Poetry by Megan Burns

                       Ron Gilbert CC




Significant

to say/ stay seduced/ by language
we built a house of spells
a wording of what we meant to one another

i sd i wd/ want but there was/ barely
a dusting of truth i would you topple

inside me/ a poem/ of us/ i form
to not last i was always designing escape

to not feel/ not like you imagine/ i was
giving up feeling for knowing beyond mind

giving up knowing/ for nothing/ beyond time
what is an entanglement to traveling back 

time’s rainbow/ listen/ it’s all the same
i saw you and then i knew you 

following clues/ traveled some/ you don’t 
remember who i am, you say 

next time/ should i/ leave sooner
stay longer what i would do different 

we stay/ aloof/ the word/ we are
when you are no longer in my mind

i am forgot/ forgetting sign/ i tried
to not write it well at all

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Source of Memory

morning in a world at once crumbling and building transparent akin to beauty, a clumsy push forward, kept source for debriefing inside this atomic moment, this well played gone strange practice of breathe in suffering and release attach, this world if you insist is a dreaming that is meta-stable and context we must admit is boundless: we are the universe and have an intrinsic capacity to go beyond what went before. consider others as another you. as exactly you. this practice can change societies. compassion is your greatest protection and your greatest resource.


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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 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. Her poetry and prose reviews have been published in Tarpaulin Sky, Gently Read Lit, Big Bridge, and Rain Taxi. She has three books Memorial + Sight Lines (2008), Sound and Basin (2013) and Commitment (2015) published by Lavender Ink. Her recent chapbooks include: her Twin Peaks chap, Sleepwalk With Me (Horse Less Press, 2016), Beneath the Drift (Red Mare, 2019) and FUCK LOVE: I’m sorry someone hurt you (Shirt Pocket Press, 2019). Her fourth collection, BASIC PROGRAMMING, was published by Lavender Ink in 2018. Her forthcoming collection is called PLURALITY. 

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