Poetry Suite by Aleph Altman-Mills
“junkyard carousels,
horses with their mouths polished into jump rope handles”
Poetry by Aleph Altman-Mills
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Rubble
The swallow of me is a chemical piggy bank,
hoarding swollen escape keys and the lips of tape dispensers.
These eggs hatch into tree stumps and junkyard carousels,
horses with their mouths polished into jump rope handles, reeled up and down,
not trusted to jump. These bright and quiet bombs have half-lives
and teeth that no one calls teeth, like mine, like all
the blades I am trying not to let down my throat.
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The Complete Crazy’s Guide to Going Crazy
What happens first is the night seeded with bomb light. No, the happiness so bad
you could die from how alive you feel. What happens first is the wind up birds
and your mouth with all the slamming windows. Sugar and metal
stop being opposites. They ask the same questions over and over
and you answer them differently each time and you pray
this isn’t an emergency room and you pray
this isn’t a ghost and you pray
this is a ghost and you pray you are
a ghost.
What happens first is you realize
you cannot hear yourself sing.
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My Old Life Has a Birthday Party Without Me
Everyone dresses up in wrapping paper.
The gift? A necklace of petrified claws.
The cake is thick as fist.
There are no candles. Something might catch.
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Unbaby
They tell you to hate it for the hole it ripped in you,
the way it pulled you in like tangled slinky.
These are no longer your bones.
The nurse puts it in a glass cage.
All it knows how to do
is suckle it’s own broken alarm clock.
You have never seen it before.
You recognize it like your feet recognize grass.
It was there before you,
a fossil with a broken wing.
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Header image courtesy of Chona Kasinger. To view her photo essay, "Cheers," go here.
Aleph Altman-Mills is an autistic writer who loves swinging and skirts. She has been published in The Legendary, Words Dance, and Mobius, among others. She blogs and posts poetry snippets at really-fucking-confused.tumblr.com.