Poetry by Megan Burns

              Sjoerd Los CC



the heart does not break 
for Laaura Goldstein 

it thins, stretching 
that discomfort                   the space 
we came to grow, look travelers
we decided to abandon unconditional 
for this devastating licking at the jaw 

it's mine, the horde of desire pecking 
remember what you have already survived
i let love go in a flooding that took my breath
took everything i knew before and memory itself
watery since, i cannot keep time 

when the heart held close three beating birds
in the making it did not know one day they would 
be stolen nested, and still you wake and tremble 
spread wide: i am undone of every whispered promise

already, by the time you meet me
i am burnt from the fires i crossed to reach 
the dead, who would run farther from me
what i know of love is i have never been handed 
anything lightly, and would not treasure it anyway 

to say i feel it fill me is to say i papered this life 
with words, i could take out and arrange, the mind 
itself holding the scapes we design to jettison 
addict in control, addict in how wide the doors get flung
open and once upon a time, once upon a timing 
we were houses made of gestures so quiet, so still 
i was glass, shattering in neglect, and surfaced so 

i can hear the thumping echoed call now drowning 
can you love, can you love, can you love, can you 
love: it pumps out the poison of scarce holding 
you let it flow through you or have it ripped
from you, there is nothing you get to take 
it is always your choice, hard or gentle 
there is no break 




new orleans 

inside of me lies a closed casket,
roofs like lily pads,
the smell of rot
called home
                                       : look, there are things
we do to our bodies

things we do to our one precious lives
we do not mean it

i was hooked to the idea
of predatory behavior
splintered around the rim 

so boat around loss, shore up 
and come to root

i landed on the levee like all
the rest, tell me we get to escape 
these whispers

he says to walk backwards into the pain
of it is being human & to that i would give
you, i abandon human, skinned down to lines
of code: you make me want to desire more time

if that’s a word for love, i know islands
i know the way water holds down and back
what is it about this city that keeps you 
even when it cannot keep

what is it about us and disaster
the way we want to land safely but need
to spread wing: to be a water bird  means both
sky and a body of pooled reflections 

i can see my life unspooling
if you said, let’s fly away
would i survive unrooted 
i keep picking up dead hearts 
holding them to my ear
broken that they will not sound for me 

​

Megan Burns is the publisher at Trembling Pillow Press (tremblingpillowpress.com). She is the co-director of the New Orleans Poetry Festival (nolapoetry.com) and runs The Dragonfly: A Poetry and Performance Healing Space in New Orleans (noladragonfly.com). She has been hosting the Blood Jet Poetry Reading Series in New Orleans for the last six years. She has been most recently published in Jacket Magazine, Callaloo, New Laurel Review, Dream Pop, and Diagram. She has three books Memorial + Sight Lines (2008), Sound and Basin (2013) and Commitment (2015) published by Lavender Ink. She has four recent chapbooks: Dollbaby (Horseless Press, 2013), i always wanted to start over (Nous-Zot Press, 2014), her Twin Peaks chap, Sleepwalk With Me (Horse Less Press, 2016) and Beneath the Drift (Red Mare, 2019). Her fourth collection, BASIC PROGRAMMING, was published by Lavender Ink in 2018. 

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