Sparrowgrass Annual Poetry Contest Winner: 2nd Place, 1997
Lilac petals bleed like sunrise
the ocean’s voice like a hand
between my thighs.
Like the ancient dead
We ask.
Hoping on embers tyranny
when we drink our fate and cut ourselves
with razors
to let what’s inside out
Surprised sometimes at what escapes.
Cracked open like a seashell
on the pavement of a rising tide
A different, decadent, poet’s new nightmare.
Disarranged and distorted
promises all unhinged.
At times it all but vanishes,
with half-gone Saturdays and
intermittent inspiration
passion as thick as
that day in the rain,
I retreat to that solace
when sleep eludes me,
my sheets in flames,
the truthful simplicity
the somber asylum
of my eternal, internal
worship of
us.
Angela C. Kelly 