3 Poems by Lauren Stone

“when I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”

Randall Jarrell, 1954 “The Death of a Ball Turret Gunner”

No words had ever felt so real to me.

No filter, just guttural distinctions

start to comprehend what it means to be.

Hoarding, inhaling unique creations,

striving to understand, ingesting, all

literature becomes my heroin

I’ve lost myself, a servant to its call

consuming Ginsberg. I commit sin.

“Keith Richards ain’t got nothing on me, bitch.”

I felt those words tingle down to my toes

when I wake haunted by that phantom itch

going back to that image of the hose.

I’m never satisfied, I search for more

crawling to libraries looking to score.

Sea Girl: Revisited

Your salt laden tears,

reflecting pools of beauty,

splash against my face.

Lost in your serenity

I immerse myself in you.

Starfish envy you,

a beauty unparalleled.

most would recede, but

the rabid sea cucumber

begs for entrance to your depths.

Permitting access

I am struck by your wave of

generosity

you take me inside of you

once lost, you guide me back home.

Werepuppy

I’m the worst werewolf ever.

There is nothing terrifying about my bark.

My claws are dainty and unthreatening.

I thought that becoming a demonic creature of the night

would at least make me less perky, but

no I had to be a were-Pomeranian,

An Armani purse dog, six inches tall,

Plush like a feather duster.

The last time I changed I went on the hunt,

there was not an ankle in sight left unbitten.

Soon they will be like me. But it wasn’t easy.

A lady kicked me in the face hard and I went flying,

her black pointy Versace shot-gunning me across the street.

But determined as I was, I followed her home, slipped in

through a cat door in the garage, and stole her shoes.

I guess that wasn’t very werewolf of me.

Oh well, all I wanted was to be a creature of the night, kick some ass,

show the goth girls from high school at the ten-year reunion

who was really edgy and in league with Satan.

But I can’t even turn into a werewolf right.

I knew I should have been a vampire.

(First Appeared in Bank Heavy Press's Pom-Pom-Pomeranian)

Bionote

Lauren Stone is the owner of Loyal Stone Press, and the editor of the quarterly literary journal Prospective: a Journal of Speculation. Stone's poetry has appeared in Verdad Magazine, Bank Heavy Press's publications Pom-Pom-Pomeranian, Husbands and Malfeasant Dogs, and "Cthulhu a Love Story". Short fiction can be found in Menage-a-20, "Cthulhu a Love Story", and Bartleby Snopes's Post-Experimentalism. More information on Loyal Stone Press can be found at prospectivejournal.tumblr.com