don’t call it necklace   if it left a ring of sleep     where my breath should’ve lived

(after the snow, after the silence)

The orange bulb falls off and a selenite rectangle appears 

She talked too fast Wore heels too high

First kitty comes around You’re so thrilled to be picked

Well heaven only knows my heart is picking up pace Pumpin' out parts of me like a flooding lake

In woods, meant to be like a crab at the bottom  of the sea,

Ash trees—stone-naked— stripped, clear to their nodes. Wind pursuing dead leaves through life-sucked green in the yard. Your mouth, above all, the liveliest thing. 

The ambulance turned down the lane while I was mulching behind the shed  where I’d hammered four-by-fours into  a groundhog tunnel with a ten pound  sledge. I threw down the shovel, watched red light pulsing into the low gray clouds. My neighbor, who, too, had stopped, started moving again on his green tractor. We each raised a slow wave, a hundred yards away. I don’t remember his name. We spoke last fall. By the time I took a drink and wiped my face with my shirt front, litt

You are bitter black coffee at dusk, A hunger for bread to satiate, A bed of broken glass to rest at night.

I was never a good painter. 

I watch jagged rocks reflecting light At odd angles, Reminding me of the muscles in your back and  That decision I regret. Like wearing sandals in the winter, Feet stinging with each step. Numb, yet all I can feel.  Mingling Razer snakes light up green on a screen And I am jerked back to your room, An internal pounding from the unapologetic bang Of my head on the wooden corner by your bed. Smooth and cool and unforgiving  Like the history between us. The pounding is compounde

The mark of the beast sometimes flickers across their gunmetal coats.

on the fine China dinner plate: sprig  lacquered with sweet Sherry ambition, polyurethane-blanketed queries, 

Abigail Ray is a writer from Portland, Oregon, and has been published in Same Faces Collective, Maudlin House, and Call Me Brackets, among others. She recently graduated with her Bachelor’s in English and writing from Portland State University. She primarily writes poetry, lyrical essays, and experimental fiction about loser-core women that are definitely not poorly disguised projections of herself, no matter what people are saying.

My parents’ eyes lock on me the minute I enter the reception hall. A few other head turns and  lingering looks shoot my way, undoubtedly due to the show-stopping quality of my dress. Mom  picked it out for me at the department store a few weeks ago. I remember struggling to conceal  my disgust when a pink, frilly monstrosity you’d think she’d stolen from the closet of a pompous  toddler came out of the shopping bag.

imbued by a sense of blue,  berry not in lactose-less latte

Can you feel me in the silence, can you smell me in the air?

in a subterranean street   of a literary novel   set in Mexico City like those lines   folded across faces in suburbia  clipping the grass 

“The date’s going fine, right? She’s kinda quiet but whatever, cute girl in a pink dress. No complaints”