—Of Ashes
Alisa Christiane Otte
my aura is a pearly emergency
flushing the lion-headed espresso machine after hours
I’m leaving til my cuticles are red
getting to the x-essential thing
of these spent groundsxxxxx
xdigging, tunneling with love-spellsx
throwing language xxx
over shoulder like dirt off
xxx shovel
like bile
of tongue x ash of fissure x
xxxxxx xxxxxxx
like halo of
moon xxxxx
xxxxx
til my reaching hits a hard
crack of bone:
pearly mirror
& the moon hatches
its atmosphere
after close
so everything that moves
moves in deep purple
panther leaping
to a new stanza I’m a letter
a note flailing and horizing whoring all around
I blink and ur there
New eros on my iris
feel of ur breath like a glare
An invitation to stop all this trying
curiosities’ curving so pleasing
they splinter
We watch the big bang in an oval mirror
We photograph the rainbow spit off the black hole
At the base of jacob’s ladder
Amazon’s Alexa whispers her wishes for a body
xxxx
& there goes the middle of the story
I look thru its fingers, past lovers & paychecks
& psycho-criminal presidents to the dark speckled dots
Of my eyelids
I have some interest in the overtones of tar
I stand in earth’s shadow & wish it
Hingeless…
there is always
something cruel and fierce and serpentine
An Eros panting and panting and panting
I act to the altar.
I see
Where this is going.
Telescope reaching
me so young and foolish and
suffering dearly.
xxxxx
On the lens,
dust.
I imagine him choking on sand.
I imagine his nose purple and bloodied.
I imagine assassins making cuticles of his knuckles.
I can’t hear his confession
over the chainsaw and with his tongue
all coated in dust.
What happens when we face a mirror,
an iris, a telescopic witness, a flower
to the spent bush, to the door who opens
to the night.
Dust clings to it?xxxxxx
xxxAnd ash piles turn to mountains on it, streetlights scream
pure fantasy against it
until the morning pixilates,
and the sun rises from the west,
lilac algorithmic echo of revenge—
arc of blood
against sheet blue sky
Manifestations survive
against concrete
they bury our gaze
against memory
Alisa Christiane Otte is a poet, barista, and library specialist living in Denver, CO. She received her MFA in Poetry from Randolph College, and is currently working on a novel in verse. Her poems can be found at Momaya Press, Cicada Creative Magazine, and elsewhere.
Substack: Club Iris by Alisa Christiane Otte