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.
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.