Three poems by Lana Bella

Near The End

By Lana Bella

Near the end,
before the mind leaves
itself into a halfway
poem, you clip bonsai 
stems and dry them 
beside the French 
window. Listen, that is
all the universe 
have left for you in this 
ambulatory length 
of guts, even refuse rises 
above rust, and 
sunlight fails to polish 
your reflection in 
the glass. So you'll need
to breathe out two 
strong slips of air, for at
last you could feel
the blues 
becoming your own,
crawling then thrusting 
with the serpentine 
grooves of an adder, 
when heavens slumps
you down on 
the rocking chair,
as sleep should arrive 
then almost nostalgically.




Snapshot

To cross the trembling
slate between 
the strange and the stoic,
she tried to imagine 
her flowing curls  
scuffing past this wind,
where the manic throb of
Manhattan rushed
back to leave autumn on
her cold cheeks.
Someone called her name,
she turned, parting 
the streetlight and shadows
for a celluloid snapshot 
of his grainy ghost, 
who was rallying 
the sorrow she wore 
beneath the pinched smile.
The background about
her sapped then behind 
the crisp leaves yellowing, 
muddying his sad eyes.
Turning back,
she held her pale limbs
to the easel of her dormant
universe, and emptied
her soft words into 
a snow globe of his eastern sky. 
Wake, wake, little darling, 
he stalked her silence 
above the motion of time 
creeping through an inchoate
circle, understanding that
at last he has grown 
quietly dim as quickly as 
the watermarked streets in
a downtrodden city.




The Poet Who Gives Up His Ghosts

all of the house is quiet,
while the strain of a velvet
metronome stretches 
along his narrow bed--
and rather than trifling
in those sonnets penned,
the blue arcs of nightsky
haunt the mouth of the 
downhearted poet--
through the wide saloon of 
his chest, eyes of ghosts
show off their red-flecked
rage, pruning back the
tedium traffic of unwritten
words the texture of slate 
granite--out of luck and
out of gin, he ruffles
the remains of black robed
metaphors as they spring
invisibly from his mind
to mouth—words, which
can nurture his waking, 
can in turn sour him in
their smarting cryptography,
so he follows the salted
path between them, still,
the ghosts play the lost
and found in his house of
opus and stones--



​

 About the author: A Pushcart nominee, Lana has had her poetry and fiction featured or forthcoming with over 180 journals, including a chapbook with Crisis Chronicles Press (Winter 2016), Abyss & Apex, Chiron Review, Coe Review, Columbia Journal, Elohi Gadugi, Foundling Review, Fourth & Sycamore, Galway Review, Harbinger Asylum, Literary Orphans, Lost Coast Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Quarterly, Roanoke Review, William Jessup University, and elsewhere, among others. She divides her time between the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps. https://www.facebook.com/niaallanpoe

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