WHO KNOWS WHAT STOPS THE HEART OF A SONG

by Ariana D. Den Bleyker

“But the American people are begging us for more than thoughts and prayers, they want an answer, and guess what? They want it now, because they know that this is a critical moment in our history.” — Elijah Cummings

The world is vacant for a moment,
grief a womb of air—
but how it lives through love,
the hunger for an abundant & eternal life—

even when it seems impossible to hope.

Today the fallen leaves sleep on a lake
from a wind waking the trees.
A voice shivers under the calm water & firm ground
to shake the faltering stars.

He offered his heart to our hands.

His words stay awake in the remaining raindrops
of an endless night; forbidden morning.
There’ll be no harvest here to reap.
There’s no one left to till the land.

Beneath the soil a farmer sleeps.

Close your eyes to the color
of the world & live your life
in black & gray. Love transcends
the empty room wishing you were here.

Real heroes are men of peace.


Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a wife and mother of two. She is the author of three collections, including Wayward Lines (RawArt Press, 2015) and many chapbooks including, most recently, Scars are Memories Bleeding Through (Yavanika Press, 2018), A Bridge of You (Origami Poems Project, 2019), Even the Statue Weeps (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming 2019), and Confessions of a Mother Hovering in the Space Between Where Birds Collide with Windows (Ghost City Press, forthcoming 2019). She is also the author of three crime novellas, a novelette, and an experimental memoir.

YES, THEY SOW GUNS INTO THE BELLY OF THIS WORLD

by Ariana D. Den Bleyker





You cannot sow leaves back to a tree,
unpluck the plume of an eagle.
When words begin to rot the tongue,
those words cannot be swallowed back.

There is a dish to hold the sea,
a brassiere to hold the sun,
a compass for the galaxy,
a voice to wake the dead.

But this is the silence between us.
And this is why there will be no nest.
Because this is a relationship
between a bird & a gun.

Shots burst out into a crowd;
and, we saw the red-hot glint,
watching & crying & asking
that question over again.

Talons fall from the sky,
settle, & turn to rust. I hate you,
I think, as you shoot me
to death with a rifle in my face:

Born to pull the trigger.
Born to light the match.
Born to see the blood.
Born to steal the hope.

You feel rage & there are bodies
on the floor, me, dying,
almost dead, knees stuck
together with feathers & blood.

One gun to hold the bullets;
one finger to pull the trigger.
Truth wears everyday clothes.
Tufts crimson as sunset pass us by.


Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of three collections, including Wayward Lines (RawArt Press, 2015), the chapbooks Forgetting Aesop (Bandini Books, 2011), Naked Animal (Flutter Press, 2012), My Father Had a Daughter (Alabaster Leaves Publishing, 2013), Hatched from Bone (Flutter Press, 2014), On Coming of Age and Stitches(Origami Poems Project, 2014), On This and That (Bitterzoet Press, 2015), Strangest Sea (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Beautiful Wreckage (Flutter Press, 2015), Unsent (Origami Poems Project, 2015), The Peace of Wild Things (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Knee Deep in Bone (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2015), Birds Never Sing in Caves (Dancing Girl Press, 2016), Cutting Eyes from Ghosts (Blood Pudding Press, 2017), Scars are Memories Bleeding Through (Yavanika Press, 2018), A Bridge of You (Origami Poems Project, 2019), Even the Statue Weeps (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming 2019), and Confessions of a Mother Hovering in the Space Between Where Birds Collide with Windows (Ghost City Press, forthcoming 2019). She is also the author of three crime novellas, a novelette, and an experimental memoir. She hopes you'll fall in love with her words.

AMERICA IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE MUELLER REPORT AND THE ANGRY TWEETS THAT FOLLOWED

by Ariana D. Den Bleyker

Graphic: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES NEWS/GETTY IMAGES, TWITTER via Elite Daily

I.

She swallows the news, a lump in the back of her throat,

watching all the armies who rally to save her gather,

seemingly defeated, their hopes hanging 

upon the delicate flesh of failed ghosts.

Balance of possibilities can go either way:

with just a whisper of wind, touching hand giving strength

to moments of truth swinging gently, leaning, anchored, swaying, 

rediscovering & restoring, though always permanently rooted. 

A new furnace burns brightly, metal ablaze, wrapped in red heat;

sweat pouring, glistening brighter than molten steel, boiling her people

until the day is done & lions roar by the hearth-fire. 

The sun briefly shines, allowing moments for thoughts

& strange songs of what will happen 

tomorrow that may never be real.

II.

She grits her teeth & makes a home far away—

deep within caves within caves, farther back until blue becomes blackness.

She returns to her mother, to nothing,

for inside Plato’s ultimate form illusions of illusions demystified & ugly

rely on her starkness—this & all that she saw

when he crawled in her bed unworthy of sitting by her side,

her form easy enough to reach, as if an object of his desire

left alone to bruise & soil while lying beneath the earth,

left with angry words unable to differentiate

the stomping with supposed compassionate feet, 

the head held down feeling no regrets. 

III.

She can see the revolution from her window,

the small orbits, when they turn away & return 

& sometimes a star falls, a blazing fire shot down,

a demigod dying & it comes down on her—

the thing that once was but is now lost inside her,

borrowing girder, salvaging safety for others, 

relieving the pressure amid weary shoulders grasping

for strength, taking refuge in sacrifice & pain

of her people giving what they’re willing to never receive,

as they walk breathlessly into the ether,

surveying the fact or fiction placed in their hands.

Ariana D. Den Bleyker is a Pittsburgh native currently residing in New York’s Hudson Valley where she is a wife and mother of two. When she’s not writing, she’s spending time with her family and every once in a while sleeps. She is the author of three collections, including Wayward Lines (RawArt Press, 2015), the chapbooks Forgetting Aesop (Bandini Books, 2011), Naked Animal (Flutter Press, 2012), My Father Had a Daughter (Alabaster Leaves Publishing, 2013), Hatched from Bone (Flutter Press, 2014), On Coming of Age and Stitches(Origami Poems Project, 2014), On This and That (Bitterzoet Press, 2015), Strangest Sea (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Beautiful Wreckage (Flutter Press, 2015), Unsent (Origami Poems Project, 2015), The Peace of Wild Things (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Knee Deep in Bone (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2015), Birds Never Sing in Caves (Dancing Girl Press, 2016), Cutting Eyes from Ghosts (Blood Pudding Press, 2017), Scars are Memories Bleeding Through (Yavanika Press, 2018), A Bridge of You (Origami Poems Project, 2019), Even the Statue Weeps (Dancing Girl Press, forthcoming 2019), and Confessions of a Mother Hovering in the Space Between Where Birds Collide with Windows (Ghost City Press, forthcoming 2019). She is also the author of three crime novellas, a novelette, and an experimental memoir. She hopes you'll fall in love with her words.