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Spotlight: Chameleon / The Most Beautiful Thing / Uni-Love

April 7, 2014/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Carly Breault

Chameleon

I’ve found you
Imposter
Erect against the araceae backdrop
Stealing your neighbour’s hue

Garbed in flowers of false truth

Yesterday I thought you were a rock
Stoic in potent iron, even as my belly
Slipped over your scales

You beg the sun for her gold
The stones for their silver
The dirt for his muddy brown
The leaves for their tangerine

Shapeshifter
Scurrying through life with a colorful shield
Now, veiled
In yellow leaf-veins
Branching down your back
to the emerald stem of a tail
Feet inch deep in bough’s brown

Your guise dismays
Your buggy black eyes
Wearing no second-hand color
Naked in fear, defeat, regret
You cannot change the color
Of your destiny


The Most Beautiful Thing (Two Cups of Tea)

Mother
Hunched in an elegant bridge
Gallops of tangerine hair
Sweep the kitchen counter

Sunrise, the sky
Is grey dancing with
Soft amber, brilliant carmine
Waltzing into her
Liberated hands
Freeing one, two
Tablespoons:
Leafs of obsidian glow
Rests into my favourite
Purple cup, her favourite red

The kettle whines, she carries
It off the sienna flame
Gracefully decants a river
The leafs plump, release ecru
Steam pirouettes midair

Carefully, she lays the cups on the table
Checks her watch, sits down, and waits
For me to find
Her and two cups of tea
Not knowing that I am
Already here


Uni-love

We are lonely drunk vessels
blindly,
finding each other
in the dim library light

We thrust our hands, gape our mouths, stab our tongues, and let
Our gender emblems defile each other
Clumsily, senselessly, in a sea what-is-that unpleasantness.
Discovering what we’re made of
In kindred inebriation

We swap
Partners or positions or
Pink body parts
All in an effort to achieve
A believable rhythm of delight

eventually we will forget
names, faces, earnest promises,
foreplay, and afterglow
None of the dinner by candelight
We might imagine
The intimate glances
The talk until dawn

as soon as they’re gone we sit alone,
eating cold spaghetti from a can,
detach ourselves from
another emotionless encounter.

i find remnants of your faceless lovers
beside your unmade bed:
Empty condom wrappers.
An ashtray with butts
From their lips squished
By their thumbs buried in ashes

in your white-walled, smoke-filled, dirty-laundry strewn dorm room
That I find myself coming back to again and again
For no other reason I can think of
Than that you desire to have me in it.

Carly Breault is a second-year psychology student at Vancouver Island University in Nanaimo, BC, Canada.

https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/54616nanaimoC-Breault-web-_SAM3829-e1561854441259.jpg 399 300 Carly Breault https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Carly Breault2014-04-07 02:27:192019-07-08 22:52:05Spotlight: Chameleon / The Most Beautiful Thing / Uni-Love

Amuse-Bouche Archive

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Friday Lunch Blog

Friday Lunch! A serving of contemporary essays published every Friday.

Today’s course:

Diagnosed at Sixty – My ADHD Journey

April 22, 2022/in Blog / Kait Leonard
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Why Video Game Preservation Matters

April 15, 2022/in Blog / Nicholas Galvez
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Sarees in America

April 1, 2022/in Blog / Majella Pinto
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Midnight Snack

A destination for all your late night obsessions.

Tonight’s bites:

QVC-land

May 6, 2022/in Midnight Snack / D. E. Hardy
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Diana-Hardy_QVC_Feature_Photo.png 533 800 D. E. Hardy https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png D. E. Hardy2022-05-06 23:45:322022-05-06 19:25:59QVC-land

Escape Artists at the End of the World

April 29, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Lisa Levy
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/waldemar-brandt-eIOPDU3Fkwk-unsplash-scaled.jpg 1707 2560 Lisa Levy https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Lisa Levy2022-04-29 23:49:582022-04-29 20:27:32Escape Artists at the End of the World

The House in the Middle

April 15, 2022/in Midnight Snack / Megan Vasquez
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/alec-douglas-iuC9fvq63J8-unsplash-scaled.jpg 2560 1707 Megan Vasquez https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Megan Vasquez2022-04-15 23:45:322022-04-15 08:32:48The House in the Middle

More coming soon!

School Lunch

An occasional Wednesday series dishing up today’s best youth writers.

Today’s slice:

I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

May 12, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Brendan Nurczyk
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/SL-Insta-Brendan-Nurczyk-2.png 1500 1500 Brendan Nurczyk https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Brendan Nurczyk2021-05-12 10:18:392022-02-01 13:24:05I’ve Stayed in the Front Yard

A Communal Announcement

April 28, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Isabella Dail
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-FB-Isabella-Dail.png 788 940 Isabella Dail https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Isabella Dail2021-04-28 11:34:132021-04-28 11:34:13A Communal Announcement

Seventeen

April 14, 2021/in School Lunch, School Lunch 2021 / Abigail E. Calimaran
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https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/SL-Insta-Abigail-E.-Calimaran.png 1080 1080 Abigail E. Calimaran https://lunchticket.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/lunch-ticket-logo-white-text-only.png Abigail E. Calimaran2021-04-14 11:22:062021-04-14 11:22:06Seventeen

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Word From the Editor

Here at Lunch Ticket, 2021 represents ten years of our literary journal. 2021 marks the start of a new decade, one I can only hope will stand as tall and iconic in the history of our publication as the jazz age in America. What we’ve put together this fall is what I call and will fondly remember as our “Roaring 20th Issue”.

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