Now I’ve got that dusky feeling
Every year around this time
Every time it leaves me reeling
The sun’s a ghost, the wind’s a mime
What of winter gives it meaning
What of summer makes it die
Every day the leaves are failing
Every night the moon’s a lie
I should have known that I was stealing
Memories of future crime
Now they say begins the healing
Now I say begins the climb
And as my lids are slowly sealing
I see my mind was never mine
And I’ve got this dusky feeling
The past’s no help, you’re a rhyme.

Society elected my skin to be a deep onyx
I am immature by age
But my soul is wiser than one hundred men.
I am not shy to tell them how I feel
My name is Zianna.

Choking on the bucket of words my brain is trying to pour
Eyes releasing tears like a leaky faucet
Staring at the ground for a sense of purpose.
All we want is just to have our equal rights
My name is Zianna.

My blood and bones were born in Charlottesville
Color is meant to describe licorice and the midnight sky
Not the surface level pigment of vibrant souls.

I am ill at ease with your nervous system.
This is my skin, my physical boundary.

If I seem inappropriate, freeze at your cues,
it’s the lack of affect, the absence of resonance.

I fight or take flight. Cobblestones and kites.
Am beginning limbic revision.

There is something they call recovery.
There is something you never recover.


(First published in Ambit, Issue 227, January 2017.)

You ask me to take the Christ costume
out of the closet. It’s been a year

since your consciousness went
missing—stunned out of you

into the road: collision of machine & boy,
no pulse in your wrists, your ghost

gasping. Crash doesn’t capture it: your halo
ringing as it bounced from gutter

to sidewalk, singing down concrete
end over end. I wonder, did you throw

your shoulder against your eyelids, wanting
to burst through those last slits

of light? Your recollection of this
is dead, as is the seven days

I’ve got that dusky feeling
Every year around this time
Every time it leaves me reeling
The sun’s a ghost, the wind’s a mime

What about winter gives it meaning
What about summer makes it die
Every day the leaves are falling
Every night the moon’s a lie

I should have known that I was stealing
Memories of a future crime
Now they say begins the healing
Now I say begins the climb

And as my lids are slowly sealing
I see my mind was never really mine
And I’ve got this dusky feeling
The rain’s no help, the world’s a sigh.

Summer was elusive that year,
a pale demure maiden hidden behind a lace covered window
wistfully watching the rain slide down the pane and into the earth.

And so young Spring thrived,
feasting on the moist, cool drops, heaven’s own nectar,
feeding the young green shoots sleeping beneath the soil,
rousing the thirsty seeds.

we are a forest fire.
you, the flame
i, the earth
we are whirling, dancing, passionate
i fuel you, and you consume me

until you leave
the world is black, charred, burnt
walk through my woodlands and find that i am ruined
but alas, these things heal with time
you may have killed me, but my soil is now rich
and from that i will grow

you see, you may be fire
you wield the power to destroy me
to set me ablaze and watch me go up in smoke
but baby, i am the earth
i am so much more than the flowers you see

I keep a picture...
knowing not what you are...
I howl at the moon...
Are you a star?
Where is the heart
When everyone’s the same?
When everyone is different
Is someone to blame?
Your eyes catch fire
Through the heat of the screen
Singeing my soul
The beat picks up steam
The idea of a flower
Wracks my poor mind
I give it to the sea
There is no other kind
And the waves part way
For the secret little book
I keep close in my study
Time never took...
When I look at you again
Your image disappeared
Into the new wallpaper