SAINT JULIAN PRESS

Cynthia Atkins ~ Poet

When The Internet Is The Loneliest Place 
On The Planet

 
Blow by blow, we gave up scents and sunsets 
to hold our heads in a screen and gawk 
in our sleep—My blind leading your blind 
to where the last light is driven 
to be warehoused.  I learned to whisper 
over graves to measure the heft 
of my breath next to the soul that lay 
in that soil, devoid of breath.  When push 
comes to shove—When enough is more 
than enough.  When your face 
sees itself snatched by the swarm 
of names—Pell-mell.  I’m just parched 
for a whiff of clean laundry, a bed made 
from the cheapest smoky scents 
of its last spent residents—Clinging to 
pastures where the lovesick stargazers go. 
Yesterday, I mourned a friend 
whom I’ve never laid eyes on. 
Never heard the bricks in her voice, 
or saw her mouth, a gaudy brothel 
of accents, straight out of the Bronx, 
by way of Chicago—My birth town, 
I was born to know that train whistles 
record the distance of our loneliness. 
I drifted to sleep smelling 
the pepper spray my parents
shot at each other in the front seat. 
It was my own garden on the highway, 
under the Magikist Sign where 
I could cry all night long in the damp 
arms of strangers—Each car holding 
that piece of self that looks for others.
Popping out of a hole, like a fox
forcing you to see your breath, 
flick the light switch into the dark 
classroom in the planetarium of stars.

POET’S PAGE
 
PRESS RELEASE

​POEMS
ANOREXIA NERVOSA
 
GOD IS A LIBRARY

Available Through ~  Ingram Content Group  ~  Amazon  ~  Barnes & Noble  ~  IndieBound ~  Fine Book Distributors & Retailers
 Saint Julian Press, Inc. * Houston, TX 77008  *  Ron Starbuck ~ Publisher-CEO
 Email: ronstarbuck@saintjulianpress.com * Web: www.saintjulianpress.com