Ariel Beller

what we treat it as a hill so big it switches color when clouds push armadillo red ember echo picnic I dodder and I stray in crayfish streams a man carrying a dirigible defense the one we hand around is full final and stifling, like a love or re-entry the glove of Earth and staying seasonly horse albatross table cloth sky glass home pinball machine visitation inertia, bear pawing at trash acclimating puff of fog, flash, resembler’s ring string overflow feather piano and penny our horses wander and field a man carrying dirigibles over, a hero as much as Kenny Rogers cries on an airplane, about the alone I ride trolley, trains and sky ferry bus on a hollow rocket, I head forward by propulsion to hold you as a soft packed strawberry our love left, like a napkin on catered table an embrace drawing of a yet to be [...]

And Now You Want Me One More Time Your mother told me you were out with the stars. I tried to call but you left your phone on the counter. I went outside. The sun was up. I called your name to the sky. I couldn’t see anything but blue. I called out your name until it was dark. Above an audience of diamonds all laughed at me. They laughed until I lost my voice. Then they sent clouds to fill my cup with water. I found a new boyfriend. He approached me while I watched birds pluck worms out of a rainy field. I asked him why the birds were able to find worms as soon as they landed. He said worms float on water. Then he kissed me. I felt like a worm. The Open Eyed Dream Meets The Day Moon There are people who look like my [...]

Author photo courtesy of Matthew Wyndham Jellyfish There’s no doubt she thinks he’s lost at sea. A smudge of blood on her glasses. She looks healthy. She wishes he looked healthy. Her weird stare drifts across his sick face like the shadow of a murder weapon they called love. Her new boyfriend is a taxi driver. He is a quiet man with at least one tooth missing, so obviously he’s a paedophile. When their little girl says the new boyfriend’s name her father’s fingertips go numb; he has visions of the taxi driver’s dismembered corpse scattered on a cold beach full of baby jellyfish, broken phones, the nights he dies without her. They share a joint in his parents’ garden, negotiating a future that bites too hard. Her saliva moist on the filter, he takes the cigarette, inhales, wonders if this is the last time her spit will touch his [...]