Five Poems by Mirissa D. Price

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The waking and dreaming images obscure
consciousness,
a bereft soul without form.

Indistinguishable
mind and matter collide
into the oneiric nebulousness that is reality.

Conscious hallucinations arise
by happenstance
transforming elusively
form into subversivism.

Derided by function of vacant
chaology,
she stands – a simulacrum
devoid of its root.

But for a moment

Breathless, burning,
But for a moment
Life has beauty.

Burning, intensity,
But for a second
The wind is still.

Intensity, passion,
But for a quiver
Fear has meaning.

Passion, breathless,
But for the rapture
You wait

to exhale.

Go First

Today I realized
the cemetery darkness
is all I have remaining
of the stunned myocardium
they promised –

it could return
they said,

they said a lot
in those hours of systolic
d ysf unc-tion

they said
every word drowned
in antiquated language and superfluous –

fantasies are that way,
I remember when we were kids,
you always wanted to go first, and I never

let you sink
beneath the sapphire reflection of contaminated
fallacy – they said

a stunned myocardium can
reperfuse, they said,

darling, it’s you-
r turn.

Scrambled and Fried

Waking up to that
putrid smell,
showered in sulfur, drenched
in sweat,
eggs over-easy and life
under-satisfying,
lacking the milk
to wash the bitterness
down;

Biting into another
generous gesture
to find it was cold,
leftover love,
your value no
more than an afterthought
of eggs
in a lingering odor of burnt
toast;

It’s always the same
as you compact
our marriage in the broken-
down metal of
a garbage disposal;

Our suburban simplicity
an American utopia,
eternally parched
in curdled hope.

Shhh…

You say you’re oppressed,

You say

Did you hear that?

‘You say’

That means you were heard,

Your voice,

You say:

I hear you.