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SurVision Magazine

An international online magazine that publishes Surrealist poetry in English.


Issue Nine

  

PALOMA YANNAKAKIS



Journal of Discontent (1)



In the dwelling of the outermost rock,
with my one good body
and bone-picked soul I flung
across the ground to see if it would
support the idle weight of my ideas,
listing. Less the loss

but still on the registry,
a faint numeral for reckoning.
Hid beneath a strip of selvage that should
have been mine discarded
on display in the raw tangle that began
to resemble
a distant association of bones.

Surely they won't undertake me
in the crosswind
without a care to my name, no
wherewithal, I said. The dense netting heaves over
flanked by two perfectly brown horses.

Tell me where it ends,
and if it's true. Escape and evasion.
As when something indescribable hooks
into being.




Journal of Discontent (2)


I slept in the shadow of my waking
the curve of its ash branched
into morning tremor, jay
that jangled. Galloping across my chest
the many-stranded cough, incipient wave.

Wings shadow wings
on the window frame,
flashing tips
landing on the clapboard outside.

When it was no longer possible to pretend
we would escape unscathed, to move an inch
meant the world.

The ground cut away,
sash of remembrance roped to
some forgotten tree at the edge of a
public square.




Paloma Yannakakis lives and teaches in New Jersey. Her poems appear in Lana Turner, Washington Square, Bodega, Green Mountains Review, and Afternoon Visitor. She is a contributing editor of House Mountain Review.




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