PEN SAND
by Luke Skoza

Pen Sand

The block of ice she tries to hide
in the backseat
keeps melting on her hands.
An old lake sits around her feet.

Her white rain coat is so clear, it's not transparent.
One of her frightened hands tries to find her legs.

The mound of rock salt sprawled in her tongue
stretches towards the lake.

There's another sea inside
the moldy food in her colleague's drawers.

She wants to put an assignment on your desk,
but she never has a pen
You always have to discover one for her at midnight.

When her hand finally finds her knee,
the salt in her tongue cooks to sand
and is dry enough to reach her eyes.

Bone Olives

The old apartment sits in broken notes
of two letters.

 Her nose crawled on the stove.
Her legs tingled
and burst into pepper
drifting into the noses of thoughtless cows.

Broken windows in abandoned steel
train cars by the vine kingdom of old power
in reptile buildings.

Her dirty
bird cage behind Gambrinus grunts,

it keeps losing its door next

to someone in her closet.

Old dirt wads of grass pile in her room

sliding over fake furniture

next to her friends in sweaters stuck to their skin
holding watered cocktails
tied to their hands.

 
Olives are bones in their throats

They could fit in a small town of statues

almost growing new teeth every year.

 Toes of ages, faces inside balloons
trying to breathe old bubbles.
Old steel become roots again.
Bone olives still stick to sweaters
soaking the water of old cocktails.