Rachel Dula

April 2015

Rachel Dula is an exuberant graduate of the Publishing Major at Illinois State University with a high passion for all of the arts. She’s read for the Festival and A Reading eXperiment at the 2015 AWP Conference in Minneapolis. When her parents ask her what she wants to do with her life, she says she wants to “become a comedian.” She has been published in StarWallPaper, a Chicago anthology for young writers, in 7th grade because of a poem that just happened to be her homework. Find more of her work at http://figment.com/users/237709-Rachel-Dula. 

Wasteland

 

Beer cans and whiskey bottles

Drunken attempts, sliced skin, and dopamine pills

A garbage dump for a pathetic waste of space 

A recyclable piece of pixel paper

Blank like an artist’s untouched canvas.

 

A stroke of a quiet quill

Dancing letters, daring desires

 

S̶c̶r̶a̶t̶c̶h̶.

            No.

That’s wrong.

 

Hours tick tocking away.

Tick.

            Tock.

Tick.

            Tock.

 

 

Yearning yawns of crumpled crap

Crackling of crinkled sheets.

                                                           

                                     TOSS.

           

             Missed.

 

Eyes drooping as a hand caresses a cheek.

The artist’s canvas still untouched

 

B̶l̶a̶n̶k̶.

 

 

 

House of the Suicide Sleep

 

The loneliness of the hour came home to me

In the salty eclipse

I pick stars

I saw the night on the outer rim of the drinking glass

In the severing cloud of the sow

A broken armada.

 

A rainy disease of jittering drops

The state of the tear that slips off

The house was submerged in the cool lake of air

Lakes cannot drown me

I am circling passwords.

 

Everything down to the words was in motion, in expectation

We fantasized foreplay with the person standing next to us

Buried in skin

The house gave a long answer

In the moment of ecstasy

A spreading of good news over an area without elements

Without words,

Without voice,

Without speaking identity.

 

The music was light in its sound

I play songs for the errors

A breath was enough for differentiation

Of the suicide sleep

The day was without hours.

3:4 April 2015

 

Ron Riekki

Tendai R. Mwanaka

Nina Longfield

Paul Tristram

Rachel Dula

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