Fulcrum Milk
Lana Bella
Back straight, aligned, slants off
the aspen tree, sieving winter
at the edges. Mouth pours breaths
down the neck, fulcrum leans
into your tongue turning smolder
of milk. Spilling black, you are
a line of junk in its wake, a break
from the solid pulse of heartache.
Then chin uphill, eyes trace score
upon the autumn fade, outwards
the sounds of birds flying west
leaving your spheres of light. This
afternoon grows old with names,
scratching earth and you to blades
of sinking sun, like the closest
things to death carving knife, slow
to the last cut at your bone adrift
in dew, as if you were a fleck of sky
that never marked across to burn.
A River of Two Suns
Lana Bella
I saw sunlight fall to the halvah
of home, the ends fractured
into blond of shutters. Silk, nails
and teeth, I veined with elixirs
of thought, tilting the glow turned
shape at my shadow on the wall.
Hand traced downward pulling
wrinkles away from the door,
I let gravity become a river of two
suns, whistling through oak
and keyhole, drum fan blowing
heat between steps. In my throat,
whisky stirred finer than blood
like throes of a prayer, branching
back a hundred perfect hymns,
just softly, every note, a breaking.
about the writer
A four-time Pushcart Prize, five-time Best of the Net, & Bettering American Poetry nominee, Lana Bella is an author of three chapbooks,Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016), Adagio (Finishing Line Press, 2016), and Dear Suki: Letters (Platypus 2412 Mini Chapbook Series, 2016), has had poetry and fiction featured with over 400 journals, Acentos Review, Comstock Review, EVENT, Ilanot Review, Notre Dame Review, Rock & Sling & The Lampeter Review, among others, and work to appear in Aeolian Harp Anthology, Volume 3. Lana resides in the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps.