Caroline Rayner is a contributing editor at Cosmonauts Avenue. Her poems can be found in Shabby Doll House, Witch Craft, Scum, Inferior Planets, and elsewhere. She tweets @scaroline9.
2 poems by Caroline Rayner
pink noise
okay i just collarbone dug until serrated with little knives i memorized on the
radio while learning how to drive and i tell you what delilah gave me everything i
needed like gelatin i could rub into honeycomb lacunae while reciting wuthering
heights from memory until strong and sweet as dogwood cleaving the gorge between my
thighs becoming prismatic as anything except human grape against glass like
translucent whatever each morning i divide until simultaneously iridescent and linen
still wasted like i never promised anything except reckless behavior like i bruised so
easy because i thought i deserved tenderness with salt i puke lavender and get real precious
i love shaving candied fur off each branch i love being hazardous i love it and yes i
can reach because i practice violently naked in front of the mirror eating avocado with
a spoon collapsing in tears resisting from now on
let me count specks of real vanilla while barefoot in the powder room with the door locked and
devotional burning let me spill earth juice down each wrist until animalic
let me dissolve until halved let me let me
high school made me sad as hell but i could not hold it with bold hands once
i tried while floating above the electronic scale as undetectable as desired until found
sobbing in the bathtub twice i tried during hurricane season with meat cut into
such tiny bites i let each one rot under my bed without telling anyone and yes i
handled the stench three times i tried but already whatever
no one loves a fat cicada i mean
bodiless i mean on the spectrum of decay i mean would somatic architecture
mellow if hormonal upon leather in june would the architecture mellow if smeared with vegan
cream cheese would the architecture mellow if the ghost i mean the phenomenon of
aura captured on film by a woman the enchantment of juniper breeze lotion the grammar
of water upon belly fat i mean energy snacks buried where no one can even think
maybe magnolia where no drone goes maybe river where jellyfish kill hummingbirds
maybe yard where daisies fuck heaven i mean pissing chili and thorn
like essentially the kind of girl who shits amethyst when teething the kind of girl wearing
terrible fragrance the kind of girl or diurnal predator crouched upon tile
because america must be swallowed whole
smoke show
fucked up my knees on saturday morning in the park backflip gone raw like jam i can feel
it oozing attracting bees i slip into the pond & swim down where snakes live with
centipedes
i never heal
i keep picking stinging nettles & making bouquets why
heavy light pins me like a starfish with a morning routine shredded coconut costs
extra cucumber lotion costs extra weed costs extra can anyone even afford spiritual
retreat i pull out my eyelashes at karaoke because the supermoon made me
california by grimes plays on my car radio when i leave early
while i suck on a lemon peel this time i know even less eat even less & trust no
one already tried fitting myself inside a snail shell already tried ripping myself open
with amethyst & clawing out like i read birth charts
i wore chambray but like what else could i give
what else
what could i take back