On The Occasion of a Felonious Assault on My Heart
it’s a love poem you say,
as you stab out your cigarette on my appendix.
[vestigial, only suited for the stinging
caused by the eyelids and cityscapes of ex-lovers.]
***
lachrymose, pulsating
lakes shoring up diary pages.
[i pray for a groundswell to hemorrhage the ink,
to leach her from your repertoire.]
Deviation of the Chaste
I. somewhere along the line, i realized that
a. purity feels like inattention
b. i am an animal full of rhythm
c. i twitch like ashtray grave
clinging to dead cigarettes
II. pornographic intent leads to pockets full of enlightenment
a. the restless fulcrum softens with impatient breathprint
Karissa Morton is a student at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where she is a writing tutor, literary journal editor, and president of her university’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta. Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Lyrical Iowa, Words-Myth, Flutter, Breadcrumb Scabs, Writers’ Bloc, Fogged Clarity, Counterexample Poetics, Splash of Red, Leaf Garden Press, Alba, and Clockwise Cat.