Poetry by Yelaina Anton

                       Ashley Harrigan CC



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I Dreamt of You in Shades of Charcoal

I dreamt of you in shades of charcoal,
with those spiralling, bewildering smoke limbs like you were born
of some hot inferno I could never survive,
eyes like embers I meant to extinguish but never could.

Haunting things, you said to me.
Cursed, terrible things. I remember one
most of all: your heart, made of
ink and tendons and crow feathers, beating for any one’s but mine.

And the hurt, falling from me like
stones slipping under the vast expanse of ocean,
falling from me like a velvet bag of stars thrown
across the skies, the kind of velvet bags they use for loose diamonds.

When I dreamt of you, I never imagined
a nightmare. You surprised me, I admit, with those clever plots
that mind of steel edges conjured. Keep away, demon.
I learnt my lesson when I dreamt of you in shades of charcoal.

​



Rat chicken

Friday take-out. We sit around
the table and pretend it’s a
family dinner. Rat slips down
our throats with the help of
sweet & sour sauce. Sip coke.
Tip the delivery boy, and invite
him inside—even though he’s
not a part of this family, and if
he knew us, he wouldn’t want
to be.

​

Yelaina Anton hails from a small city outside Boston, USA and studies Creative Writing at NUIG in Ireland. She tends to write about things that confuse and distress her, which is unfortunately everything. You can find her work in Perhappened Magazine, Versification, and Neuro Logical Magazine, with work forthcoming in Ayaskala, Nightingale & Sparrow, and Vox Galvia.

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