est. 2022
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ISSUE 5: AEVUM
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HAZELYN AROIAN
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Consecrate
Hazelyn Aroian | Poetry
I.
​
This is a circumstance crying out for a creation myth.
Yes, I am aware there are others: unsour bathwater. Bare earth.
​
Forgeries too are noble, haven’t we all given breath without
laying claim. A statistic: one-third of all works of art
​
are fakes. Yes, this means the sanctuary windows.
Simultaneous godliness and ungodliness of routine.
​
No, I didn’t believe it before I met you,
didn’t believe intent the mother of beauty
‘till your hand closed around my wrist.
​
II.
​
In the parking lot, the single plume of exhaust holds back
the sky. Paints a heaven for some world ripe with cement,
ripe with nicotine. Like all things we are polluted.
Warmth trapped in the body
begs some form of belonging.
You press your fingertip to the smooth skin
below my eye, trace a rivulet like a vow.
Like a plea.
​
III.
​
I would not like to get out of town. The last time
I drove on the highway,
I mistook a stranger’s car for yours,
realized when the bright green bumper sticker promised
salvation. Unless, in the space after that final word
I caught from your lips,
​
you became an Evangelical. Who am I to tell you different.
​
Sanctity, or sanity:
a preacher’s womb, drop
of dew,
a fresh coat of white
on a stubborn picket fence.
​
​
I wonder if my drive-thru Diet Coke’s still housed in your shotgun cupholder.
IV.
​
I stole your shade of lipstick from the store down the street,
ran the long way home,
​
pitied the boys pedaling up the hill,
​
counted the spires of the churches as I passed them by,
laughed aloud because the water is rising again,
​
kissed the mirror ‘cause you’re gone, but here I am still, blessed
and tenuous, holy and plain, glorious imitation
of your shape
Ulster County, 1974
Hazelyn Aroian | Poetry
Content Warning: Non-explicit reference to su*cide
My grandmother burns receipts in a motel, waiting for the rain
to abate.
​
Find me curled within the crypts that are her eyes.
A bridge blooms under my mother’s brush, the kind of solace
there’s no reference photo for. The painting’s in the attic now, Jesus
nailed to the wall above every bed. As a child I dreamed
I could slip between lives like a cat: this whisper passed between
women of my family, worn creases of the dollar more intimate
than my grandmother’s hands shaping the piano. She sings,
​
The morning tastes different in the dark. Is it strong or foolish
to cling to something built to be passed by, the blotched dawn
bringing the storm, begging the sailors to repent? My grandmother
never learned how to swim. There’s no need upstate.
​She wrote in all capitals, and someday when I too put down the pen,
lie to me, tell me I do not sign my name silently.
In my mother’s scripted ls I stumble on a space I could hang myself,
​
her handwriting pale against the bathroom vanity.
Constellations of toothpaste stains confront me,
graze my cheek. My grandmother sings, This is what you could be.
Should be. And I abide. Ceremonial in amber light, efface
my fingertips: what use do I have for a corpse? What use do we have
​
to be heard? My grandmother sings, Unblemished sky’s a mirage
formed from spite. Unblemished sky’s an abyss hovering
in labored breath, a loss cutting dull teeth like church bells.
​
We threw knives at the stars, blanched at the deer’s bleeding carcass:
from slaughter a monument.
One Last Return to the Little House on the Prairie
Hazelyn Aroian | Poetry
Well, we finally set fire to the homestead. To the four clay mugs
and the goose down pillow. To the wicker and the rocking chair,
the Bible, basin, and knitting needles. To the trunk,
everything festering unfettered in the dark
within it. We watched as the flames curled
real tender ‘round the timber and thatch, twinkling
like a pastor’s smile. When the roof bowed
and bent it was something like joy, not vengeance. Crackling
blaze like cricketsong, like
falling dusk. And when the flames
stretched, yawned from the house,
skimmed the prairie grass low and easy,
it was only natural. A progression like building a fence,
then painting the damn thing. Or maybe different. Because
through the smoke, for the first time,
all the rituals of living aside,
we could see clearly for miles. Thimbleweeds,
purple clover. Sky throbbing
with heat, bursting. About to split. Ash
like prairie snow.
When the flames crept toward us,
like a small child who just won’t get herself to bed, we knelt,
touched them gently as the hands of an old friend. I reached
for you next,
fingertips now tingling with raw, hot tongues.
My flames threw new shadows
on the hollows of your cheeks,
set them ablaze. You
tipped my chin up, then. Eyes lit from within
like morning, like a harvest,
golden wheat coaxed forth
by summer sun. We gazed
at our two faces, at our flesh
bubbling, running,
pleased with itself like a brook.
Our bones carved clean,
sweet enough to pick teeth.
And it didn’t hurt one bit. It felt
like taking off a tight dress.
Like rapture. Like unraveling,
coming free.
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Hazelyn Aroian is from central Massachusetts. She currently studies English, computer science, and philosophy at Northeastern University. In her free time, she can be found curating hyper-specific Spotify playlists.
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