alyssa hanna

daughter

what is the series of prayers you’re supposed to say at the funeral of a fruit?
i know i asked this already. i know you’re not entirely sure of the answer. i know there’s
a tournament of snakes set to be held in this churchyard the same time we’re scheduled
to bury our bruises.



///


​
i love to push off the edge of the horizon
it’s where all the things i want to do and undo and redo go when i can’t reconcile
the fact they are an incomplete colony of the ways i am a disappointment

in the parable i can fly to the sun and it doesn’t even matter​

​i find peace in the knowledge that i won’t live long enough to covet those killed by lava
just enough time to defy earth’s hourglass
or maybe see some resurrections

​in the parable i can fold in like an umbrella and no one calls me closed off

​///

this is the point in the story where we visit the safari of absent parents.
the girl searches for hers but she can’t tell if any of the wandering adults belong to her.
who has her face? her eyes? her predisposition to choosing
the worst out of anything?

in the parable they’re in there, somewhere, grazing with the rest of the herd
migrating towards the sun setting behind a castle filled with needles

this is the point in the story
where she remembers
her place--

--
alyssa hanna's poems have appeared in Reed Magazine, The Mid-American Review, The Naugatuck River Review, Arc Poetry Magazine, Rust + Moth, Pidgeonholes, and others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for Best of the Net, was a finalist in the 2017 James Wright Poetry Competition, and a semi-finalist for The Hellebore scholarship. alyssa is a Contributing Editor at Barren Magazine and works as a copywriter by day. She lives in New York with her three lizards. Follow her @alyssawaking on twitter, instagram, ko-fi, and tumblr.