Two poems & two photographs // Alyssa Yankwitt

Summer of Bad Decisions

Begins with a boy

ends in a bedroom.

Begins with a different boy

ends in a different bedroom.

Begins at midnight

ends no later than noon.

Begins at Webster Hall

ends in Brooklyn.

Begins alone

ends alone.

freemont kitsch

made to be broken

Paradelle

I wear the skeleton key you made me.

I wear the skeleton key you made me.

Its teeth are crooked and uneven.

Its teeth are crooked and uneven.

You are crooked, made me uneven.

I wear the skeleton teeth and its key.

It hangs around my neck, over my heart.

It hangs around my neck, over my heart.

But can not open any locks.

But can not open any locks.

My neck hangs locks over my heart, but

it can not open around any.

When you left, you took everything but this key.

When you left, you took everything but this key.

You said this is the key to my heart.

You said this is the key to my heart.

Everything but this heart you took when you left.

you said this is my key, the key to.

This skeleton, it hangs over my heart

its crooked teeth around my neck.

You took the heart I can not open

but made me wear my key, uneven

and to any, this key is, you said

locks everything when you are the key

but you left.

spread love, it's the brooklyn way

heart of the island of women

//

Alyssa Yankwitt is a poet, photographer, teacher, bartender, documenter, and earth walker. Her poems, essays, and photographs have previously appeared in Yellow Chair Review, Blacktop Passages, Alyss, Up the Staircase Quarterly, It's All About Shoes, Spry Literary Journal, Peacock Journal, After the Pause, Gargoyle, and are forthcoming in Thirteen Myna Birds. She was nominated for a 2015 Pushcart Prize. Alyssa has incurable wanderlust, enjoys drinking bourbon, hates writing about herself in third person, and loves a good disaster. She says, "If I have a vision for publishing, I guess it's like every artist: to tell stories. I want my photographs to be visualized as poems and my poems to be read as snapshots or postcards. I want to capture the world mid-heartbeat and hold it in my hand. I want to share and be shared. I want to read words which make me cry, see images that make me laugh, and respond to all of it. I want to be a part of building that architecture. I want to be invited to the conversation and hopefully, I have something worthwhile to contribute.