[Poetry] Two Poems by Alyssa Ahnell

Midnight Surf Pantoum

It is like you’ve died, my salty cherub,

and I am left beheld by a gone pair of blue eyes.

I’ll put on moaning, mourning surf rock for the processional.

You were always far too California to be real.

I am beheld by a gone pair of blue eyes.

I bent to admire your boyish tenderness.

You were always far too California to be real.

You washed each freckle I own in remembrance.

I bent to admire your boyish tenderness.

I hear the moon still talks to the sun about us.

You washed each freckle I own in remembrance.

We traded souls, shells from the beach.

The moon still talks to the sun about us.

I squint now to spot the waves we met.

We traded souls like shells from the beach.

My fingers spilled through your yellow curls.

I squint now to spot the waves we met.

I think a soft-skinned fate guided us to the barrel.

My fingers spilled through your yellow curls.

We sat, tethered in awe, tied eye in eye.

A soft-skinned fate guided us to the barrel.

It’s like you’ve died, my salty cherub.

We once sat, tethered in awe, tied eye in eye.

I will play moaning, mourning surf rock for the processional.

The Blue Wallpaper

An Ekphrastic Sequel to “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

He took my mother somewhere like this too,

mine with blue wallpaper.

I didn’t know the color blue could be this ugly,

this deviously stirring blue,

the hue of water

that you’d fear would give you worms

in your brain

if you were to swim in it.

Shapes float on its surface,

with tentacles that go meters deep,

all hexagonal, yet diamond

striped, yet starred

And in a spiral.

I never feel dry in this room,

always sopping, gathering mildew,

my clothes want off me.

It is apparent to me now,

that the floor has flooded by my weeping,

Up three inches from linoleum to horizon,

sloshing softly around the baseboards.

And sometimes, like a sailboat,

my mother’s head will bob by,

oval and drifting,

from her raft in the wallpaper.

She wants desperately to break the pattern,

embrace me.

But the tidal print has trapped her,

refuses to carry her to shore.

So, when, on Tuesday, I told the doctor,

about waking up

and finding myself drowning

in my walls.

When I explained to him that the tiles affixed to the wallpaper

swallow the light in such gulps

that they seem on their way

to drink me

and add me to their mosaic.

That my mother, too, must fight the geometric current

to reveal herself to me,

grasping from the marine abyss.

So dim it seems it must dine only on darkness.

He tried to cure my mother like this too,

But, she,

is telling me to swim

for my life.

Alyssa Ahnell is an undergraduate Creative Writing student in Seattle, Washington, raised in Northern California. She has been previously published in Just Poetry Magazine, Bridge Journal, and Lingua Journal. She strives to craft work that illuminates the intricate connections between people and the natural world.