Melissa Anne Tolentino

and like every other burnt out musician-slash-magic-user, drops them in favor of trying seventeen different chords on her lyre with some wrecked ideas about love and war for company. (SoFloPoJo) (scroll down to find the poem)

I get jealous of things like dolphins / and their trainers, how one can trust another / with her life so much she will eat, bounce, kiss anything / that comes out of his hands. (Beaver Magazine [reprint: originally in Junoesq])

I tell him that his face is an octopus, / just like the one nursing my ankle, except like hell / he would ever find someone to make out with. / Not even an ankle would want to get near a face like his / except to kick it. (Fish Barrel Review)

There are twenty-seven plants in my bedroom / that will need watering. I know you won’t know which ones / need which kinds of fertilizer and who knows if I’ll have / enough of a grudge to curl around your shoulders and whisper, / If you so much as put the Miracle Gro near these I will eat your eyes. (Emerge Literary Journal)

The boatman tells you not to stick your hand in the water / but you hardly ever obeyed while alive. / You tell the kind sir / to go fuck himself. (Yuzu Press)

We talk about the stars and the dead like they are one and the same / but I know that the dead don’t sparkle. Why would they? / Bones don’t shine in the ground. / I’ve never seen a cemetery / that glowed like a carnival, rows of tombstones lit up / like Satan’s personal catwalk. (Rust + Moth)

Today you are six months old, / though we never got to count / that far together. Since last summer / I have been trying to be pinker, / tiny palms and noses sewn into the hem of small breasts. (Tinderbox Poetry Journal)

the best way to beat a boss is to leave the game / for a few months and forget you ever played it / which is a tactic I have used in relationships / but in those I can never load from saved game / and new game doesn’t quite have the same taste (FreezeRay)