Peregrine {Edited}

peregrine―
eyes feral and aglint with hunger
aerial morph of the winged huntress,
slow like liquid and plush upon one's thirst
        ―flow―
all the words,
the colors worn with names assigned
they don’t resonate,
it’s not their fever spike,
not their condition to be defined
not when pleasure alights the solar flare
        ―when silence escapes―
the clouds lend them form,
a simple pleasure not lost on tongues of currents,
a world in full rush,
as cars in screaming speed still the outside world
        ―stagnates their roll―
land,
a window-scape blur,
as dirt caked fingers shape the air,
pastel smear of dust and skin shed
        ―no farewells to bleed―
trees circulate,
their absence of defining lines,
where phantoms of secrets
steal woven avian breaths
their leaves expiring in the spark of astral chains
snapping with every vulpine wail
        ―headlight death in the thick of night―    
vultures circle,
pitch-on-pitch,
no rest for their hunger
their heights of hypnotic catastrophic inebriation,
steal from a grieving mind
        ―a hallowed grave―
shoulder gravel and rain hollow epitaph,
horizon wall of lunar eversongs
luring the acceleration,
beckoning to vacate the rear view
        ―a bare hand to suffocate―to amputate―from a world that can’t hold {me}
mirror shatters on concrete
a howl escapes,
leaked gasoline sparks and a glimpse,
eyes and padded paws keeping pace
―a wild thing frees ―

E.A. O'Connell

Mash-Up of My Writing {Writing Sample}

Asleep.  Wrapped in nosebleed soaked cotton,

her silhouette has been pressed through to the mattress in a carnelian stain.  

She’s the flower preserved between two sheets

in the name of a hunger that cost her the privilege of sound sleep.

In muted colors of night terrors seeping,

her neuro-fluid rushes in a rhythm of rain water flooding a storm drain,

leaving her head absent of equilibrium and near comprehended thoughts falling,

scattering like leaves in the scrape of claws on pavement.  

They flee the impending drowning

that will catch up with them at the cul-de-sac’s bend.

The spectral fingertips quietly spread out upon her,

caking her body in a clay mud,

painting her bare skin in wounds of rough bones, twigs, and stone weapons;

her body the war and the warrior.

Lifting her from the cold slumber, her limbs limp and head hung right,

her length of hair sweeps the cobwebs

and cold breath of the floorboards creaking in the wake of their footless steps.

Lithe are the hands of the dead,

a haunting toil of a surgeon’s precision with a new mother’s delicate touch,

stealing her body away to the pyre of sassafras and orchids

where they lay her upon the vessel of ceremony.

Commencing the sacrificial rite,

their rabid hissing and growling calls forth canine teeth and talons,

tracing the language of their desires into her neck,

painlessly slicing and folding back the flesh of her throat and meat of her tongue.  

Unhinging her jaw, they study scars in her teeth,

all the while seeking the source of her impenetrable silence,

while force feeding her the jackal’s whine and buzzard’s scream.  

She gasps a strangled choke as she is pulled into the sudden reemergence of life,

throwing her body over the edge of the bed,

coughing and spitting the taste of nightmares against the wall,

their long shadows hunching as they back away in a defensive creep to the window.

Turning in warning, they taunt her with the threatening of their return,

as they liquefy, running down the brick and mortar,

mixing with the rain, running towards the sewer grate.

The blood flowing from her head, out her nose, and through her fingers,

stains the memory of the terror to her thighs, breasts, and lips.

From the north corner of her room,

a new moon voice, reminiscent of  sub zero wind through frost bitten pines,

chilling her marrow deep.  

“When will you let your soul out to play?”

She doesn’t startle.  

Releasing her hands from a chalice pose beneath her chin,

her blood slips her palms to the sheets beneath her seated form.  

Closing her eyes to regain an equilibrium, she opens them slowly on an inhale.  

Her lips part, ichor-washed teeth barely on display,

exhaling a visible winter’s breath, she expels her silence in a hushed voice.  

“Blood. Stop summoning me.”  

“When will you despair, Small One?"

“Devil’s Hour. False shadow bravado. Blood cease.”

His fingers thrumming the darkness at his side,

as a thundering origins in his chest, soaring to his throat;

a guttural growl issuing forth,

indiscernible as to whether it’s an act of warning or amusement.

“Beneath my flesh. Crawling fingertips.”

Heavy steps carry him out of the shadows, stalking the foot of her bed.  

His nearly seven foot, beast-like physique,

broad shouldered with a horned head,

pale in comparison to the intimidating black abysses glaring at her.  

Steadying herself, she rises to her feet on the mattress.  

Her bloodied visage meeting him eye-to-eye.  

Without blinking or flinching, she holds her ground,

rooting in the knowledge that she is power.  

Her voice building in volume.

“Seizing my breaths. Fracturing my bones. Blood. Cease your hold.”

His massive hand darting out—stopping— just shy of clasping her throat.

An entity in its own right—silence— takes up residency between them,

sizing each up, before clearing a path for revelation.

“You..You fear me.  
Why else would you come for me through my mind—my blood.”

A hint of a smile reaching the left corner of his mouth.  

“Untouchable.  And so very brave.
I saw a crack in your foundation, Small One,
and I exploited it. I’m in there now.  Indelible.”  

A smile, equally maniacal, but ever more fierce,

slowly crawling the length of her lips.  
“As shall I, Mon Horreur.”

Without hesitation,

she grabs a hold of his wrist and forearm with both her hands

—no force or strain—just a moderate pressure to her clasp.       
“Pitch igniting.

A language I keep. Undisturbed.
Summoning. Blood—

Try as he might, he’s incapable of breaking from her hold.

“—& Fire.”

Her room immediately lit by the distinct smell of hide being branded...  

© Elizabeth A.K. O'Connell

Late April 2017 Journal Entry

It’s a deceptive day…late April flourishes…abundant in the blush of dogwood, the vibrancy of azaleas warm with fuchsia…delicate violets grow from concrete, lilacs constellate against the contrasting grey sky, rhododendrons flare as if in permanent twirl…dandelions button the fragrant grass, thick and uncut…white petals ghost the Spring mist, as cherry blossom petals are carried in the chill of the wind...it steals my breath just as it did in Winter...

E.A. O'Connell

She May Be {Edited)

She may be—

a guttural growl from an asphalt sinkhole
where screams in pitch of street light synchronicity
dazzle her eyes like hard candy melt
on her tongue— the taste of saccharine rocket fuel

—and she falls away, falls free, she gives to—

gravity pulling—
the blood running thin from her nose
like juice of a pomegranate
staining her fingers in the surface contemplation of her thumb

phantom lips wax and wane
as witness to a language homicide
—a violent ending to an incoherent thought

the blood runs thicker
slipping the dark caverns of her skull
silver coating the roof of her mouth to protect from the heat
as her body temperature runs high
the unconscious huntress
incinerating landscapes and inhabitants of her repressed mind
—picking them off one-by-one

they dissipate in sunburnt waves of viper percussion
atop a long stretch of desert asphalt
the tarantulas scatter
leaving ghost imprints in her vision, that make her swear she held them in her hand
like stunned birds recuperating from high-rise plate glass trauma

and then the frostbite seizes her bones, ceases the stream of consciousness

sleep-laced words slip the currents of her slowing breaths
—down, down, drowning in the swallow—
—and the death roll—

death extends to her—keeping a distance—he fears her still
he remembers her 
blood like star fire, or was it the tequila seal of her lower lip in kiss
—the permanence—
their fire eating reanimates life, if only for a moment, and she breathes
—shared lungs with a scar tissue tenacity—

her skeletal fabric remnants 
have begun thrashing in their chrysalis cell safety— morphing
the chemical combustion offers a slow pull into a suffocating disintegration
the insanity of letting go in the go
the blooming after wildfire ravaging

—a distant planet turns within itself—

—far, far, far-gotten—

She may be— 
earth static

She may be— 
the moon

She may be— 
the womb to birth a universe anew

E.A. O'Connell

Strange Beings {Edited}

Strange Beings: The wind blows forcibly. The leaves scratch and pierce the crowning night, their underbellies a thousand infantile faces: shrill― mourning in fate, in the disengaging and rearranging of a heart.

Funeral In A Matchbox: Burying a body with leaded glass wings, the burning gas of a star’s inferno mirrored in flightless migration.

Procession: Wrought cemetery gates, green muddy hills, runoff, and blood. Roots grappling the earth, lightning breaking and bruising bark, weathered ribbon ghosts fraying elegies over numb cherubin lips.

Funeral Rites: Risen in the moonlight and sacrificed as an offering to clock-working eyes― naked, burning, forging. Blood runs down my legs, as a stag’s eight points shatter and gore my pelvis― Death is morning glories vining, unwinding, wringing.

Resurrection: Maggots, earthworms, and insects alike, dismantling ruins, pollinators seeding pheromones― a soaking rain, an arid sun cycle. The birds that eat of their flesh, sing my essence― pollinators to petaled heads― bees brewing honey that taste of me― trees fruiting a nectar of me, that trickles down your chin with each insatiable bite― your tongue painting for your hands and mind’s eye― what my soul looks like.

E.A. O'Connell

Voyage, Voyage {A Micro Tale}

The world fell asleep last night; insomniacs found a rhythm and syncopated, children phantomed fog cities in the trees, lovers puzzle-fit their bodies and caught their breaths, animals, domesticated and wild alike, nested and denned in the absence of alarm.  As the world slumbered, the oceans inhaled and with every exhale gained fathoms, crested miles, until every suffocated cityscape, each stratospheric mountain peak, and colossal redwood were submerged; leviathans for a fraction of a second.  For a glimpse of time, all of life was reembraced by a caul of intuition, all life reverted to an in utero state of breathing, and every cell of every existence sounded back the beat of The Mother's heart.  Peace; the whale song and doppler pulse of currents, sonogram moonlight, and the momentary silence of an extinction.  By morning the oceans receded, back to lapping their shores, and the world woke to a water stained earth, as if rain secreted in the night.  Everything seemed as it always had, the people fell into their daily routines without a question or suspicion, and the problems that weigh heavy continued to plague.  But the sun radiated a warmth that lit an inkling of the night's truth to all; a faint primordial scent of origins and amniotic dreams, an awakening of sense, that cautioned a nightmare, that keepsaked a hope: the seed of kind planted in a reverie, the premonition of lot in the escalation of real time.

E.A. O'Connell

Meditation of the Morning

The lotus have died, receded to their watery clime of a regenerating sun in mud luck and deciduous fortune. Elsewhere, the renewed spring of greenery and blossoms within the garden borders haven’t fared as well; depressed, in a low slung green of vegetation putrefying under the weight of an unapologetic frost. They return not to a supple hue or texture in the sun, nor do they brown and release their hold in the dipping temperatures of November nights, they just linger in a limbo of being; awaiting, numbing.  On a walk through a churchyard I behold red begonias, winter macerated and pooled upon their sisters; a wax of thinly veiled youth, of blood ties to the mother, of a death and all it has yet to become.  Shadows spin about me, a split second of chill as they black out the sun: vultures.  I rather enjoy watching them wheel and dive on a breezy morning; how warm to the touch their feathers would be: a sun saturated abyss.  Icarus flying too close to the sun, and yet possessing wings incapable of melting.  I think they write poetry in their fluidity, or at the very least lyrics to a song.  They thread words together as their bodies cross and they raise choruses in their heights; percussion and strings and woodwinds.  Some think it odd, inappropriate even, to speak of the beauty of something believed to be ugly, horrid, that monstrosities are just that, monsters.  But who defines a monster?  Who defines beauty?  Who defines purpose?  I took my children to a cemetery and while there I explained to them that it’s not just a final resting place of the deceased, that it’s a garden; of contemplation, of gratitude and surrender, of a terrible beauty and it’s renewal: life.  I study the architecture of the church, the stained glass, and how the crows sit atop the slate roof, cawing out at all who pass; keeping tally or bidding a good day?  God and I made a pact decades ago: we’d believe in the other from within our respective houses of worship.  So when I go to the lotus, when I go to the trees, the mountains, the ocean, when I’m standing in a parking lot or outside of a church, when I’m a spectrum, when I’m faded, when I feel like a ghost to the world, to even myself...I still exist, because somewhere in the immensity of the universe, my mote of self, has someone, something, some energy, believing, knowing, that I am.  I finish my walk, admiring the damage of winter’s encroaching, placing my chilled hands in the pocket of my hoodie, nodding to the crows, as I turn and go with a whispered amen.    

E.A. O'Connell