Heartache | Tulips by Kim Suttell

Ariel Machell | Two poems

Confessions

At the supermarket I choose the greenest bananas
just to watch them bruise later
 
I know this: bananas are not good company
They’ll rot themselves to mush if given the chance
 
In this, bananas are like people
               (I think this only on the rotten days)
 
Despite the itch in my throat
I eat avocados by the basketful
and I overwater all my succulents
 
I know better
 
I went ten years thinking I knew
what a kumquat tasted like
or how to pronounce
prelude­
 
Now all my prayers are lewd
but I don’t really pray
 
I google endlessly
but never the right things
 
                             I ask: Am I dying?
 
I know only what death leaves behind
 
I used to speak to the moon
in the absence of Mother
 
now I speak only to absence
 
I used to carry a rabbit’s foot
back when I believed in luck
over chance
 
I’m still not sure why
people name their kids Chance
but not Luck
 
                I ask: Is there a right way to love a thing?
 
I’m selective about the bugs I will tolerate
 
I can listen to a fly
panicbuzz at the window
for hours
 
                 I ask: How many animals did Hermes kill
                 to make the lyre?
 
Sometimes I want to pluck
at the threads of my day
like a harpist
but I don’t know what song to sing
 
                I ask: Is there anything
                like the human voice?
 
Music evades me
 
When I place my hand against my own humming throat
I don’t recognize the tremors
 
When I look in the mirror
I don’t recognize the face
 
                I ask: Who is that woman?
 
She doesn’t believe in mirrors
 
She’ll believe anything she reads online
 
                She asks: Is it possible to live an honest life?

How to Get Your Mojo Back Without Doing Anything at All

Sometimes, like tonight, the moon is too bright to look at,
a searchlight beaming down on the already found.
We are at a backyard concert and everyone is talented
but it’s February and it’s cold and envy warms me only so much.
A rat darts across the too-low wooden fence
and I try not to laugh but its feet are so pink
and the lyrics, in that moment, so tender.
Something, something, Joni Mitchell.
On the way here you stopped me
from driving down the wrong side of a one-way street
and I wasn’t even a little embarrassed.
I kept both hands on the wheel and you fed me
a French fry that was perfectly salted
and I thought how absurd. How absurd
that this little life of mine has gifted me a hand to hold
and a pack of Reese’s waiting in the freezer.
My foot is asleep, no, my whole leg,
all the way up into my ass and isn’t it marvelous?
If only the other fraction of the body could appreciate
the declaration of love that is falling asleep
while it remains wakeful. Is this scribble-out pain
the realization? Lightning branches the thigh like mycelium.
I think the missing panel in the greenhouse is beautiful.
I think the groundhog hole in the yard is superb.
I think the chip in your black nail polish is a work of genius.
Artistry is a curse and we’re all afflicted.
Envy warms me only so much. So much.

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Ariel Machell is a poet from California. She received her MFA in Poetry from the University of Oregon in 2021. She is an Associate Poetry Editor for Northwest Review. Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets, and is published or forthcoming in The McNeese Review, trampset, The Pinch, SWWIM, The Shore, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Los Angeles.

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​Kim Suttell is a collagist just emerging from a career in bureaucracy and spreadsheets. Paper, as her medium, speaks in torn edges, subtle curls, and tiny glimpses of previous use. The grid template references both quilts and ledgers, places where individual pieces must interact to create a new whole. It is the point to limit the format so that color, texture, and fragmentary images make their own movement and meaning. 

Instagram: Page48paperart