Karissa Morton

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.  Her poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Lyrical Iowa, Words-Myth, Flutter, Breadcrumb Scabs, Writers’ Bloc, Fogged Clarity, and Leaf Garden.

Forests of Atlantis

have i told you

that making love to you
is like
searching for atlantis,

       using a tiny wooden boat
       to navigate
       the riverbank of your mouth,

words foaming on the waves
and trailing
       spirals of smoke.

combustion
semisweet like sparkling wine,
fractal bubbles
breaking against the goblet of our bodies,

quoting the wind
and melting my need for words.

i bow my head to you
       like a deer toward ivy,

tree trunk periscopes
rising through
fallen leaves

as i feed you my fingertips
to taste,

and wonder
if you were carried here
in the beak of a pigeon
       who was trained to bring home
               to me.

Escape By Wing

if i spend all night
pushing through wheat fields,
dripping with saltwater tears
and beaten blue as a bruise,
my wings slicing like scissors
in the haze of airbag dust,

if i weave through stalks
where depressions are daisies
and the dawn is sketched in swirl
with bats hanging from the sky
like seed pods,

will you cry yourself awake?

will everything rise and fall
like the sea,
like your breathing

with "sleep" and "dream"
as the cardinal points on your compass,
the one you carry in your pocket
because it reminds you
of your grandfather

like the scent of juniper
and the feeling of crossing the border,
filled with the hope that just maybe
you'll never have to go back.

Proposal With Smoke Ring

if intently on the street corner,
i watch the way
you                exhale                smoke
from your cigarette,

it’s only because
i know the taste of your mouth,

know the sensations of caffeinated fervor
as we writhe in bedsheets,
         rocking chaotic
         like babes in the bathwater,
         your hands an umbrella over my skin,

curving together
before you snap me in half
and i become a stick of charcoal,
rolling between your fingers,
shading you
    with
         bruises
         outlines
         nuances.

if your eyes contain anything but images,
articulate me a map
of how to stay here forever,

teach me to pen us into a metaphor,
something like pulling the blanket
over your head,

         something like a hieroglyph
         spelling out proportioned rosebushes

because like a yacht drowning in waves
of engulfment,

                   i sail manuscripted seas,

occasionally pinched by recognition
and the crash of mutual neurosis.

we pirouette like pearls and skinned knees,
something sweet like vinegar in our veins,

                   and an agitant that would become
                   a photograph                you refused to pose for.

butchers' gaudy blades caress our bones
after our thighs repeat the creative process –


                                                        and i wonder if you sleep on my side of
                                                 the bed
                                                                                       when i'm
                                                                                 gone.