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October 11, 2012 Poetry

In the absence of wings

Helen Vitoria

In the absence of wings photo

One girl sits in the smallest chair at the smallest desk and catches rain that leaks from the ceiling on her tongue. One girl steals gestures from a wedding and pretends she is kissing a married man fifty different ways when she wakes up she finds that the man has rotted and floated downriver. One girl pretends the space around her neck is starlit, she runs her hands up and down and edge to edge and when she swallows the moon moves inside of her.  One girl clothes herself in boys’ clothes and punctures herself with a key till she figures out how to lock the door each night. One girl watches the boys make a bomb of birds and leaves until they have left fifty birds without feathers. One girl hides in the thicket of the closet till her bones ripen to sleep and waits for winter to come. One girl is a liar & says she loved you for six long hours sometimes in more than one time zone. One girl swallows the sharpest edges of things till she can fill the space of his absence.

Helen Vitoria’s work can be found and is forthcoming in many online and print journals: The Awl, elimae, Ping•Pong Journal, Rougarou, PANK, FRiGG Magazine, Gargoyle, Barn Owl Review, Dark Sky Magazine and others. She is the author of nine poetry chapbooks, a poetry pamphlet (Greying Ghost Press, 2012), a full length poetry collection, Corn Exchange (Scrambler, 2012) and a forthcoming collaborative ekphrastic book (Concepción Books, 2013). Her poems have been nominated for Best New Poets & the Pushcart Prize. She is the Founding Editor & Editor in Chief of THRUSH Poetry Journal & THRUSH Press. Find her here: www.helenvitoria.com

image: Ryan Molloy


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