Contributor: Alyssa Nickerson

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Abscond with me
(illegitimately)
to those states of stupor
aligned on the cusp of dawn,

where you answer
the vaudeville babble
of seashore with makeshift
riddle snatched from a poet
society will overlook.


Let your heels slap the pavement
like an invitation to a duel.

Forget the nagging constants,
the see-saw whining of
emotion between ribs.

You see:
it is not the death of
light that haunts you.

It is not silence, but a
brutal ambivalence
that knots sheets at base of bed;

that ties thighs to headboard
with burn-pocked bandanna
& sings nervous litanies
in whispered slang;

that flutters in your periphery,
arriving softly as buckskin
& lace to settle beneath
skin like a worn lover.

It is your indecision
that knocks fabled egg from
fence, a fallow comprehension
of miracle and madness.

It is a stalwart devotion
to choice, half-invented,
that slips about your neck
& collapses Orphic logic
like a young man’s pride;

only anxiety can flood
your skull with reverie
(in the hope of drowning
more than time).


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Alyssa Nickerson is the product of wonder and wanderlust. She was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and plans to move to Georgia to study writing at the Savannah College of Art and Design. She has been published in Word Riot, VAYAVYA, Poetry Quarterly, Camel Saloon (including Editor's Choice), Eunoia Review, Downer Magazine, and other journals.