Poetry By Hanna Tawater

Jason Popesku CC




Dear Amphetamine, 

you ask what I’m thinking and this time
I don’t say nothing

but vomit the string
      loosely connected 
               trajectory of thoughts


      “little butterfly brain”
you say affectionately


                but that’s wrong

whispers of delicate wings 
do not land here
       my thorax is not soft, rather

       a temple catching every echo
       discordant chorus in fractal
       kaleidoscopic static 
       seeping through every crack every bone

                                  my thoughts were so loud

                  paralytic body
                  constantly abuzz
                  above a suspended scream

                                screaming shut up shut up shut up
                                to give rhythm to chaos
                                some control over tempo
        
                                it’s a hard meditation to maintain

                                       I couldn’t hear in my mouth


sometimes I wonder if this is why
my parents were addicts
were they trying to quiet 
their own screaming?
      trying to drown
      out ours?

reluctance to diagnoses
replaced with dull shouts
thud of bodies against walls
fists against a sallow
cheek         bruised and vacant 
                     eyes

                 these softer sounds
                 something to focus
                 juvenile insomnia


later, your heavy palm
long slender fingers
elegant and warm on my chest
stills the vibration of strings

               you calm the shrieking 
               bugs inside me

I say, you say:
are the bugs in your mind
or spirit

               they’re in my body, everywhere


               I am one thousand cicadas
               shaped like a woman


                             and I’ve been tired for one thousand years



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Hanna Tawater is the author of the poetry collections VOID (White Stag, 2022) and Reptilia (Ayahuasca, 2018). She completed her MFA in writing, with focus on interdisciplinary poetry, at UC San Diego. Her work has appeared in various publications, both online and in print. She teaches writing and project-based learning in San Diego, where she lives with entirely too many cats.