if you asked me what i wanted

 

we have a balcony

that overlooks the old city, we have two dogs

that sit

at our feet in morning sun and the breeze

is warm like summer and smells

like pineapple and the sea

 

i

watch you across the table, you

look careless when you wake, you have learned

to love the morning for me

 

you squint

against the rising sun, you drum

your fingers across the back

of my hand in patterns of five

 

you ask me if i’d like

to have lunch

somewhere we won’t be recognized, let’s

fly to Paris and write poems together

on a terrace full of pots of geraniums and vines

let’s spend the day brushing crumbs off our pages and

making love in the shade by the river

 

i raise my coffee to my lips and say

yes

 

the dog yawns and settles down its sleepy head

again

 

and it is quiet

 

 

Artist Bio:

Haley Morgan McKinnon is a poet and playwright based in Portland, OR. She holds a BA in Creative Writing from Pacific University, and works as an editor for Cascadia Rising Review. Her work has been previously published in The Almagre Review, and more can be found online on New Play Exchange, or on Instagram at hmm.writer. 

In the Folds of Your Memory

 

You don’t have to squeeze me

to that tight schedule of yours, Sweet!

Just keep me, pressed between your pages,

where you search for a smile you lost,

where you feel the contours of your hope expanding.

Keep me there,

Like the petals of those flowers that you blew me that day,

spilling love on your pages, printing the fragrance you miss much;

the yellow pollen rolling to the mid ribs of your memory book,

with its gloss still vacillating, ebbing your loneliness.

You can always meet me in those imprints left behind lingering,

like your touch that remains seldom on my fingertips;

radiating moonbeams from the entangled bodies in love, near the window frame,

your hand gliding smoothly over mine, like flames on gasoline, so smooth

ending its journey at the tips, dangling-

like a dewdrop on early greens, holding on graciously,

until reluctantly you could let go, with the ring of the rising sun.

When you feel lost, hold out a finger, trace mine in the folds of your memory pages,

to bring you back home, sweet.

These fingertips have you inscribed in their lines,

But, don’t you squeeze me to that tight schedule of yours,

just keep me pressed in the folds of memory pages!

 

Artist Bio:
JGeorge is a 26 year old writer from Pondicherry. Her poems have
appeared in several online and print journals, most recently in “The
Martian Chronicles”, “FishfoodMag”, “Muse India”, “Madras Courier”,
“Spark the Magazine”, “VerbalArt”, anthologies of “Boundless”(Rio
Grande Valley International Poetry Festival 2019) and “Love, As We
Know It” (Delhi Poetry Slam). Currently, she is pursuing her research
at Pondicherry University