Inside Out

Catrin Welz-Stein

Elena Kalis

Diane Victor

David Ho

Frida Kahlo

 Ken Wong

Leilani Bustamante

Kate Macdowell

Inside Out

By Diane Wakoski

I walk the purple carpet into your eye

carrying the silver butter server

but a truck rumbles by,

                      leaving its black tire prints on my foot

and old images          the sound of banging screen doors on hot   

             afternoons and a fly buzzing over the Kool-Aid spilled on   

             the sink

flicker, as reflections on the metal surface.

Come in, you said,

inside your paintings, inside the blood factory, inside the   

old songs that line your hands, inside

eyes that change like a snowflake every second,

inside spinach leaves holding that one piece of gravel,

inside the whiskers of a cat,

inside your old hat, and most of all inside your mouth where you   

grind the pigments with your teeth, painting

with a broken bottle on the floor, and painting

with an ostrich feather on the moon that rolls out of my mouth.

You cannot let me walk inside you too long inside   

the veins where my small feet touch

bottom.

You must reach inside and pull me

like a silver bullet

from your arm.