Enjoy Being Human

Amanda Stovicek

A Kind of Blindness

The impossibility of the sun every morning—
then suddenly it's gone in a flash of green
brighter than a highlighter than the first leaves

of spring in the trees. Everything organic and not
becomes the normal, the decay. Plunged into night
you learn what electricity means, which shapes

of your furniture inflict the most pain, which parts
of your body you don't need to see anymore.
You liken the surface of your face to ash or the dried

up sponge in your sink, empty and cold. Nothing
likes to grow anymore and the lights need keeping
on and everyone's skin gets paler and paler

until you wonder how long until we are transparent?
You live like this for a while and memorize all
the summer constellations and the color

differentiation of the stars because the planets have become
void nothing to reflect how Venus is more yellow Jupiter
more orange Mars stupidly red even though it isn't—

it's the color of ash—and the Moon—
the Moon isn't there. No more super harvest blue or blood.
The night even more lonely than before.

Southern Weather

They sing about the Carolina sky, sunset smeared
like a Monet, cotton candy colors that can't be bottled

or dyed, only drawn against the cornea.
But there's also the heat—

it floods the body like a bruise, an ache even dark
carries. No matter how tall the sky or how far

the stars, in the South heat remains. It hangs
in the trees like Spanish Moss, a sweat-necklace

dappled all summer. You want for rain, but the drops
aren't cold and the thunder cracks the sky anew—

not like the sky they sing about, but rips it white
and buzzing to blister with a fresh heat.

Märchen

We grew these stories like pearls in the hillsides
and tired villages of our fathers. Tales spun

from rules into complex threads growing
along the bones of our bodies like lichen.

We stoked the syllables in the fires of hearth
and chest and behind our eyes. We remembered

purity and ribbon knots and the angles
hands made of prayer. We became ink

from kindling and dark. No words stayed buried
under the cobbled roads, each footfall scraped

the prescribed behavior from fieldstone
to lip to lung to air passing through

the jaws and muscle fiber of our kind.
We planted these roots inside

to grow out to knit forest to lake to sky
to the song of our kneeling bodies. Please

remember how we struck sentences on sun's arc
how we longed for evergreen blooms

how we sucked bitter lemon and did not spit.
We gave a voice to the bruise of all faces.


About Amanda Stovicek

Contributor headshot, Amanda Stovicek;

Amanda Stovicek is a poet from Northeast Ohio made of star stuff. Her work has appeared in Noble/Gas Qrtly, Gordon Square Review, Red Queen Lit Mag, and elsewhere. Her debut microchapbook, SPACE SPECTACULAR, was published by Ghost City Press in the 2018 Summer Series. When she isn't writing, Amanda teaches English at three local colleges. You can find her online at amstovicek.com or on Twitter @amae099.

Follow Us: