused to knowing anything but myself, and warmth, and hunger.

The concept of a hero is a natural progression from understanding speech. I am Me. I am the one all the stories talk about, born special, to whom both innocence and wisdom are possible. I am so great a part of my own self that I do not know it can be de

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A woman is missing.

by =OritPetra, Nov 6, 2011, 6:21:55 PM
Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

A woman is missing.
My sweater is knit too loose and the wind blows through.
The leaves are done changing and are waiting to fall.
I think of them collaged against my morning-damp windshield;
they will mostly be red. My wipers will push them off;
I will forget about them. But inbetween these thoughts
my brain hums. A woman is missing and I cannot forget.

Two weeks ago the leaves were mostly green and yellow.
Two weeks ago a woman went missing.
I didn't know her but she went missing and today
I am standing at a wall covered with candles and
I am rolling her name over my tongue and I am thinking.
I am thinking and praying, but I am not hoping.

A woman went missing; a woman is missing.
I keep going to work, getting up each day.
I brush my teeth, comb my hair, pack my lunch, drive my car.
And mostly I do not think about her. But sometimes I do.
Sometimes the hairs on my neck stand up and the two blocks
between the library and the coffee shop are impossibly long.
Sometimes I feel so much a woman that it hurts.

Two weeks from now, when the trees are bare,
the police will find her body and I will go back to the wall of candles
to think about the woman who went missing and was found
but was not really found. There will be a hole in my chest and
I won't quite know why because I didn't know her.
But I will imagine I hear her laughter, see her smile,
and I will think of all the women in my life and I will weep.

A woman is dead and I cannot forget.

A woman is missing.by =OritPetra

Literature / Poetry / Emotional / Free Verse

Edit: A huge thank you to =LadyofGaerdon for suggesting this as a DD (and as a DLD, too!) and to ^Beccalicious for featuring it. Means more than I can say.

Also, if you are interested, you can you can listen to me reading the poem here.

This is different for me, and so naturally, I am unsure of it. But part of me also rather likes it.

I reckon there's lots of stuff here that needs improvement, so if you'd like to call anything to my attention, critique is very much welcomed and desired. Feedback more generally would also be nice. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the themes and issues I am digging at here.

Finally, a brief bit of background on this: in October, a young woman went missing from the community in which I live and a search has been going on since. Yesterday, the police found her remains and began a homicide investigation. I didn't know her and never met her, but the story has really gotten to me -- perhaps because it was so close to home, perhaps because she is very close to me in age, and perhaps because it sickens me that women (and men, too, but I needed, right now, emotionally, to write this piece about women) still need to worry about this sort of thing. I'll be praying for her friends and family, and for all people who have been affected by similar situations, and I urge you to join my in keeping these people in your thoughts/prayers/meditations/et cetera.

,
Tazz.

Daily Deviation

Given 2011-11-29

A woman is missing. by =OritPetra Suggester Writes: a seemingly remote tragedy turned it into a deep reflection of the shared fears and vulnerability we all wrestle with. ( Suggested by =LadyofGaerdon and Featured by ^Beccalicious )

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*artin2007 Apr 30, 2013

It is lovely, and moving, Orit.

=Vigilo Apr 4, 2013 Student Writer

Hi - this is just to say, I used the title of your amazing piece in a poem of mine, for #TheTitlePage's contest, over here! If you'd prefer for me not to use it, please let me know, and I'll change it immediately. Thank you!

=Sammur-amat Mar 24, 2012 General Artist

You've sent shivers down my spine

~beautyinreview Jan 30, 2012 Hobbyist Writer

Again, you manage to capture something that so many people feel in a few beautiful and heartbreaking stanzas. I have had this reaction to terrible things that happen around me, and I think that you evoke the fear and sadness of it very well. The fact that these things are a concern, that they are something to think about, that it is generally women who go missing and end up dead, is terrifying and terrible. I pray that one day we won't need to think about a woman going missing, because it will never happen.

We shouldn't forget, ever, so you immortalizing the event in a poem is fitting.

Gorgeous work, hon, that shows what a beautiful person you are.

~mreid973 Jan 15, 2012

Lovely and lyrical and leaves the reader with something to think about. Congratulations on the DD.

=DailyLitDeviations Jan 13, 2012

Your wonderful literary work has been chosen to be featured by DLD (Daily Literature Deviations) in a news article that can be found here [link]
Be sure to check out the other artists featured and show your support by

ing the News Article.

Keep writing and keep creating.

*Angie-Pictures Dec 9, 2011

Congratulations on the DD!

!The-Theory-Liz Dec 5, 2011 Hobbyist Writer

Hello again this piece is featured here: [link]

!The-Theory-Liz Nov 30, 2011 Hobbyist Writer

I think this is a beautiful reflection on events that haunt us

It needs to be said and the way it is thoughtfully articulated gives me the impression that this is still haunting. There is no shame in that. I think it's good to know that people are affected instead of turning a blind eye or being apathetic about it.

No one would be able to forget anyways _{maybe some but that is quite sad}

=OritPetra Nov 30, 2011 Writer

Yes, it's been reassuring for me that there are so many other people who are emotionally affected by this, who can find it within them to care deeply even about a stranger. These events are tragic and terrible, but at least they can remind us all of our humanity.

Thank you.

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