INDIGO LITERARY JOURNAL

emi wyman

"させ子"

花.

clandestine bells

champagne pearls drift to the rooftops of her mouth

strung along a fishing wire

neophyte cormorant with

ribbed corset laced too tight,

lungs spilling through the cross stitches

like flotsam and a bit of bone wedged just above her chest yet

she takes the bait

she always does

until she gasps for air

釣.

mama is a long-necked fisher,

of the nagara

and twelve tenawa wound about her fist,

she has them

hanging from her arms

she’s charcoal left untouched beneath wood

a kerria that has lost its flowers and she knows it

knows as she pushes up her breasts

and plasters a smile

to her cardboard face

背.

they flock from the city

homebound,

they say

like the park geese that pluck their own feathers

blood like spittle running over wide-blown pupils

they flock to the tunnels

chewing metro cards like

entitlement always tasted as bitter as that first curl of a tongue between lips

and the homebound would know;

mama fishes the homebound

寝.

she does as mama says

she doesn’t expect a hello when she returns

retires to rich milk sheets

and chrysanthemum dreams

mama is tired these days

pianissimo pétil and pêche

mama drops the down cardigan from her bare shoulders

and lights up

translations: 花: flower // 釣: fishing // 背: back // 寝: sleep

"[VEGA]"

{camber

it was that hotel on Hollister that they never built. it was that sweet smell of dry wood shavings that covered the bitter taste of overpriced cigarettes under your tongue. it was, and is, and has always been that persistent shift between certainty and losing yourself.

{anura

here. the loquat trees are ripe for no more than a single day each year, and the plants that grow along the middle of the freeway are chronically parched. you will miss the gray haze of chimney smoke that blots the sky when it rains in november, and you will miss the red horizons of december. your best friend’s black-rimmed eyes mirror wet amphibian tears.

{briar

you laugh a million times in the city of angels. you use the last of your paycheck to rent a cherry red camaro, and go for a ride with the drop top down. sunlight is shining from the stars, and there’s nowhere else to go, so you stay for a while. past the highway billboards and the lemon tree inns, heartache waits for you to walk over a grate in your silver stiletto heels.

{arc

like young leo in romeo and juliet, you lose yourself in an aquarium of stars. unfocused eyes waver under silver strobe lights as coverup for cognitive delay, and you think of yourself as the luckiest person on this side of the milky way. and you think of yourself as the artist. the poet. the paradox.

Emi Wyman is an artist first, human last. Her one passion in life is expressing beauty through all forms of art, including writing. She has been casually scribbling since she could hold a pencil, but for some reason hasn’t done anything at all with her hoards of rambling poetry. You can find her searching for new beauty beneath the gentle 2 p.m. curls of the coastline waves with a dream between her fingers and a strand of seaweed in her hair.

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