Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
  Apr 2016 Dylan Dunham
Joshua Haines
The darkest fields, an interlude
to parallel sparkling, suspended
watching eye upon vermilion sky --
like a harbored god pretended.

Killing trees, roots eating deep,
my father mercilessly alluded:
branches high and branches wide
found the sky and intruded.
  Apr 2016 Dylan Dunham
Joshua Haines
Altogether, the night we wove
a trickled treasure, tangled:
skirted legs spilling out from
the teacup of a denim lap,
validation in the vacuum cove.

- Dusty Nikes before the dusk,
who art in heaven, my god
he thrusts.

- Why'd your mother
let you talk that way:
You smoke cliche cigarettes
in such an unfamiliar way.

- The hanger left welts, weeping
into post-relevance landline love,
body lay like the hands on the clock,
copper landmarks seeping.

What a feeling, ever so same.
Arched eyebrows, a trademarked shame:
like a fighter, like ****** oozing.
Like a functional inability,
divine in its losing.
  Apr 2016 Dylan Dunham
Joshua Haines
Yellow soap for a yellow me.
I don't feel like being pure
means being happy.

- I scrub scarring
with more definition
than a dictionary.

Moldy bread kissing
gravid navel oranges,
in a cherry plastic rib cage.

- Can you find me altruism
hidden in the heart  
of ecstasy and rage?

Satellite bobbing above
the air supply,
are you out of reach or am I?

She was taking pictures
of us in the aphotic zone.
Saying, it was the only way
to capture me vulnerable.

Extirpate my species
to save my life.
I am saturnine for
the only adoration I accept  
is mine.
  Apr 2016 Dylan Dunham
Joshua Haines
The bloodied marble is
where the youth was sold.
I sit and wobble on
a mind of gold.

Burn the end
and pass me a thought.
Pale smoke differs
from state to state.
Top forty hits;
songs or cigarettes.
What was your dream
but an isle of regret.

Your tears were insects
burrowing into your cheeks.
Red painted hands
and yellow stained teeth.
I could've remembered
that I had sworn.
I never found your death
a place to mourn.
  Apr 2016 Dylan Dunham
Joshua Haines
Fire. Orange flames waving towards the sky
with blue bellies and a hunger for havoc.

Split foot bottoms sprint, infinitely unable
to stop the annihilation swallowing whole
stained, splintered floorboards
that held sand-speckled toes,
extending high,
as embraced but separate never-lovers
kept thoughts of together
in the sky.

Gravel flickering from under heels;
might as well bounce into a void:
a place happy in its tornado-time.
Where sounds escape, return home;
abstract assurance: kind of alone.

White siding peels off
like a smoldering fingernail.
The roof holding heat
like the lid a *** kisses.

Her head halts,
with an ash blonde swoop
flailing by.
Staring and learning
the world is a skeleton dream.

Never knowing when it started.
Never knowing why.
  Mar 2016 Dylan Dunham
Joshua Haines
Maybe we're from the same scar.
Maybe the same galactic gutter.
Maybe the same pulpy punch.
Maybe you were my sister
or you were my brother.

Maybe there is a place
where we used to go
to plant our feet
in what we didn't know.

Maybe there is a place
where the whistle grows,
the voices chatter,
the stillness slows.

And maybe, somewhere
or the whistle grows,
the voices chatter,
the stillness shows.

And maybe, somewhere,
or this place, you said to me,
"I hope you remember
that this is a false memory."
University of Virginia
  Mar 2016 Dylan Dunham
Joshua Haines
Look at me:
I'm the captain
occupying borrowed space.
Thrown on fading campus,
grown through the cracks
of a forgotten place.
Next page