Tara Chapple - Two Poems
The Heart Explodes
We Wait
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The Heart Explodes
There are things the mind
half-remembers and the heart:
red plumes, red ribbons.
Two steps into the pulsing field
you slice your shin on barbed wire,
skin open like a cut tomato,
my hand mopping up blood clots
and smears and
a thousand half-lived days
break themselves on our front lobes,
a blur of sticky fruit,
bare hands in the snow,
warm apple flesh sugared
in our mouths, pockets full
of mushrooms and forget-me-nots.
Those things the mind half-remembers
can make the heart explode
with all its loss.
We Wait
A thousand slipknots
tie and untie in
lovers’ stomachs.
Four red feet at the bed end,
under sheets
everyone moves alone.
Kisses are heroin
then broken glass.
Lips always part twice,
to breathe
and fail at words.
Do not trust the person
who leaves
your knees unhinged.
Tara Chapple is 17 and currently living in the South-East of England. She attends full-time education and hopes go to university to study English in September. She has been published in the USA in publications such as Peshekee River Poetry, Mothertongued, Conspire, Thundersandwich, and Mipo-Print.
