the roller derby has come to town,

the crash course in cryptic conundrums,

boiled riddled, cabbage patch eyeballs

hung from ramshackle christmas trees

an ornamentation of femininity,

clasped like two buckles on a pleather purse

a small cage for wingless cryptids

to hunt inside a black purse-lipped-pocket

for a tiny crumb of something to force

oneself to not eat

pocket-squaring away all the details

four square meals and triple-decker heels

whopper sized eyelids dressed in hunger

draped in trembling blue glitter

tipped with the wing-edged blade of black

that flips itself in and out

for any given occasion, or any re-written

fantasia; the soft callow wind of pressing a brush

into the corners of your cheekbones, find

the taxonomy of where the ridges and mountains

of the bridge of your nose meets the

landscape of your cheeks - rosy, clown-coupled

dripping with rolling mascara rivers

crimson blood and the perfect shade

of pink, to stand flush with your flesh,

to blush; not out of embarrassed or flattery

but a permanent mark pressed to the outside;

an attempt to capture the fleeting, passing, blushing moment

that the fire within

blooms hot on the surface, out of

bliss, ecstasy, nervousness, warmth;

the inexplicable, un-reproducable,

flash of an instant,

upon the washed tablecloth of the face

the marbled tremor of something which passes

only in presence and reaction;

placed, delicately, purposefully, precipitously

above the furrowed hillside of the cheekbone

below the temple

just so / a map,

for a place you cannot

get to from a road

for a place you cannot name

Lauren Suchenski has a difficult relationship with punctuation. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and four times for The Best of the Net. Her full-length collection “All You Can Measure” (2022) as well as a chapbook “Full of Ears and Eyes Am I” (2017) is available from Finishing Line Press. Another chapbook “All Atmosphere” is also available from Selcouth Station (2022). More of her writing can be found on Instagram @lauren_suchenski or on Twitter @laurensuchenski.