By Amy Simone Piller
1.
Can you smell the cotton candy
seducing you into line?
Is it the wind in her hair?
The a-line dress distractions
a hundred years since
hoop dress held hope
of what lay underneath
just out of reach
Step
attempt weightlessness
World War II unfolds elsewhere
Everyone simply floating
past one another
2.
If everyone only floats
past everyone else
anyway
Why not?
3.
If we just hold hands
in flying baskets
nothing will be
Fixed
4.
Too often
we just hold hands
in flying baskets
and nothing gets fixed
5.
Surely though if you give up
on flying baskets
and stop liking cotton candy
on your tongue
the taste of temptation
Then all is lost anyway
6.
Ever so slowly we spin
By Amy Simone Piller
1.
Whose hand
was I was trying to hold
when school closed
for the first time
in our lives?
Snow piling high above cars
on which kids played
king of the mountain
Everything
as possible as
a unique flake of snow
mattering
Sometimes when it snows
it could be then again
Magic slipping from the sky
safety just being
a small speck of snow
2.
Is life meant to labor
from here to there?
Or to accept
we are merely
momentary?
3.
Last night at dinner
my mother tells me she is retiring
This is her last
project
Like a rosary she says
I know this is just a grain of sand
She means herself
and I should have corrected her
4.
Today it snows
swirling and settling softly
I envy the easy going snowflakes
Unconcerned
how others see them
on the way down
By Amy Simone Piller
Bela Karolyi screamed
Suck it up
and my life seemed so simple
when Kerri Strug landed the vault
on one foot
try harder
try harder
all we needed
By Amy Simone Piller
If from a simple seed
becomes your intricacies
Anything can be
By Amy Simone Piller
You keep well
waiting in there
to perfume the room
It must get frustrating
awaiting someone
to take you and make you animate?
Oh you paralyzed orb
why am I drawn like a cat
to your snowglobing?
Must you transfix me
always at this almost?
Would you just peel yourself already?
By Amy Simone Piller
Everyone knows to savor you
to the last sweet morsel
affixed to your simple core
you are simply above us all
Out on the counter you sit
We watch for days
awaiting the perfect breakdown
Not just the sweet spot bruise
we want it all
the full vulnerability
your gentle curve
You are the girl next door
unaware of how wonderful you are
in the breeze of a cotton dress
You make me want to want
If this seed can become that pear
If this can become that
If we grow
If we must die
How can we be more
perfect?
By Amy Simone Piller
How placidly you wait
for me to get hungry
and midday muse
over making you
done
How boring
Be not overwrought
laying in wait
Let your juice
drip down
You deserve to enjoy me
when I bite you
take you
make you
My everyday
moment
By Amy Simone Piller
There is a bride
on the corner of 8th and Broadway
She could be elated or distressed
An older man
who could be her father
smokes a cigarette
backlit by an ad
for bubble tea
that someone spent too much money for
whose dreams hung on its success
This is why I need you in the morning
with a little sugar
to believe it is all possible
at once
By Amy Simone Piller
I startled a deer
this evening
who ate berries
so softly
and then was gone
before I could say
stay
Gull prints remained
patterned across the beach
precise until take off
unobstructed path
swooping through
colors of sunset
I have no need to capture you rope and line
I only want you to stay for a moment alone
to find me watching you in wonder
and to somehow know to you
this matters
By Amy Simone Piller
You are such a mess
barely contained
by thin skin
And yet
you are
delicious
How reassuring
when you melt
in my mouth
Oh deconstructed myth
resist! Make me
salivate more
Maintain my hope
Sticky
hot day
you ooze
No ceremony
(how chips crushed
in one’s mouth
make mashed potatoes
no class
all out)
to eat you
to your core
again and again
ever finished