Poem by Lavina Blossom

Obsession

​A morsel of sparrow darts

across the window.  And because

you cannot sleep for the rumbling
under your ribs, and because the lemon-drop
sun is seeping into the deep dark
of the kitchen where you sit with
a needle stitches together
the sides of your stomach--
you imagine taking the lettuce-
green shadows, balling them
together, throwing them
against the wall.


Night swims upstream, while
you suck the collar of your
shirt, taste fish.  An itch,
a pinch, a pang for that
butter knife that’s only
knife now, that fruit bowl that’s
only bowl.  You lick your
parched lips, take
your blood-orange
head in your hands.


It breaks
into sections.

Lavina Blossom is a painter and mixed media artist as well as a poet.  Her poems have appeared in various journals, including 3Elements Review, Kansas Quarterly, The Literary Review, The Paris Review, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Poemeleon, Common Ground Review, and Ekphrastic Review.  She is an Editor of Poetry for Inlandia:  a Literary Journey.

---