shooting stars are just dead stars but you look too good to be a dead star
i hope to die fast like a shooting star - i have looked up the definition of a shooting star - when i was 4 you grabbed my face and died - I stood back to see, if under all those flames stars would appear - i was mad because you died before i got to tell you that a shooting star is a noun - a transient fiery streak in the sky when it passes through the earth’s atmosphere - a shooting star can also be any person or object that moves with spectacular speed - you are also a noun in the atmosphere - to you i would have given the recipe for the sun and the main ingredients of different skies - i asked NASA how often shooting stars occurred and she said every 10 to 15 minutes - this might be everything i have ever been trying to tell you - every 10 to 15 minutes i would have told you that you died fast like a shooting star
you have a lava lamp head and you are becoming my living room
i try to touch your legs on my leather couch - in the dark they turn into my leather couch - i can’t see where your legs start or end or if I’m sitting on them or if they even exist at all but i think they’re close - i can see my lava lamp in your eyes and the irises start to separate in melting neon balls moving inside your head bouncing off the top and the bottom and the sides running into each other causing fights and reforming into different shapes - your legs are now a leather couch - your head is a lava lamp - your light is dim but manageable to live with - I’m trying to feel out where your arms are and i startle as they stretch into standing lamps with no switches - they have slowly curved themselves up almost touching the ceiling - your palms arch inverted into shades and your elbows become the bases - your lava lamp head still remains our only light source and i try to keep you awake for the sake of seeing each other - your entire chest and torso deflate and flatten and your sides drape over the cushions of my leather couch, or your legs - they grow small microfibers the color of cherries - and i ask you if you’re done settling in - you shake your lava lamp head and wrap your blanket body around me - i burn my lips kissing your lava face
The Only Muscle I Work Out Is My Tongue
i tell you, “the tongue is the strongest muscle in the body”
so let’s get buff
it’s a gun show
but for tongues
we’ll take the whole day off just to shoot each other
let’s go to the gym with our tongues
and work them out
we’ll sit facing one another on the floor
and take turns french kissing
i’ll stand over you while you bench press and when you breathe out
i execute my upside-down
Toby McGuire Spiderman kiss
let’s rearrange the treadmills
so you can look me in the eyes
i’ll run as fast as i can to get closer to you
and when i think my tongue muscles are ready i yell
“I LOVE YOU!” over the hum of machines
and you say,
“i think i need to buy a new gym membership.”
Alana Kelley is a visual artist and poet currently living in Buffalo, NY. She experiments with interdisciplinary poetics, often combining modern writing styles with contemporary subject matter to produce alternative literary and visual products. She is currently experimenting with digital and biological poetics, working with a new formed romanticism and the relationship between the body and its environments.