Poetry By Rachelle Boyson

Benson Kua CC




We used to hang out at cathedrals at night

        For Nathan

Some might say loitering but we called it hope,
a summer night filled with equal parts
old pain we were running from
& crisp skies we were running to.
We’d go to church to find
God
ourselves
each other.

We inked our names into
the wooden city,
that summer living forever
in the ossein of me.
My friend,
we made an immortal moment
in a world full of moments
born to die and peel away.
We squeezed out of our old skin 
over containers of chow mein,
mugs of expensive hot chocolate,
the same three songs that vibrate
in my mind like a prayer
every time a new summer
wakes up within me.

The church bells would ring out,
9pm was our own kind of miracle,
every untouched minute a minute
we helped each other get to.
The only angel who has ever saved me
was you.
The only God I believe in
is the one that saw you
and saw me and said
I wonder.





​Possible (verb)     

            With a line from Shira Erlichman         

To feel the pressure of gravity
transform into freedom,
to cartwheel into a yes
that is not guaranteed.
To ask, what is knocking at the door?
What is wanting to come in,
to be nurtured and take root?
Is it music? Maybe stones, maybe purple?
To draw a world on the ground
in chalk and enter it.
Or:
To entertain the idea
that you are already here.

Here, where the eggs are fried
to crispy-edged perfection,
little oil-birthed lattices of delight.
Here, where the babies are
squirming and teaching us
what the future could be.
Here, where we tell each other
what words we like in hopes
that others like them too.
Here, where there’s no such thing
as too much or too little.

To find rich frothy bliss in 
the enoughness of this.
Or this. This, too.
To carry a friend in your pocket,
to take a walk out of an apple
and a bite along the beach.
Possible shares roots with potent,
they are cousins with French ancestors.
To possible, one must ask:
What here is potent?
And:
What if it were everything?





The love you call in

          For Joey & Wendy

Notice the way love has made this place
home: arms around familiar shoulders; hips
harnessed to the beat; laughter, diaphragm-deep
and unrusted. God, that’s good, isn’t it?
To know, to hold and to have, to sow
something true and alive in a hall of desert
and mirage. We have been lucky to witness you
keep small things aloft long enough
to become big things, strong enough
to bear all things. I swear, the heart picks
the most tender fruit, whispers the most
potent prayer no deity could ignore.
I swear, the love you call in pours out
entire rivers. It honeys the air, it bows
the whole orchestra’s strings, it renders
the mirage into something
crystal clear and real for everyone.

​


Rachelle Boyson is a Bay Area-based poet who refuses to stop writing love poems about her friends. She holds a degree in Linguistics from UC Santa Cruz and uses both her scientific and artistic love of language to inform her writing. Rachelle's previous work has appeared in ROPES Literary Journal and FeelsZine.