I lived in a house, a house that
was wide with heat and
dark Kona coffee
slumbering in ceramic pot—
moon on paper-walls
yellowed into the cracks,
whose ivy vines
breathed tiny hopes
from their fringed calligraphy—
I stood with my back
to the cuff of bluesy chords
that staggered through a sleeve
of the sink’s cascading water,
as she washed and rinsed dishes,
sounds and lemon scents
somersaulted across her careful
fingers running scales
along the runnel
over fine china plates—
love swayed to meet the edges of
my breaths
when I propped the deep blue
of her eyes like grape hyacinth
up on the wings
of my half-smoked cigarette—
—A Pushcart nominee, Lana has work of poetry and fiction published and forthcoming with over 130 journals, including a chapbook with Crisis Chronicles Press (Spring 2016), Poetry Salzburg Review, QLRS (Singapore), and White Rabbit (Chile), among others. She divides her time between the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a wife of a talking-wonder novelist, and a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps.
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