NIGHT SPEAK
When you heard the rain tapping gently outside your window pebble tinged
A lover’s insistent plea to be let in Sweat draped in cotton sheets
screen shifted breeze floating bare skin Before your nail torn larynx’s scream asphyxiated Hatched
spiderlings pouring from every orifice
Wool choked whispers misnomered sheep knowing want and desire are different beast
Squandering retaliation on forgivable regret Who pays the piper to chase uncounted sheep Delinquent
soothsayer’s childlike prayers When you can’t forget whose voice
never shuts up
in your head a familiar stranger Memories sewn into a taunt fitted skin suit
bloodied by touch wail slapped birthing
And you want to pierce the heart of every white knight who failed to save the possessed maiden
Virginity’s broken vessel has a female body It’s dark in the dark beneath ghost lids
The night spits up chewed morsels of cognition Endless rooms in a house of woke with no escape
every ex-lover is holding a hatchet of mistake Our dank sub-duality drum grown quiet Curtains
tangled into knotted links of noose Stygian slumber’s bloated corpse awakening
to sunrise’s persuasive red-tinged cleaving Dawn filters through eyelash ensnared brain fog
Do you remember a kindness of sleep
PLAYING GOD WITHOUT A FLASHLIGHT
Fear and loathing eat days
Mares of night wearing faces of memory
racing blind and trampling throated screams Couch sitting on my hands wood paneled Walls covered in
The Wizard of Oz memorabilia
I’m Dorothy talking to an inferno head Pretending to be a wizened little man behind the curtain
Words flick against enamel escaping between my lips All the house of me doors are unlocked
I’ve set a place at the table for you
Introducing each trauma sitting with us by name I played the role of cowardly lion
Empty as a tin man with no heart
A scarecrow psychologist panning my brain Each response institutionalized textbook ready You
believed this yellow brick road
led to all my selves
For years pulling up a chair to examine
Each nag pulled from the race of my headspace Time was a useful tool for thieving senses
Never staying longer than an hour Refusing to turn on the stair lights to the
basement’s sublevel of emotional fortitude Every other room mined of intellectual capacity I never
locked my doors you were free to leave Your pissed stained road spiraled out of control
Munchkins couldn’t brick enough winding yellow Holding a motor purring kitten not Toto
I’m watching the ball you dropped roll away There was never enough magical realism to forge
the wilderness of me No matter how many times you stopped to skip stones across my creek
I own this darkness
The batteries in your flashlight are dead
On a black background, a QR code for visiting the book page is added on the right with a book cover of “Everything that hurt us becomes a ghost” on the left. Another QR code is added under the book cover for browsing more poetry titles. Information about a promo code (NDHM2025) that saves 30% on all poetry books with free domestic shipping is added at the bottom with “National Poetry Month” and the GU logo under. https://gupress.gallaudet.edu/Books/E/Everything-That-Hurt-Us-Becomes-a-Ghost
https://gupress.gallaudet.edu/Browse-by-Subject/Literature-Poetry-Literary-Studies
We can’t let April pass us by without featuring some #DeafLit for #NationalPoetryMonth! Here's “Night Speak” and “Playing God with a Flashlight” by @sageravenwood.bsky.social from EVERYTHING THAT HURT US BECOMES A GHOST. Now 30% off w/ promo code NDHM2025:
gupress.gallaudet.edu/Books/E/Ever...
