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"Black Holes And Honey And Other Poems" by Lauren Kells


give me your unbridled approval streaming   

in torrents         

cascading off cerebral walls                                      

soaking my cells in viscous honey

tell me it's okay to be       

to be everything

in one moment and nothing in the next

I need you

to tell me that everywhere you go

I'm hanging over you     

panting like the sun

on the verge of an impending

star collapse


bathe me in smoke

and promises before

aching like the moon

i eclipse myself in gloom and ink

assure me

I'll never again be a leaky faucet

or sit at the kitchen table digging

my bear claws into dark mahogany

tell me that    

the constant dull thrum of pain

meant something

lead me here        

then lead me out


"the undoing" by Lauren Kells

please don't tell me you love that I have a ball of light inside of me a star heart
don't revel in the luminescence

or I'll drown in the guilt when I'm stabbing needles through my paper thin throat           
dripping magma and marrow all over your new tile  

you can feel my veins through my skin buzzing beating in a blistering cacophony

next to the hole in my artery that's been gushing for years on end   

you didn't notice
cauterize my wound
skirt your fingertips over the scar  

everyone has been pouring milk down my throat endlessly
drenching the scored flesh

they won't know I'm choking from the inside
until I vomit my soul into your lap white hot and spoiled milk

you will be punished for loving me why not  

run like hell is after you big barking dogs with razor wire for teeth
chasing nipping at your ankles they want to gnaw on your finger bones

and I do too shards of you will always stay within me

the defenseless feeling of vulnerability causes a rift cleaving me in two    
with unnecessary vigilance I'll do everything I can to send you slowly slipping away    

from my searing incandescence

how can I burn off into a supernova if you still come when I call


"unwelcome tattoos" by Lauren Kells

something aches deep down in my teeth when someone asks me what denomination I grew up in I remember nothing shame, too-short skirts, endless side eye so much insatiable hunger all those labels I've ever claimed have stained me in ink taken a piece of me with them and left me with more questions than answers     so i dig into my pockets for a descriptor and sometimes reluctantly I answer     Baptist showing off the last tattoo marking my skin others boast theirs like a cattle brand while I spit that word from my tongue like a mouthful of venom it's a dizzying thing to love the Lord but still wear the church's fingernail indentations on my arm   in spite of attempts to scrape them off   no pride in the crimson semicircles of what i am not and never quite was.


Lauren Kells is a student at Lipscomb University in Nashville. She loves spending time with friends and family, creative writing, and eating pickles straight out of the jar. Her goal in life is to pet every cat in the world.