Inclement Weather & Other Poems
Zoe Antoine-Paul
Insomniac, two weeks in
i ghost my own life
mesmerise the edges of it
sink through
houston and sprout
up against third avenue
ephemeral
sister the bones
lifting the hawk’s wing
the rat’s gut
the glisten of
a black beak flecked
with blood
the happiness
of strangers grinds
my teeth
pink skies
harbinge neurosis
or brain damage
another tuesday
3am ER triage again
no use
all the xanax
in the world has lost
its edge
On a Friday in July, I orchestrated happy
I commandeered the pickled daikon,
marched carrots up the cutting board
diagonal slice by diagonal slice.
When my honey stood in the doorway,
sun like a disease glimmering his teeth
and tainting his hair,
I tongued the cloying,
and in the living room, my bubblegum
busted eardrums bled cotton candy bright,
but Britney played on, joy won:
a brilliant yellow yawn gulping down
the kitchen one wall at a time,
an emesis of poppies and Prozac
flooding the bathroom floor
so I waded in happy,
let it swallow my limbs lemon,
kiss my lover every hour on the hour,
let happiness buckle my knees
and pull me under.
Inclement Weather
how delicate the mercilessness of a crisp below zero,
how bone-wisp and brittle the ice-latticed sidewalk
and sun-starved tree. the wind banshees
the song it’s sung for two months now,
high notes whistle through emaciated branches,
crescendo against my exposed face, my bluing hands.
in december i become a testament
to staying alive. everything in me claws for it;
my blood plays hide and seek with the pinprick air
leeching warmth to soothe its lonely, my lungs
gag on it, savour the needle-thin oxygen
ballooning my chest despite itself. i silver;
the sky, a mirror, refuses to back down
so i crack with it; winter splintering my skin
to so much light.
Zoe Antoine-Paul was born on the Island of Saint Lucia, but now calls Brooklyn home. She likes writing about the city, the beauty in the mundane, and everyday internal turmoil. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in F(r)iction Magazine, Poets Collective, Scapegoat Review, Funicular Magazine, West Trade Review, and New Note Poetry. When she isn’t writing, Zoe can be found crunching numbers in Mid-town.
