Featured Poet & Artist Neshan Tung

​SPARK IN A GLEAMLESS NIGHT TIN
 
pillbox dreams grow dead things on me
(essential organ—heart beats steadily)
cold steel slices virgin Mary
in two and
she laughs, embroidered
in hues of blue
sea salt ocean eyes
hiding the good stuff under her tongue--
she won’t give it up!
she just comes again and again,
wounded sparrow bird in flight, red iron wings embedded
eyeballs rolling, she tells me lies--
planting rosebuds on
those endless hills,
those amphetamine hills.
 
look how I die :
rain-soaked Belmont
king-sized, left out to dry
only to be shot through the carnival ride--
it wilts inside.
nobodies like me wilt inside.
slow burning roots grow drowsily, without promise
of aching swelled bellies--
 
sweet toothed, ready to pop.




THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH!
 
in another life, I was best friends with my mother. I saved her and she saved me
from men with cold eyes and thorny crowns, she kept them away with switchblades
and the flick of her wrist.
 
we tied cherry knots in the dark and cried. we ate pomegranates and pressed flowers in
alice munro books, our fingertips stained pink.
 
with lilac and tangerine skin blues in my mouth,
I sunk to the bottom and that was the bitter end of it.
I bit my tongue so hard the whole ocean turned red.
 
I wanted to be real, I wanted to be a mermaid, beautiful and soft,
sinking
            sinking
                        sinking
 
down baby!
always sinking.
 
my thighs weren’t ever sore anymore, and nothing hurt. she pierced my ears with a rose thorn.
when I died, mother scattered my ashes in the Indian ocean.
we both just wanted to be where the cowboys were.




HOT ROD ANGEL
 
lanterns in hell buzz like death and bluebells.
my snake bite baby dissolves in hot trips of red and blue, like black leather Wild Ones
singing the arsonist’s lullaby.
 
barely breathing, I sit still and heavy on the river’s edge, waiting
on Lucifer
fallen mystic, my old man— his burnt halo glows, he lights the sky up with tears.
 
I want to be there with him, way up high, when he bites into the strawberry
red exploding into his mouth, fingers sweet and sticky.
 
then he will turn to me and say:
 
you’re a miracle
            you’re a star
 
but my Southern Comfort dreams don’t mean shit to him.
I throw parties for dead things when he touches my face in the dark.
 
in the end, my heart valves shrivel
and rivers of Babylon run dry inside.

​

Neshan Tung makes collages and writes poetry to get by. She is currently at the University of Calgary, majoring in English. Neshan takes inspiration from graveyards, Marlboro men, peach schnapps, achy and swollen hearts, disco balls, dream work, knives, and strangers who smile back.

---