This Vision Makes Us Beautiful
we have folded into a day
where we can see any
color we want: royal purple,
recesses of indigo,
variants of costume gold
with a weak pulse. a woman
hangs down,
small, strong as the last smoldering bits
of a bonfire, head tilting at an eyelash
angle, each bow of shoulder blade,
each last applique pressing themselves
against the body
young and fleeting, paws all, all
over this chiffon body. a striped curve
of flattering, unzipped off of a
hanger like a first-class trip to other
types of shackles.
a straight line of ugly shakes the
nonlinear so the sentence bumbles
into commas and
breath. the sky-blue visage speaking
in french to show she has sustenance
more flavorful than the nape
of her neck dissolving into
thick veins of peonies. that she
is a being more concrete
than anna wintour, the picture
behind the press
of a tack breaking out into dull rosy
song vis a vis a gloomy redhead
singing about ghosts, god, and
a small murder of girls whose total
number of faces comes to equal one.
Teddi Haynes is a sixteen-year-old poet living in Southern California. She has previously been featured in Inkblot Literary Magazine and Vagabond City Literary Journal, and studies creative writing and poetry at Orange County School of the Arts. In her poetry, she is interested in addressing notions of heredity, family dynamics, self, and introspection.
