Poetry Collection by Wanda Deglane
Season of Thawing
it is January and the rain washes away all my expectations.
I am sitting in a parking lot with a boy I don’t even like,
trying to get home unscathed. you’re smoking in someone’s
backyard on the other side of town. you blow in with the monsoon,
look out at the blurry streets like I do, think the world looks
like a giant oil painting. that’s what I like to think, anyway.
it is February and I live in perpetual disappointment.
it is easier to expect nothing than to want everything and lose it
all over again. and you show up like sea-storms, like blister-wind
in Phoenix. is it because I’m so easy to sneak up on? you take me
out for sandwiches and I am already searching for exit wounds. you
look at me like you’re catching the sky as it turns into sugar-tongued fire,
like you already don’t want to miss me. is it because I’m so goddamn
unique? because loving me is the gentlest rebellion? you bring me
coffee with the last of your gas money and come inside to meet
my dog. she melts to petals at your feet and my heart whispers, fuck.
it is March and you stick around. you look at me like you’re already
trying to make a home out of my hands. I try to dig up the roots
of my loving, but nothing can stop this softest bloom. I finally ask
if you’re here because of some debilitating boredom, and you tell me
it’s because of the sweet-sour citrus of my skin, because there’s moonlight
in my blood. you tell me it’s because I live in eternal fire rain and instead of
cowering to die, I dance in it. maybe it’s time I had a dance partner.
it is April and my heart is swaying in its own tenderness.
First published in Vessel Press
Tangerine
Listen to me. The worst thing
you can possibly do right now
is loosen the steel grip of your fists and let go.
I know your hands are tired and worn, but listen:
remember how the rain fell over Phoenix
like the whispers of an already-dead secret.
Deep inside you, the rain still falls,
but even deeper, you are still Manina,
and pigtails and purple overalls.
Orange and violet lights twinkle at you
from the corner of your eyesight.
Your roommate snores rhythmically
to the sound of your stifled cries.
It’s so easy to let go.
It would be so easy to shed this skin
and reawaken as someone brand new,
with soft cheeks and green bones and no scars.
So heartbreakingly simple to be a girl
with healthy hair and no pill bottles
waiting for her on the bathroom counter.
But the reason you’ve never broken a bone
is because they are strong as titanium.
Though your skin has torn and
your mind often crumbles, with every fall
your foundation grows stronger and stronger.
You are the tangerines, ripe on the trees
this early November, seconds from falling.
You are the ruby red of the three-year old’s Mary Janes,
as she climbs through the playground
and shows them off to her friends, her favorites.
You are the girl’s auburn hair,
tangled and frizzy in the windy storm
whipping about in a frantic kind of beauty.
You are the magenta four o’clocks that bloom
at the edge of the unnoticed garden.
You are everything the happy girls
hope they could be, every life lesson
they wish they had learned sooner.
You are power and bitter tears
and nervous smiles and unending love.
introspective autumn
sitting in the dark. orange lights glow up above. the crickets sing their nightly hymns. you think of retribution. of how trees make of themselves something new every time their leaves fall off. how they sigh, “good riddance,” when the last yellow leaf is torn away. you wonder if it hurts, and if they welcome in the pain.
your roommate tiptoes through shadows in these earliest days of fall. she explores in the pitch black, where you haven’t been before, and you hang back because you don’t need anymore dark in you. she paints happy faces on rocks to give to strangers, while you think of what it’d be like to decompose, to shed all this faulty skin and tired muscle. you think of the flowers that could grow out of you when all those flaws are gone. the living coming from the dead. the dead made new with the living.
coming back to life. kicking up for air. bubbles escape from your mouth. sunlight drips like cool honey. you want to breathe. you want to hide, a butterfly that crawls back into her cocoon. you want recovery to feel less gritty and raw. keep pushing until it doesn’t hurt. skin scratched over and over, wasted atoms.
the rest of eternity takes only a second if you just close your eyes.
Tangerine and introspective autumn first published in Veronica Lit Magazine.
Wanda Deglane is a capricorn from Arizona. She is the daughter of Peruvian immigrants and attends Arizona State University. Her poetry has been published or forthcoming from Rust + Moth, Glass Poetry, L’Ephemere Review, and Former Cactus, among other lovely places. Wanda is the author of Rainlily (2018), Lady Saturn (Rhythm & Bones, 2019), and Venus in Bloom (Porkbelly Press, 2019).
