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Stephanie V Sears

Big and skillful,
eyes sliced slim and
sidelong on his face
made words go numb.

The simmer of violence, if any,
nature disciplined.

His island was predisposed to silence
through the lone hoot of the Karavia.
We both drew on that quiet
like sailors on halyards,
feeling our hearts’ hemp
twist and tighten.

When apart, we called
over the unselfconscious miles
returning language
to its numinous form.

We summoned each other
across the star distilling hills,
the moon’s loose bolt of sea.

It even happened once that overcome
by distance, we entwined our initials
in the pulp of a tree.

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Stephanie V Sears

This formula of muslin green and castle grey
Offers seasonal romance
That in which we finally rejoice in ourselves.
An iron gauntlet dishevels the tree canopy,
Foments a mad fray between earth and sky
Before dropping a rain storm of crystal pins
On the tar in a smell of asteroid.
Lacquered chestnut trees blossom
Into days of cavernous drama.
Flowing like rivers out of their alley ways
Towards elucidation.
The body soaked in incongruity
Walks to freedom’s delta,
Skin pearlescent with cool cracking wafts.
Suddenly, young and old feel
The thinning order of those last school days.
Nature’s delight in storms: theirs.
A spirit expelled from winter’s old stones
Now exults in aberration
That enwraps them
In the thunderous charm
Of liberation.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission fr

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Stephanie V Sears

The boy and I enter early dawn’s aspic of moisture and air,
as two units of being, scissored out of space,
tingling with death up and down our spines
in this disembodied capital of ghosts.
A tourmaline dome covers the river of miracles
that flows devouring whole tiers of urban filth,
but for memory’s haze ascending the ghats
in blue cobras of smoke.
Between acrid intakes, the alternative of a stench.
Morning prayers careen down the Ganges to Yon’s frontline
in a contagion of candles and awe,
like ragamuffins going through a department store.
The boy and I, convinced to be more than ourselves.
He sees her first and his licorice hair falls
in disquiet over his canine eyes. He hates disloyalty.
Her resemblance to me is essential, pervasive:
from boat to boat we replicate each other.
Which part of the aberration am I?
On which side of the mirror?
Do I go where she goes?
Who dissolves the other into dream?
Already the sun strides up the river towards us
and something of passing time rouses nostalgia.
She pushes upstream with a staccato of oars in the locks,
while, with suspicious ease, I glide seaward.
Our two crafts pass each other.
One of us slips back into the crypt of absence,
invisibility’s deletion.
Did the boy see it? Only he can reassure me
That it was a divine trick
from the fanged goddess of death and rebirth.

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A Cargo Lounge Heroine

The small tonnage cargo

privy to south pacific moods

was obligated to swell and wind

for its fearless disposition.

High up on the castle

a wide-eyed lounge tilting

to sea and sky

offered the unyielding rover

a tern’s weightless pause.

In dawn’s watered inks

land couldn’t keep me.

I was picked off islands

heavy with lithic spells and iron trees

by a big-armed crew.

They held me up to the restive air

by my wing tips.

If a leeward cuff of breeze still fettered me

to sandy shallows, 

adventure soon intruded.

At my wayward elbow, a wood bar

polished like an English Major

stuck in an outpost,

metallized with the brogue of tankards

and cocktail utensils,

concocted me a homecoming

from the soon, not yet, a distant perhaps.

When a shark hide sailor

turned Beethoven on loud

for the dolphins combing the prow,

a green island wrung from the horizon,

became elixir of joy.

I went scouting ahead of myself

to make sure we’d never arrive.

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