Poetry by Ra Kay

At Least Ten Killed

Your pupils- dark coals
piercing through your eyes
become black diamond bullets
that backfire blowing your head open
like a mine.
“How does it feel,” I ask  
“to be so brilliantly wounded?”
You say, “Excruciating,” then admit to that
being the reason you collapse on anyone who enters.




Conductive

There’s a high cost for running electric blue veins through plastered bodies.
When others hear the buzzing of the vacancy sign over your heart,
I hear a tune from when you were once full, forfeiting space for proximity.
You request to not be treaded on lightly, wanting to feel the weight of thought.
You’re sure not to be careful for what you ask. Live wire. Cobalt Sparks.
A tendency to catch fire all of a sudden, lighting up the nights, igniting everything around.
My goodness, those electric blue veins convey your blinding repentance.
You can’t help yourself. I can’t help myself – standing in the center of you heavy and doused in
water. Waiting.  

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​
Michelle In the A.M.

Sister,
You’re who I would be
if I were truly uninhibited;
if I let my run-ons tear through walls
instead of punctuating them.
It becomes apparent around you
that we’re really underwater when you get naked
and show your gills while most others
swim to the surface to survive.
I dove in after my reflection
and found a likeness of me hidden in your pelvis.
There’s more to it than astrology.
I know you, whims and all,
and can find your pleasure spots
by pinpointing your wounds.
As much as I tried to be separate,
all of my perspectives were on the sides you were on,
taking the tide wherever you went.
What they think is fairy dust in your pocket is really salt,
and the ocean can be heard
by pressing an ear against your temple.
The part of me that’ll always be joined to you
envisions your hair blowing as you ride the pacific coast
right on out into the cosmos as water currents rise to follow.

​


Stable (for R.W.)

I see you trying your best to remain in spite of the leaving that flows through you, having come
from a people who were gifted in disappearing into thin air leaving only a garden scent; rooms
smell like roses when you walk into them bearing thorns. Hallowed be the same by any other
name, you’re still a god bloom in human form feeling every extent of yourself, and I see you
trying to stay even when the spirit moves you to go.

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Bio: Ra Kay is an aspiring author from Kansas (relating more to “The Wiz” rather than plain ol’ “The Wizard of Oz”) with more than twenty years of journaling and writing poetry/prose under her belt. Unconventional to say the least, her imagination and pen crosses literary lines, creating a unique lyrical quality in her work. When she’s not writing, she’s thinking about it, reading, or engaging in an array of other activities that contribute to her inspiration.

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