By Dane Lyn
keep out
after Olga Rozanova’s “Abstract Composition (Color-painting)”
please keep your hands and arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times please keep your thoughts and insights inside your pretty little head please keep tabs on your sensuality please keep your story straight please keep up appearances please keep please keep keep away keep breathing keep breathing keep breathing keep your weight off my shoulders I’m keeping score I’m keeping my middle fingers in the sky
doomed beautiful thing
after Hal Fischer’s “Bobby at the Beach”
his tenuous hold on life as delicate as any doomed beautiful thing beach soothing rough edges, grinding rock to sand, and sand to dust, and dust to skin. cotton in negative, a whirlwind packed into those pockets, silver dreams blown across the waves. grinding dreams to ash, and ash to stardust, and stardust to glitter. a sparkling dissipation across oceans and he will come again to this beach leaving bread crumb trails of his longings until his pockets are empty.
launchpad
Earth is broken,
I want to leave
find me
waiting
my disassembled launch pad
buried under dot matrix print-out instructions
tools
somewhere
beam me up and away,
might be stranded here on
a planet that mocks
me
coordinates hazy
but that’s a risk worth taking
to fly up and away
because
Earth is broken,
I want to leave
find me
find me
Dane Lyn (they/them) is a neurodivergent, genderqueer, disabled, educator, poet, and glitter enthusiast with an MFA from Lindenwood University. Find them in L.A. with their partner, constructing blanket forts, caring for their menagerie of teens, snakes, lizards, dogs, rabbits, and cats, and ridding their shoes of beach sand. Dane’s work can be seen in Quillkeepers, Gnashing Teeth, Gutslut, and Imposter. Their debut chapbook by bottlecap press, “bubblegum black” will be released in early 2023. They are on social media @punkhippypoet and most of their published work can be seen at www.danelyn.net.
Academy of the Heart And Mind 