There’s a fly in my champagne coupe
the door is locked from the wrong side

Freshly squeezed stars and glitter all over the floor
freshly squeezed heart vessels and vermillion all over the ground
I once read that even an asteroid can be a celestial body

A drop of blood in fresh water pooling out
mercurial water color portrait of self
there are nights when something is happening
that should not be happening
a black swallow tail emerging and transforming
inside of a women’s home

Bleed into emptiness
a hungry stillness beckons with airy hands

Is being alone loneliness?
What does one do with an amorphous heart?

If I was a werewolf I would tear this mourning to pieces
at night leave my body skin, teeth, feet
peel them off like a wet bathing suit
leave them in the backyard solitary, limp, detached

I would moan low
up there over in the ether
hovering in the violet heaven before twilight

Airy/breathlessly chilled/maybe
not really anywhere at all.

He Left You In The Basement

Hello, high tension
I live for her and all her rage her big moods

This mood is busting a pumpkin skull
into tiny little pieces
it is saying assault or non-consensual
and maybe not laughing about it this time

Here is a slice of unsolicited advice…
if you have a sexual attraction
to destruction
do not unearth things
that are not meant to be uprooted
push to tell the truth to yourself
talk to mirrors and waterways
yell out the goons in your lungs
and the phantoms in your memory
if that’s what it takes

Write these things in old photo books
scribbled them on fortune cookie paper

Let me impart an obvious secret…
There is no elevation in achieving
disastrous outcomes
do not turn back
to the echo you might hear
in a darkened tunnel

Maybe a harsh fact with help with your heartache…
Your cherub face is gone
deal with that sorrowful truth
shed those old childhood books
leave the pages on the ground
a trail of snake scales

Return home like slow sunrise

I undressed my face for you

“It hurts here, in this delicate place”
I pointed to the cracked shell
prized it opened to viscous yolk

Shame lunges forward on grasshopper legs
when I look at my loss
I find no golden embrace or tether
of closeness
I am without a thick knot or bow for my gift

My face a bruised purple sky from all the cry
a carmine tongue licking a mirror
glassy reflection looking back wet

Vexing hurt left split open
slices of tomato like tender palms
red and demanding
Are we just all broken pieces of mountain
waiting to avalanche?

There will be no cleaning of this wound
I am on the lookout for thunder
perched over a high cliff waiting
like a cloud that begins to
sigh.

Trickster

The Coyotes sang against
the moon and I was the only one to hear
their lyrics full of athletic inflection

What a foul waste
that I was only a child
unable to understand their possession
only learned to hold my face
to the sky years later

In their vocals I felt and found
we “humans” are just animals with souls
pushing love off of a
Steep
Sharp
Cliff

Moth Mother: I

A busted birthday gift
I am ripping my mind open
my chest open
my womb extending
and reaching

Moths pour in the streetlight
Lately there is always some lust
I am not allowed to swallow
my mouth trying
to cram too many
rubies like so many plucked jewels
from a pomegranate

I wish I was pretty

Kiara Nicole Letcher is poet who currently resides in Omaha, Nebraska. Weaving lush imagery with horror and harsh realizations. She explores the darker side of being a woman. How to deal with shame and growth. Loss, want, need and the shadows of self.  She received her MFA from The University of Nebraska at Omaha in 2014. Her chapbook Scream Queen was released October 2019 through The Orchard Street Press. She has also appeared in Green Mountains Review, Plainsongs Magazine, Stone Highway Review, New Bile, Pismire, Villainess Press and Quiet Diamonds.