KNOT Magazine
Fall Issue 2022
Emalisa Rose
The beauty of oblivion
Sequestered three seasons
suns going up, suns going down.
Dim now, the bright lights of neon
west of this shoreline of respite
where we set in, with our sins
our backpacks and six packs,
from a world we’d forsaken
at the tip of oblivion
where the waves crown the sea.
We lay down in the sand sheets.
Our dog lays between us.
That photo on the fridge
That’s me with my big blooming belly
where your brother was brewing.
We’re here at the seashore. You flirt
with the ocean. I reach out my hand
clasping your own tiny one, as you’re
toe tipping in on your own terms -
part shy bird, part daredevil.
In two months fast forward, I give
birth to your brother, the new kid
to worry about.
As I stand between hand holding
and a child’s thirst for freedom,
somehow I balanced.
That conversation
We knew it was time to discuss it.
Here, on the bench by the north field
sipping our lattes, with
November’s last leaf warriors
determined to fly
with their flips, jumps and somersaults
through the Spring air of April
as we watched in diversion of thought
from our chit chat of ‘sorries,
I told you so’s and let’s start all over again,”
wishing more leaves would come down
and perform for us.
Needing a window
Onto floor six, I moved in, facing
west of the Triboro, dealing with
life at that time.
April was there with her mops and
her Marlboros, lending a hand
sharing tips on recovery, the way to
go blonde and how to exist in this
city of brokenness.
April went home today, two years to
the day, when I moved to that flat
with no view.
I miss the truth in her eyes, her girl
power stories and having had someone
around, when my world needed windows
When not writing, Emalisa Rose enjoys crafting with macrame. She walks with a birding group on Sundays. She volunteers in animal rescue and tends to cat colonies in the neighborhood. Her poems have appeared in Mad Swirl, Writing in a Woman's Voice, KNOT Magazine, and other grand places. Her latest collection is "On the whims of the crosscurrents," published by Red Wolf Editions.
She can be reached at veganflower00@gmail.com
Beneath your mattress, a part of me
Tarot and Timberlake
tap vs bottle.
We’d talk through the night
till the sun
rolled its eyes again.
Then sudden as showers
you asked that I leave, with
our poems on the nightstand
half baked and unfinished.
Once we went thriving
in April’s first fields, only
to flatline in February.
But strangely, I miss you -
the banal of our banter
our sixth sense of debauchery
and putting my gum, chewed
up and vindictive, between
your mattress and boxspring.
To wish away Walter
He’d remind me quite often,
like a spike in my spine, about
the “she” I once was. I needed
him gone, gone like the Winter
that’s worn out its welcome, when
fields are anemic and pipedreams
run empty. I wished him away
asking Jean to put spells on him.
I wished him away from his chronic
obsession to chide and remind me
of the “she” I once was, a woman
I long ago left on the side road,
where weeds thrive their best there,
untouched and unnoticed, by those
men that once wasted me.