FOUR POEMS by ALIZA HASKAL
Cabbage Song
click this link to hear the songCaged aged face
A deaf bed begged
Begad!
Bag a cab.
A gade fed beef
Gade bade a face aged
Egad!
SPLASH!
boiling water in your face!
the number of the Beast?
11:32 pm
the IFC was playing Perfect Blue
the usher told us the wrong theater
goodbye is too forlorn drive safe
my kidneys are a cauldron my skull
the slush pile
a zipper will always break no matter
the pants and the new ones
won’t fit either
i’m going to ashes for a bit
one roach in my lips
one wriggling on the concrete
WEST 4TH COUPLETS
Dr. Danilova says my sesamoid bones are swollen.
Until now bones were a promise unyielding.
I limp through Washington Square Park in my surgical shoe.
The drummer: ba-Dum. ba-Dum. ba-Dum.
I see a man wearing a flat-topped hat like a birthday cake.
I want to tell you but I’m always in the elevator when you call.
Leafing through the mini-fridge. Sweaty almond milk and clammy lo mein.
Are you tucked behind the bell pepper?
It’s 4 pm again.
Too late for lunch, too early for dinner.
visitation
i sit at the 60-foot grand piano
blindingly vantablack
reflective of nothing. absorption
of all who gaze into it
except those who sit in front of the glass keyboard
fingers poised.
i have never seen the sheet music
jamie lee curtis places in front of me
but she looks expectant and i
am loath to disappoint her.
my fingers begin to move but it seems
the string between my brain and hands
is cut.
my sight-reading is shabby.
i should’ve practiced more.
i should practice more.
jamie is eating yogurt
and laying on the piano now.
she looks so good
and
long.
Aliza Haskal is a 22-year old English student in Virginia. She recently won a University Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets and is looking forward to publications in The Spectre Review, The Lunar Journal, and Diphthong Lit. More writing can be found on her blog: alizahaskal.wixsite.com/theobsoleteplace and Instagram: @lcd.aliza.