Red Planet 12
Round and rest for shade
The gallant trees are trays sure
Cherries not rubies.
Sum the years prunus adium, my sweet
inspires what we respire.
Anti-Figawi*
I read poems I don’t like to my
coworkers.
“That is strange,” says the woman
stalking an old Tiffany’s bracelet.
But we all like the line “hurricanes
give me shingles.”
I read a poem of mine.
The eighteen karat gold earrings
tickle my throat while I read.
“I can relate to scones” the manager
says.
The manager will break the glass in
the antique cases when it is time to
retire.
We hate it, that weekend. Even the
cats are vomiting this weekend.
*Figawi is a holiday weekend on Nantucket Island known for wild drinking and expensive sailboats.
Red Planet 13
Sounding out a tree
A cherry could be a sun
Could be a sonnet
The red seen at dawn as if
For life be of lead the end.
You are spoiling me
Squash, please say garlic
parmesan, old tomato
is copper in sea
oh two and water vapor
yields patina, luna green.
Red Planet
Rust thing against rot thing against resting skin red cheery parallel lines the blinds of grey once gold then wood between me and sand.
I spit into lines those cherries sum the blossoms I would and they wood now grow pink and red and brown above, aground, and around.
Blue to red plant it in sand like sugar island cherry pits, almonds, and amygdala gallop down the lines of the old boards.
Cheery the stone fruit juice of thinking skin and spit wrinkles to splinters mouths erase months though I think to the seeds parallel lives.
Radish the planet hematite to butterscotch water the planet nearest terrestrial nor iron three oxide alone.
Latin cerasum eats sand not sugar for soil cherries some blossom sing to pink the tree really takes seven years to mature.
Sevenling truth or thrust? the cherries I do dare the roses don’t care a yearning, a year, align garden king to teenage queen.
Gallantry to hide in root and bark and flower carbon dioxide from gas to green shade and food is armor shaped as a heart.
Cheer for rye whiskey cherry red faces all moan when the old fashioned roll the crimson bar wagon watch the sun or mosquitoes?
A constellation ripening into spinel planets then fruiting Mars after Mars after Mars named for the Roman war god.
Rust thing again rot thing again resting the skin desire sing the mouths erase months sure the climate change so the gallant trees grow.
Round and rest for shade the gallant trees are trays sure cherries not rubies sum the years prunus adium, my sweet inspires what we respire.
Sounding out a tree a cherry could be a sun could be a sonnet the red seen at dawn as if for life be of lead the end.
****
***Julia Rose Lewis is earning her PhD at the University of Wales Trinity St David. When not in school, she lives on Nantucket Island and is a member of the Moors Poetry Collective. Her poems have appeared in their anthologies, Rasputin: A Poetry Thread, GTK, and 3am Magazine. Find her on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/Lilysbarnmate ***
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