The Brooklyn Rail

DEC 22–JAN 23

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DEC 22–JAN 23 Issue
Poetry

five


Coffee on Planet Igneous



She draws the cup to her mouth and takes a sip of coffee like black-eyed crows greedily elbowing, crowding around a narrow puddle on Igneous Rock Mountain during the darkest hour of night, just before dawn’s blood orange sun will surely sizzle away all hope.


Her eyelids, heavy with delight, sink as her sockets cradle her rolling eyeballs in their upward arc like the youngsters that deftly descend Igneous Rock Mountain on obsidian boards with shards of shattered rock flying, sparks of fire dazzling, and globs of lava erupting behind them as they soar like crows, ecstatic in their revelry, tasting the hot, heavy sky between ivory fangs for one climactic moment before their boards pound the rock and barrel down the mountain like rushing waterfalls, crushing everything in their path, sounding like a hundred garbage disposals amplified, yet rivaled by their hoots of sheer ecstasy to be doing the one thing they love best.


She inhales deeply through her nose and gulps, letting the coffee wash down her throat into her satisfied stomach like the 300 ft sea serpent that swirls in the depths of the Red Sea circling the planet’s volcanic islands, as its rows of dagger-like teeth pierce into the side of a gigantic puffer fish who’s expanded like a spike laden balloon, but to no avail, and is torn to pieces by the serpent, keeping the Red Sea of demon-abundant Planet Igneous true to its name.





































Contributor

Chime Lama

Chime Lama (འཆི་མེད་ཆོས་སྒྲོན།) is a Tibetan American writer, translator and multi-genre artist based in New York. She is the Poetry Editor of Yeshe Journal, and her work has been featured in the Brooklyn Rail, Exposition Review, The Margins, Street Cake, and Volume Poetry, among others. Her poetry collection, Sphinxlike, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, and she teaches Creative Writing at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).

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The Brooklyn Rail

DEC 22–JAN 23

All Issues