Three poems by Karissa Morton

Three poems
by Karissa Morton

Apollo 3:16

proof like a polaroid of the moon,
faulty shadows and intimate strangers.
vermillion rain, ah!
-mais...mais quelqu'un m'a dit!-
nietzsche's mirrors a cipher:
-someone- is dead.
guarded thoughts puddle on sidewalks,
evaporate into this savvy desire
for eternity.
extraterrestrial ladders implacably ascend
toward sophistication
and bicycle wheel allegory.
do we dethrone ourselves
with this sugary spirituality?
impressionism as
puzzle piece to reality,
we are chronologically scrambled,
grasping for triple-word-score
----- and envisioning wooden nails.

===================

Midnight Meditations

skin glistens like
balloon in powerline,
acquiescent pearls dense ornaments
on blown-glass breath.
typing in the snow,
tithing vowels and revising,
reinventing the cards:
deus ex machina surfeit.
chartreuse stillness
swaths like a snake,
clings, swallows, scandalizes
before the rickety phantoms
of morning ripple
across the barren terrain of want
and the sky
spews color with a tug of vanilla.

+++++++++++++++++++

Ellipses

lapses of willow
lap at the horizon,
caveat to profanity
and phantom rationales.
we’re inland and we know it,
but an oceanic vista
adorns our corneas
with a glossy stillness
that causes you to ask
where are we now?
right now? i ask.
right now, we’re nowhere.
we’ve gone astral,
swirling a hook and eye tango
and sharing atoms with jesus.
we crucify ourselves
in an act of non-conformity,
blades of grass shattering to pieces
and skittering across
our transparent skin,
jimsonweed scars garnishing our arms
in augural patterns cryptic and aesthetic.
this we know:
at any moment, the ellipses
could lead to the end of eternity.

Author bio:

Karissa Morton is an English/Writing student at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where she is a writing tutor, literary journal editor, and president of her university’s chapter of Sigma Tau Delta. She enjoys having these things to whittle away her time while anxiously awaiting next winter, when she can start applying to MFA programs.