Lana Bella

Hungry Ghost

Here you are, in Philadelphia,
dressed as the red scruff of
the winter beard, feeling the sky
on an impossible street. Soon
enough you'll know the curried
haste of hostility in stalks of
trees like you are sick with love.
Dark is roomy here; sloe skin
blitz to net something in return,
holding traces of latitude lines
whetting through asphalt. On way
to reminding time of its poise
and prowl, you lift pipelines
from your sternum cold, claying
feet to a somber strut. You of
the duller teeth, breathe breaths
stirring the shoal ends of tongue,
rolling in saltwater tides of a black
night returning to dust, warring
down whitely the way a heart
turns down, radiant, feral, sudden.

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Lana Bella is a four-time Pushcart Prize, five-time Best of the Net & Bettering American Poetry nominee, and is the author of three chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016), Adagio (Finishing Line Press, 2016), and Dear Suki: Letters (Platypus 2412 Mini Chapbook Series, 2016). Lana has had poetry and fiction featured with over 450 journals, including Acentos Review, Comstock Review, EVENT, Ilanot Review, Notre Dame Review, Rock and Sling, The Stillwater Review, Sundress Publications, Whiskey Island, and Volume 3 of Aeolian Harp Anthology.