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Four Poems

Polina Riabova

Issue 11

Poetry

Soft

Wanting to cry and being unable

The slow sludge of extraordinary proportions

I always write “steel beneath the moss”

But it’s the dirt that crumbles

Over & over


Test

Boston. I made a mess

crawled inside a hole

in your head a fire burns

flames licking skin


aglow, like the sweat of a pimple

on an adolescent teenage boy.


We were once what we were

and now we’re this

 

green shrubbery, a softball.


#2 Crush

 

Stood on your tiptoes

skirt billowing, billowing

pale legs

 

I’m picturing

my face against your chest

every time I see you

online

 

“We are the same”

I think in wonder,

actually knowing nothing

 

certainly not knowing

how far this cross

will carry

 

or why I am the one

who’s gotta hold it up.


Supergirl at 6 am

 

So screw California

and friends that are never there

 

it beckons me

and then it recedes

in my dream the staircase stopped

abruptly

 

I was scared and beneath me

-       No one to break the fall

 

I climbed up backwards;

I looked for the girl

who knew me

 

--

 

watching Supergirl at 6 am

praying softly as the sun comes up

on my knees or on my belly

staring at the iPad

I made fun of and fell in love with you

for having

 

now it lulls me to sleep

in the wee hours

of morning

 

--

 

all the friends left.


all the lovers found other lovers.


all I have is this,


and you.

 

Polina Riabova is a Brooklyn-based poet, writer and performance artist originally from Kupavna, Moskovskaya Oblast, Russia. She is a correspondent at Performance Is Alive, curator of The Blue Rose series, and Editor-In-Chief of PLASTER COCKTAIL zine.

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