Different Time, Different Place Some Hundred Miles Away

poem by Lana Bella

You woke pouring horizontal and white,
like the grazing of cows in drought.
A half-life flung to some roadside
warding the knees of things, you clung
to the language of woods brooding
over loam to guts, as if crave was a word
sheared clean at the cruelest angles.
Ghost-desert floor reaching up in blades
of aphids, and you, standing there at
the isthmus hour, grounded and hungry,
tremored with caution of a rotting sick.
It was early evening then when you hurt
like a cactus spine, guttural rage ran
the tongue each time nocturnes traveled
down your cheek, reminding you of how
your body was a war when the sun fell low.

About the writer

A four-time Pushcart Prize, five-time Best of the Net, & Bettering American Poetry nominee, Lana Bella is an 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), has had poetry and fiction featured with over 500 journals, Acentos Review, Comstock Review, EVENT, Ilanot Review, Notre Dame Review, Rock & Sling, The Stillwater Review, Sundress Publications, & Whiskey Island, among others, and Aeolian Harp Anthology, Volume 3. Lana resides in the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps.