Fragments

Fragments

• RACHAEL IKINS –

Unborn evolution
Cells that eat plastic
or oceans that eat continents
we all fall down.

A call for help.
My dog answers.
The cat runs away
having stolen my pen.

Housefly stares
at me from fogged mirror frame.
I swing, miss, toothpaste spatters.
Everywhere.

Eight eyed spider blind,
sees with her feet.
Vibrations visualized, 
meat or mate?

Time frozen: a bubble 
inside an icicle,
Sunrise rose blinks.

On silent television 
dancers laugh and scream.
Someone wins, someone loses,
A bipolar heart breaks in brilliant
scintillation.

Willful ignorance,
death in plan sight.
A bog full of sundews
glistens and glues
careless gnats.

Slanted doorways of old houses
you have to bow your head to pass through.
Haunted by ghosts of a smaller, 
less nourished century.

Stereotypes.
All ages of some women
kind to wild animals, young women
awash in hormone tides

Cycle with the moon. Some go crazy.

Restless rustling
atoms’ heat,
Energy or is it magic?
Sometimes when I write
I forget to breathe.

Rachael Ikins is a 2018 Independent Book Award winner. She is a 2019 finalist in the William Faulkner/William Wisdom Writing Competition, and 2019 semifinalist in NLAPW’s Vinnie Ream competition. She has a BS from Syracuse University in Child & Family Studies, a fellowship at the Colgate Writers Conferences in poetry and young adult literature, and a Finishing Line Press honorarium – Lismore Castle, Ireland. She has published 6 chapbooks, a full-length collection of poetry, as well as fantasy & memoir. Ikins’ prize winning artwork/illustrations are on book covers worldwide. She is an Associate Editor at Clare Songbirds Publishing House. Ikins lives in a tiny woods with her animal family. They often walk near a small lake. She loves to ride her bike and to garden.

Rachel’s poem, Saying Goodbye, was included in Owl Light Literary: Turning Points.