Poetry By Angel Rosen

         ​Trixi Skywalker CC



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Thunderbird 93

I want to be Poet Laureate of someone’s bed,
peeling staples out of my knees in the meantime.
You’ll come to a knot soon, untie my neck and my head will come undone.
My head will roll around, make amends,
tell your fortune, then land in a strike,
ten pins down and all my fingers, too.

I want to be sprawled out, sheet fiend,
making acquaintance time and time again with
a heavy sleep that coats me like glue,
and a serious voltage that is several simultaneous alarms screaming dawn, dawn, dawn.
Another arrival. I see that you’ve come to check in,
I haven’t left the bed, one foot in front of the other.
I have thinned myself out enough to be your tightrope. 
Balancing act, getting to know me. The hallway to me is several New York blocks.
What a journey, wrap it up. Your entrance starts another affair.
Turn the corner, trip the fuse,
what a stunner, kingpin in the mattress.
At The Dictionary Inn, no certain suite, 
making a business out of the catalog 
of the bastards at check-in.

There is a switch in my head shaped like a rabbit’s foot. It reads good luck, bitch.
It tends to lead to unwanted announcements. 
Please stand by.  Hello, operator?
Are you at the other end of my vanishing, saying bon voyage and whatnot?
If you are selling me a box of truth,
I will take it only if it is bite-sized.
I will lie still while you assign my dosage.

I put a glass eye in my mouth and squish it like a grape.
Swallow its sharpness, spit the wine.
You collect it in chalice, name it Thunderbird 93.
This transaction sews me shut.
Nothing comes out of me ever again.

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Angel Rosen (she/her) is a poet whose writing focuses on mental illness, womanhood, queerness and absurdity.  She has two full-length poetry collections, Aurelia and Blake and has work forthcoming with Olney, Spillover Mag and Madwoman Collective.  Angel spends her time reading, writing, hobby surfing and eating ice cream.