Lauren Eggert-Crowe disarms us, brings us closer, unveiling heartbreak and beauty.

Never shop thirsty

My heart is a hole I want
to stuff with bread

so I go to our Trader
Joe’s for the first time

since you left. Rearranged
shelves are enough to bring it on.

Now I’m the weeping Jesus-year
by the cagefrees.

Barelipped, unbrushed, coated
and scarved. Even the floorplan

of our monogamy
obliterated.

Sixth months ago, observe us
in gym lycra buying a roaster,

an afternoon stretched taffy-like
with panic. All my longing

got trapped in the marine layer.
No olive trench warm enough.

A cheap unchilled white
topples to the tiles: hyperacusis

to the max. An arc
of mourners.

Somewhere underneath the light
pollution you’re swaggering

not to my security gate.
I need to invent a new heartbeat

but my beat’s off-key;
the moon, off-brand;

and every cute bagger,
a satyr on Hyperion.

Jacaranda

Metallic purple nail polish on the ten petals that clasped mine our first Halloween, the luster of lust blooming below the skin. Jokester you: thickest eyeliner on a prince and his drowned princess could not have eclipsed the white slivers beneath our irises (that wild desire signal). I smooshed my face into your curlyblack when frightened, which was all the time, so unhinged was our animal, so full-throttle on the hot path my calves too short to follow. Smashable, ubiquitous, I was more a lilac to your plum. Was not the more you waxed hungriest for in my ruffled collar, lavender whispering over my lashes. Blossom, bell, cascade, slime down the pavement: fated sequence for every love affair. How fragile the sleep, how predictable the moon. Ask my formers ̶ they will nod like bouquets in a breeze. I’m the most violet of crushes, but little else.

California Poppy

Eggdrops cluster up at you
from weedy curbs

on your walk
to the video store,

brined kelp a block
away, getting bitch-slapped

by waves that shush your face
every time you think

about texting him
An orange party

at the root of every
stop sign:

buttercups’ racy big sisters
They say let him come

to you. But parties end
when you step into them

You’re the weed who likes it
too much. You forgot you’re supposed to

act like you could take it
or leave it. The right girls

could give a shit
whether or not they’re plucked

The right girls vibrate
a deliberate aura

Look inside their tangerine
hearts, they reflect

just enough to show you
your desires, but not

a chance you’ll see your face

* * *

Lauren Eggert-Crowe is the author of three poetry chapbooks: The Exhibit (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013), In the Songbird Laboratory (Dancing Girl Press, 2013) and Rungs (co-authored with Margaret Bashaar, Grey Book Press 2015). She is the Reviews Editor of Terrain.org and her poetry has appeared in Horse Less Review, Witch Craft Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, DIAGRAM and Sixth Finch, among others.