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April Egg Moon | Photographer: Paige Six, 2020

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i.

I am a golden dawn and this is my orchestra. There are cracks in my soul glow, carry like broken notes, but as the light breaks the horizon I carry them well. I carry the heavy load, the low tones, the vibration pitter pattern wringing out the old rag and make streams from the runnels. They called it nesting but I called it cleaning the walls and floors to no avail because I was the only one who cared about the child growing inside of me in the whole circle.

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ii.

Time is a wrinkled fold in the corner of her eyes. I press them out with the girth of my thumb and hope the world learns to embrace change. Her skin stretches as my heart sinks. Cut the baby curls and let them populate the linoleum. I find comfort in the signs of aging, in the middle of the folds that foreshadow the way my child’s face will soften as the years callous her soft hands. Look to the mirror to see her in 30 years because I may not be; and she looks so much like me when I was younger.

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The moon has a navel, I gaze up its intricate craters and see the umbilical cord, a tell-tale cluster of  constellations, cut from Mother. Earth can only watch as space smacks her first child; mars her daughter’s glowing smile with imperfections; carving holes into her powder surface. I can only relate in the most holy helpless manner

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iii.

A brain fold beneath a miracle, a raven crown of perfect follicles dry of melanin dripping silver everywhere. A surgical procedure carved of sawdust, and she a comet spilling stardust. If I was a dawn then she is a choir. I a setting sun and her new day a chorus. This is my orchestra but the music is for my daughter, my golden dawn but a fleeting moment and her life an endless sea of sparkle. An oasis where only time bends to the gravity, a notebook, a sonnet, a melody.

– six pm |*the moon has a navel; we all gaze upon her

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Aladdin 1992

i believe up until

God cracked Adam’s rib,

that man had not yet

considered he was breathing.

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i believe some would call this a gift.

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we are not born beautifully…

everyone must blossom and bud.

i am a natural mother,

i understand the price paid for life with blood.

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if there were an element

that we should base life upon:

it would be carbon, i assume.

so why do i base

the life i have been gifted

on the likes of you?

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is it because you are a kiss;

a cellular conception

multiplied by folds of four

balanced betwixt my hips?

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a perfect prophecy

of proud ancestry

proclaimed from the mouth

of the royal He …

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is it how now

is an infinity;

now is when He speaks.

now is where we meet;

black, dull, and ungleaming

life without you.

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blackness of bare earth

at the tale end of winter.

no promise of green

except for the old knowledge:

knowing storms always

run dry of rain;

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knowing cold months of winter

bring forth warm nights

of summer and spring.

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understanding pain

forecasts growth;

and love

foreshadows pain.

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how men and women

were never made the same.

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my memories look like

the red glow in the rearview mirror,

if you and i were a one way street.

red light in the dead of night

dimming every imperfection.

these brightest spots

are all we can still see,

fading into the black like dusk.

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i believe in black holes.

black eyes big as pansies,

so big they could swallow me up.

bold and italicized by

ethnic ambiguity.

dense in gravity.

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behold: you are so ambitious,

and we felt so endless;

infinity masquerading as security.

i found myself staring intent

while you flew west,

watching your eyes offset

the sunset

until they were just

two specks of dust.

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i believe the apocalypse is

a midlife crisis,

and an untimely break-up.

i believe never ending

life is a sentence given

to those who allow a mirage

to manipulate their minds;

a viscous cycle of

‘if we meet again‘s’.

paranoid hallucinations

that crazy men

call heaven.

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no. it makes no sense.

i call bullshit!

i request hard evidence.

we exist because a woman

paid her blood for it. 

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i believe

Adam sacrificed nothing

when Eve was conceived.

i believe Adam broke

his own rib,

so Eve ‘d cave-in

and care for him

before he re-wrote history

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oh and, yes.

i believe Lilith existed.

i believe Lilith’s burning kiss

burned because

Adam was fucking selfish.

-six pm | *this is not a love poem

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Aladdin 1992


i.

I think that I knew it

the moment we kissed

I’d made a terrible mistake

Time yawned for my heart

(she stretched, pulled her own fabric)

nearly ripped herself apart

(her pity was an act of mercy)

Those few moments extended revealed

(time is a rubber band)

the whirring patterns of faery light

(gravity is a mould)

spidered, webbed, holding reality together

(These are my favorite days)

when I lay back to

let earth swallow me in her sand

(these memories will be my solace)

everyone moves on

we (I) must, anyway

our song; v. a prayer

(that you will make it home alive)

our verse; v. voodoo binding you to I

(so that you will still love me after)

ii.

Repeat.

(Repeat)

Reincarnation.

A reoccurring dream

My worst nightmare

(you – me)

I hear the skies in Iraq are a breathtaking sight

(northern hemisphere)

did you count every star?

(the fortune teller told me)

the creator mapped each constellation

(from me to you)

iii.

Welcome home brave soul

defender of the desert

keeper of her secrets

I’ll hold a ticker tape parade in your honor

10 carnations

(red + white)

wrapped in ribbons

(navy blue)

my gifts to you

I’ll provide the paper; a billion poems

that I ripped apart

trying to describe your perfect teeth

I saw your smile in the waxing gibbous

every month on quiet evenings

One year ago; it still aches

like a new wound (∞)

our relation; my yearning passion

(my poetry; n. dying art)

–six pm | *ad nauseum

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Aladdin 1992

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We were ready to lay dormant

until the next spring.

Rolling beneath cold clouds

waking the landscape’s frost.

When you found him in orbit about,

a nearer moon.

An unexpurgerated diary entry,

about how woman lay boiling.

A small body of water

and all of it’s creature’s within.

Brought to a stand-still

while the tide’s ripped.

Transforming the water

into a solid sculpture,

about an ever changing world,

still but alive.

To read your work is to know that

not all revolve around the sun.

As you orbit a nearer moon

upon a distant shore.

And his impact is dramatic,

as the moon rises and moon sets.

His height, his trajectory,

his monthly phases

thinning your full breasts

the scythe of a crescent.

A dizzy dissent across

the cosmos in ellipses.

Earth casts a shadow

overbears the surface

the journey that changes

us most of all.

Reveal the beginning,

at the culmination of

a tragic end.

Gravity lifts the water.

Resulting in the rise and fall

of rustic lung.

Sand stands still,

and the creatures cast,

adapt to this

intertidal wedlock

burrow along the coast

Await dual windows & feed fast.

Sheltered within

shore stone cracks.

A woman lay wasted,

you do.

Evaporation run-off warmed water.

Mist seen rising after

morning dew collapse.

Transpiration a phantom

passes through pores

in the atmosphere,

and tiny leaves.

Spring time awakens,

a nearer moon dotes

fertile, nubile,

flung off a surface

crater, cast satellite,

another coastal accumulation.

Another woman lay bare there,

you know.

Close to the warm ground the moisture

is invisible to the human eye,

such fine steam,

colliding as a nimbus cloud

above the coastal highline.

Grow heavy,

groan,

and rain

Gravity brings it

back down to Earth.

Sensitive animals dash,

flee, a marathon

You’re almost out of breath

Earth casts a shadow

overbears the surface

But it is the journey that changes us

most of all.

A bud blossoms at the beginning,

befallen your tragedy’s end

Our time passing as it elapses.

Pages yellow and your dreams

espouse their tender vulnerabilities,

forever cast infamous,

poetic masonry.

–six pm | *the super slow motion of yearning

{This poem is dedicated to Anaïs Nin}

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That 70’s Show ’98-’06

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i had just read a brief history of time. remember that night? cosmic vertigo took hold of my insides, i quit cigarettes that instant, i crushed my last pack and i declared, to you, that death takes everything.

stephen hawking explained: the universe will have an end just as it has a beginning. so having no more time to waste i told you i loved your face more than any other faces and if there was to be even the tiniest trace of me left behind i wanted it to be the way i felt for you that night.

you blew smoke rings from stitched lips, and i talked in circles around you. bleary and bloodshot our eyes closed. you maybe never read stephen hawking but i know we both ran like bandits from sleep.

I talked about how Robert Jordan said, “the wolves had no notions of time the way men did, no reasons to divide the day into hours” how the seasons and the day from night were all they needed. you had a wolf grin and would reveal a smoldering smile.

earthy smell of marijuana permeated your beard and seasoned our tongues. *omitted, wasn’t it really something? being young and together the way we were. smoke stacked to the ceiling and the lamp glow casted halogen haloes around our heads. don’t you agree how the sun always set too soon?

i’ve watched the stars, since, hoping the universal flow might be reversible. i assure you they tell me nothing of what will remedy any earthly turmoil. especially not that of someone like me, so small and so alone.

though, i love you so deeply when i set my eyes upon you my pupils pool wide as i embrace the pressure of your body’s presence wrapping steadily abound my every bone’s soft marrow: i don’t dare proclaim that your love i know, nor that the love i feel could ever heal a single mortal’s bones. despite all it’s desperation and wonder, the emptiness that swells my soul like a cavity could never be filled by anyone other than me.

when i divide my life into fleeting seasons i recall how the spring loves flowers so greatly, it lifts me every year without fail from the winter blues. yet, the winter still claims every petal and every leaf, eventually. just as my warmth is always devouring the cold weather you breathe. the motions wait for no one, time is a lethal thief.

though my brain wanders towards you and my limbs creek like the branches of trees, fingers empty of your touch like the winter misses spring leaves. i know you were a season and i needed to grow alone.

still the movements of time and her changing seasons, this bitter wisdom that has come from age and grace, nor these emotions that crash like waves cannot keep me from reminiscing so sweetly how we spent entire days and nights: undressed, wearing only one another, or how the sun came up too soon… *darling, i want more time with you.

–six pm | *i want more time with you 

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Avatar the Last Airbender 2005-2008

i. most magical-beings prefer wild things.

time was where you existed. here. in this space where i have banished your physical form. i print your photographs and reduce you to only 2 dimensions. i spell words, iambic poems, and call the lyrics hexagonal. weaving messages like memories engraved as memorials into the air. symbols burned into my lungs drumming down my throat in heartbeat pattern morse code. pat pat pat the cadence of your character presses beyond its own boundaries and establishes new limits.

bars of sunlight create glitter of dust, but cannot provide magic powerful enough to overcome the grip of this depression. no words can cast a spell over overcast nettled clouds conspiring rain exclusively via creamed coffee eyes. turns them wet and red like koi ponds drowning the sunlight in your ripples.

i have had an eternity to ponder the philosophy of life. i have come to this conclusion: god’s first display of power was to name things. when you kissed each one of my eyelids and named me ‘honey’ i saw my life the way you’d been dreaming it. and so you became holy my blood thickened to the consistency of a viscous liquid saccharine, too morose to pump reason through my veins.

i longed for you. no. more than that. i fought for you. and you are a warrior so you must understand how much you meant to me. i was delicate and focused until you wrapped you madness around me with your lips and i kissed you and drank of it until you grew bored of me and then the madness abandoned me to the quiet.

your body tanned by the unforgiving work in this sunshine. i admired it like Adonis. i saw my reflection in your sweat pools and fell in love with myself in you like a sick twisted Narcissus. like dust in the air the sun made magic out of a thing so common, made gold of a working man’s skin tone. and i—ivory slave to the moon kissed by her beams, spoiled by pillows and pashmina and sleeping until noon, soft boiled eggs for bed in breakfast making love in the frame of our bedroom window. with purple eyes bruised by telescope keyhole making the tiny universe large enough to bite… making me so much smaller. so small that you stepped all over me. too small to swallow you.

Avatar the Last Airbender 2005-2008

ii. i was almost ripped in two, once.

together we were decadence, furnishings forbidden by all ethical code of conduct, conduits of sin: ivory inlayed with gold filigree and no honest man would dare destroy it once it was put together… had we not peeled ourselves apart. pushed awry by the moisture of an enveloping world, God’s masterwork raining on man’s made masterpieces of precious materials soaked in the ripples of rain. nature has no regard for peripheral trinkets like carved tusks and mined metals boiled and thinned and pounded and husked to be a shadow of what it once was. we were to be reclaimed like everything too ornate for utility. we would be stolen like the jewelry we are and tucked away until the estate sale of someone less grateful but more wealthy.

i thought I had it all, that i’d finally held everything…

but my gold-rushed to the coasts of C a l i f o r n i a.

leaving me- ivory with a cold bone heart.

3 0 0 0 m i l e s, from my head on your shoulder.

you are banished from my pillow case.

a scar across the sunset sets the scar across my forehead purple while my neurosis picks at scabs turning towels red. the scar across my arm begins to glow under the moonbeams casting soft hue about the encroaching shadow and i turn on flash to take its picture. the dusk sets the scene for a martian planet without ever having taken off from under the oppressive atmosphere of mother.

i lay down on top of my roof and pray that i might roll off and never feel the falling. gun metal cold of a steely eye contact briskly cuts me without ever having to make real contact at all. i lay here fuchsia in my panties, i squabble with the seconds. i forge a foxhole in your neck nape to survive the nuclear winter. i reserve my american right to lie bare in your arms...

….i delete your number from my phone.

–six pm | *all the elements in honey

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Emotional Alchemy Issue. No. 1

Being chosen for print has always been an object of my desire. I have always wanted to have my work accepted, appreciated, and loved. But what is this driving force that keeps me sharing my words rather than locking them in my armoire to be discovered upon my death like Emily Dickinson?

Jacques Lacan coined the phrase ‘objet petit a’. What he meant to accomplish was noble in my opinion: was to put a neat bow around the emotion surrounding an unattainable object of desire. Was to give humanity a phrase in which we could communicate and relate to one another through our unique shrouds of longing.

I particularly love the use of small. tiny. petite: ‘objet petit a’. Because it feels small, doesn’t it? Even though it inspires our bigger calls to action

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Would you call it an echo? Or perhaps just a ringing? Picture a soft Doppler Effect: a subtle vibration that flows in waves, a pattern that we can follow until the next soundwave disrupts the flow changing our driving direction towards something new and more colorful? Hubble might have said so had he not had so many more important realities to tackle.

Is it to pine for an unspecified, and perhaps abstract moment in the future? A greatness? Or maybe to long for it to rectify the regrets that haunt our past without consequences of regression? A reunion?

It is a ghost that hasn’t passed away yet haunting us, speaking through code upon a ouija board and we simply will not say good bye? Maybe it did die and we’re arrested in the denial stage.

In my time postulating how to put this phrase, ‘objet petit a’ into poetry I have come to some conclusion as to what it means to me, currently, or in the past, as to you are most definitely reading it as it was in mine:

Imagine a mote, a spec of dust, neglected maybe, inside of us that we cannot pinpoint, something too small to see without a microscope. Yet it is powerful. The quantum quandary that allows for the tiniest pieces to hold the greatest potential force. An atomic explosion resulting from hadron collision. A Big Bang. An accelerated particle in all of us that was dormant for far too long.

It’s not missing, I think, even though we search for it, chase it, dream on it. No, I believe this ‘objet petit a’ takes on the abstract shape of an unfillable void. a pocket with an endless hole. While one small spec may light its dark tiny spaces for a while, its insatiable longing pulls us towards the next object of our human appetites.

And it makes us great. It makes us better. It makes humanity, when working towards a cohesive goal more whole. I am proud to be a part of something that made the world more beautiful and kind, even if it is not my final destination…

Paige Six | 3.20.20

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longing captured in a snow globe. frozen as the contents stiffen, but of salt & sadness, dissipating & cooling winter water: trine, threefold, vexing, upsetting at uncracked glass. ice forms and is expanding, extending to rupture; to break free of its crystalline prison cell.

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an orb; a distorted window; a fish bowl: if only momentary perfection; encapsulated within its prism; tiny planet; polished patiently; unholy prison. stranded atop a marble mantle in the castle of my memory. the room within my palace where I recall every essence of you, your earthy scent of virility, of indica smoke, & each number you represent to me. three. three. three. .333… repeating. irrationally.

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although life moves me forward, it will be you, my effervescent darling, who anchors me to the present. i no longer fear onsets of dementia. when the insects of age attack to decay my brain; when God and Devil battle to beguile every soul aching to be enraptured; I just want you to know:

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i still love you. you were my end and my beginning.

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and yes, maybe i am a hopeless romantic, twisted as my bed sheets. maybe all i have left to show in this cold life are our warm embraces, our hot encounters, the pointed reasons we failed each other, our muted mysteries (there are so many). but maybe, *omitted, these memories are all i’ll ever need.

–six pm | *memory games