holy infant

24 hour mcdonald’s eats up your rearview and the peach flavored sky
is choked by the prison lights.
i want to grab the hand next to me and dip our fingers in.
glow stick bleeds down into the trees
like a head wound on a man standing upright
(why are his friends pointing? he only feels warm egg-yolk running down his collarbone)
and threatens to surge over the road. it licks the lane lines.
pushing pulsing like the voluptuous magma lip
purring down Kilauea in the National Geographic volcano special.
her bulging pimpled veins brooding and steamy.

i’m blushing into your side and remember clouds of color
and my cherry cheek pressed into your fir colored smoke smelling flannel.
it’s not romantic, i’m blind,
i can move only to slip my fingers under the edges of the drying sky and curl it up
so that darkness shows beneath and i can sleep.
wet feet in bed,
and what could be minutes later,
i wake to pumpkin glow pressed against the japanese paper screen
and voices downstairs.
big eyes and you’re beside me
peach smelling curls bleeding onto soft pillow. peach sky peach hair nectar night.

Natalie Owen is a student in California. Her poetry has appeared in Canvas Literary Journal. In her spare time she enjoys reading everything she can get her hands on, particularly on the topics of cult history and archaeology.