Seven Stone Sisters
It’s more of a love story than a horror one
Sometimes the two are indistinguishable
We didn’t believe what our dreams told us:
A black and white vision of our insides on screen
little mallet dried up stayed behind
We used to fantasize we were anything other than this carcass mouth
The borders of our body foreign to us
No glittery honeymoon boys made shrines of our starless face
We were clean and dry
Boomeranging across their sleepy marigold hearts
We had wished to be bona fide
like cassette tapes like clementines
Barefoot in a muddy field
Our trials hardly matter but we try to make them
Our indecisiveness is not an excuse but we use it anyway
You know what I mean—this is just one part of you
Everything is connected, but it’s not that important
Here is where it gets kind of interesting
They’ll teach us what talent is
Speak for yourself
Sell me your story
Show me what you can do
They’re gonna love you
When you close your eyes
to sleep at night
Persinette
Persinette’s agoraphobic tendency is a geofence
A blueprint for the hush between valentines
This repression worsened her natural form
The tower a jilted lover
An archive of little paper cutouts
Shadows for sky & sleep & star
She sings to vagabonds
and monarchs alike
She’s too clandestine
with her clarinet song
The mania traveling uphill
and controlling her tune
She has two heads
down in a dark grave
going nowhere
She nets her hair
around a salt lamp
She piles gray skin
into the cheeks of landfills
She goes
Let’s opera music
Let’s surprise party
It’s early
But there’s work to be done tomorrow
So the pot sings to her goodnight
So she piles her mane in secret
So she hides from the public
A stone floating on water
Gabrielle Williams received her MFA in Creative Writing from UNLV and her BA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. She has been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and two Pushcart Prizes. Her work has appeared in: Amazon’s Day One, Whiskey Island, Fairy Tale Review, LEVELER, Ghost Ocean, and others.