serena crane, prescription for lilies

gravedigging; first published in Crow & Cross Keys (september, 2022)

nobody gets me like george knightly gets me (if i loved you less i might be able to talk about it more) | 07.06.23

we're halfway dead with the way we treat each other

semantic satiation

The sun will shine, I love you night will fall, I love you poets will sing their praises. I love you I wake up, I love you I feed my cat, I love you I find you in my thoughts. I love you You are written in my heart's muscle memory; I love you that same, old beat, I love you you've heard it before. I love you So why are you surprised? I love you Nothing would please me more I love you than to be taken for granted. I love you Listen. I love you Do you hear that? I love you Do you believe me yet? I love you I'm not leaving, because

Thoughts about Oranges and Other Strange Things

The Orange by Wendy Cope is my favourite poem of all time. And the thing about Cope's poem is that it draws you in slowly, almost like a nursery rhyme. You'd think this was meant to be plastered on coloured walls teaching kids still growing their teeth in how to read.

Then it swings back like a baseball bat with memories of mundane things; shopping, a walk in the park, checking things off a to-do list. And somehow, it makes you romanticise them.

And I think of you, who offers me your imaginary fruit in the hopes of making my day better. You, who keeps me warm in the nights and makes sure I'm well rested at dawn. You, who entertains my every rambling. Is there anyone who does the same for you? I would very much like to meet them, and tell them that they better be doing a damn good job of it.

The Orange is my favourite poem in the same way that you are one of my favourite people. I think of lazy Saturday afternoons and singing lullabies to sleepy friends. I think of a future so close I can almost touch it, but just fall short of having it in my grasp. I think of how much I loved in the past and how much more I would love in the future.

And therein I run into a problem. How am I meant to tell you I love you? I don't have any oranges to peel for you.

[Transcript:

BLUE WHALE IN A GOLDFISH TANK

of course there’s something wrong with me. i am the smallest matryoshka doll. i ask god to free me and it stares back with eyes brown like graveyard dirt. of course there’s something wrong when the living is already dead and every godforsaken word out of your stained-glass mouth is a eulogy. when you ought to be sky-wide and you dwell within the broken nail of a pinkie finger. they built my chariot upside-down, reversed like a tarot card: horses in the backseat, wheels riding shotgun, yoke between my teeth. what part of this is right? i need the sun to sear my skin like parchment in a fireplace, mapmake new lines into my palms - charcoal black, roasted-pig scented. if i tear every page off the book, surely i can fill the cover with a rainforest. rewrite the three-line poetry into a roads-long epic. i need to grow tall enough to throw the world off atlas’s shoulders. “this is mine,” i tell him, fingers wound around his throat. voice like a dragon before its gold. eyes like a supplicant at the altar. “this is mine. this is me.”]

serena crane, full metal baby

"The city's name is the same as one of the Ukrainian names for Artemisia vulgaris, mugwort or common wormwood." — Etymology of 'Chernobyl', O. S. Melnychuk

"… and the name of the star is called Wormwood." — Revelations 8:10-11

my poem 'wormwood' was published today by zero readers! read it + another one of my poems ('spidersong') featured in their fourth issue here 🌿

for eve || 4.29.23

my poem for the august challenge for the orangery literary society, prompt: "liminal times, liminal spaces"

Love this: Etsy

it seemed promising.

Truth is absolute— Absolutes are falsehoods— Honesty is a promise made           already broken.

I didn't have to earn your admiration but I earned your disappointment. It wasn't an oath It was an agreement Under the signature,           a watermark. So we agreed—           this has promise

Going unspoken slipped into the exchange           What did you buy           What did you give           What did you throw away?

And now we can't unspeak           (the words crowd behind teeth,           silent spectators) the promise           (unsaid, unread, fine print) already broken.

dot painting

on godhood and liminal spaces

[Transcript:

GOD IS A LIMINAL SPACE

spin the wheel: what is god 

today? an airport seat before the boarding gates. moonlight hitting the steps of an empty staircase. the loading screen of a video game. the pause before you say ‘i love you’ in your native language. god is 

(there)

a liminal space. the way to mcdonalds at 3 a.m in songdo. the moment right before the picture you took appears on your phone. the rise of sadness leading to a first sob. midnight talks, seafoam on the rocks. god is you reading these words. god is you

for lost passersby asking for directions, for house cats staring down their balconies, for secret lovers in the dairy section, for train seat neighbours and colleagues. the divine is 

(there)

a transition, a passageway. a there-then-gone-

then-there-again. godhood in the cracks of the world. in the nooks and crannies. where we unwind. humanity is ink on a paper and god sleeps 

(there)

between the lines.]