Two Poems by Sarah Pruis​

Ghazal: Honeyed Lips

Come hear the magic of

trap door lips!

Enter the sworded space below

false-floor lips.

 

Hive whisperings swarm to

the new gal in town—

the heady summer buzz

of red allure lips.

 

Campfire-lit cigarettes and flesh-

eating monster

stories pass thru girlfriends’

folklore lips.

 

Horrors abound about

a boy we know—

his Midwestern-storm-ey eyes

and his carnivore lips.

 

Inking is so permanent, tongue

left static in prose:

what calls it to lies, love,

and war? Lips.

 

When the bees are stingin’ your heart,

Princess,

stop your crying, light a match, and hon-

ney your lips.

​

On The Dock Besides Him​

It’s February fourteenth, yet all I can write about

is the way he smokes his cigarettes:

so many romantic themes to choose from,

and I invoke his cigarettes.

 

I only really like him because he looks like Heath

Ledger playing Pat Verona

in that rom-com, ‘specially when our squabbles

provoke his cigarettes.

 

Swear it’s the image I care for, not his—

His that curves over the dock, smooth

as a crew stroke, skin radiating silver heat,

as he smokes his cigarettes…

 

I shiver in the heat of his dimpled smirk,

which more than shines; it shimmers

off the canal with houseboat porch lights,

and it cloaks his cigarettes.

 

Here above the water, I’m more him than me,

more smoke than Sarah, as I draw

the contents of his chest into mine and second-hand

smoke his cigarettes.

​

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Sarah Pruis is a bachelor’s student based in Seattle but currently studying at the University of Hyderabad in Telangana, India. Her work has been published by The Lingua Journal and Ascent Aspirations Magazine.