Poetry: Selections from Janelle Finamore

Blue Cotton Candy 

The day dissolves in my mouth like cotton candy finding it’s peaceful end 

 

Hesitant to believe that this never ending day would actually conclude

 

Trapped in a permanent wet tongue

 

Down slimy throat, intestinal shame 

A life of toilet and drains and shit water!?

 

When it had once been so light, so airy, so sugary sweet. 

And so pretty. 

 

Once so cheap and disease-less

Warless and free.

The News

I’m in the shower rinsing off the news of your dead aunt who raised you

 

And by dead I mean

Almost dead

 

So much of the body, a dying machine 

Wire cut clean like Montana wind. 

 

Unraveled ribbon,

a small slender hope. 

 

And these are not good times to begin with. 

A home is for rich and the rich alone

Eggs are pricey, and

Putin’s nuclear missiles are not made of 

paper mache’ although the west

would prefer it so.   

 

So thinking of ancestor’s ghosts is like

swallowing an elephant 

After we already swallowed the sky 

and gulped every country’s rain.

 

The news is a Nesting doll of basements 

Doesn’t death fear dying?

 

Let’s kill death so that it’s blood

can brighten the globe and lift the mood

 

Our world, a bowling ball

crashing into the pins of death 

A strike. 

The Flood 

The unhinged deck floating, it’s head

Barely above water 

Already rotten

 

The tapestry of my swinging emotions washed onto marshy shore

Waterlogged 

 

I can’t even salvage your love

 

Your tears twist into a figure eight 

Snip snip

 

Unknot me

Unfettered, liberated as 

 

Your face skates gently towards me, 

power, purpose 

of a hungry sea-lion

 

A moat grows around my heart. 

Please sift through this mess and find

Heavy oars 

 

Row to me

Janelle Finamore is a musician, poet, and teacher located in Orange County, CA. Most recently, her work appeared in Sad Girls Lit, Poet Magazine, Humans of the World, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Ariel Chart, Literary Yard, Spillwords, among others. She has been Poet of the Month for Moon Tide Press and her fairy tale “The Girl Who Stuck Out Like a Sore Thumb” was published in Bohemia magazine. In addition she is also an active member of various poetry workshops and her chapbook “The Power of Silly Putty and Lipstick Kisses” is available on Amazon.