3 micropoems by Monica Beaujon

Craters

my palms face toward
dream light and hazy horizons.
i am embellished falsehood; hyacinths
bloom out of my clavicles.
barefooted, i feel my soles wilt
with each kiss of grass.

my loveless limbs are branches,
extending infinitely,
their fractals bones tearing
into daytime sky—their ravenous
leaves of want
darkening earth, claiming light
as their own.

it is all right to carve clouds,
to make them what you want
instead of deciding what
they are already.

i am waterlily outlier,
i am sad balloon saying goodbye
to atmosphere, hello to starry vacuum.

acceptance is a rare fruit—
its seeds, little smiles.

Pressed Flowers

lily hearts bloom in the vacuum
then forever manifest as starlight

my flesh has //always// etched
into each cell

limbs talk with patterns
of hold and release; they’re

enemies with air, drugged
into delirium by sunlight

places are cakes waiting
to be sliced into

time is a river eager
to be traveled across

the aching blanket that is
my skin, and whiny planets

that are my eyes, both want
the whole universe

compressed into the womb
of one raindrop

Injury

star-skinned witness of my wilting—
i will devour your fires

is air kind or possessive?
i am a fly in the web of always

i need to carve yesterday out of me
out of my tongue out of my limbs

i have too much dream inside
what is memory if not matter?

i only know the grip of waves
i live in a cocoon of sound and light

everything is a wound
we live on one, it’s festering

Monica Beaujon is an undergraduate student, majoring in English at the University of Wisconsin. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the magazines Viewfinder, Lady, Germ, and Maudlin House.