Sonic Boom in Miniature
 

If you swallow the color
of disappointment
inch by inch
don’t be surprised
if the belated game
in your brain is more
a turbulent urge.
It takes a village,
they say, to collapse
a village. Night after
night of architectural
flourish gone wrong.
My advice is to peel back
the heat on everyone
to reveal a quieter
panic, a flicker
of texture to get sick against.
Anything to feel
like a furnace born brutal.
I am here in the air
with my skin sewn tight.
You begin to appear
just to duck out of frame
like a train stuck in a loop
of its own dull derailment.
 

ξ

Unwanted Dream Sequence

To grow wildly and then die
is a mathematical certainty,

a match point in our blue blood.
Under this uneven conceit I

am done applauding everyone's
practical approach to thought.

I spew my special blue abandon
into the loneliness parade

and shall I go on? Am I existing
in the moment? There is something

symphonic about self-erasure,
learning to metabolize

unwanted love. The world
is full of footnotes and it is

a cold game to live inside.
 

ξ
 

Sincerely Against Lavish Description

Is it enough that I am gamed
and unblessed? Wasted again
on fantasy, I write not to be
visible but to pervert the new
anthem against pageantry,
against my skin as meat
as currency. This is a real
barnburner, my orchestra
conductor once yelled.
We inherit so many dead men
in our constitution
it is difficult to even howl
at night like women are prone
to do. I put forth a stitched-up
version of myself for the sake
of junked grace. Faith begets
distortion begets sickness
in the planetarium. Who is born
without a little coaxing?
Stability is an unnatural resource.
I was a glimmering whirlpool
before I slammed headfirst
into the wasteland. 
 

ξ

Anne Cecelia Holmes is the author of The Jitters (horse less press, 2015) and three chapbooks, including Dead Year (Sixth Finch, 2016). Her poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, jubilat, Conduit, and Denver Quarterly, among other places. She is an editor at Jellyfish Magazine and lives in Washington, DC.