I write because

By Anna Navarro

I am in a love affair
​with language,
 
with the pungent ointment of words— 
     citrine and biting eucalyptus
     on the burnt, bubbling tongue,
 
and the restless, fat-laden
pregnancy of
 
                              white space.
 
I lust over languorous drags
of heady lines
that slick and warm the throat,
 
     set the lips and limbs aflame
          in a funeral pyre of dead pages.
 
I pore over letters,
lick them raw,
stitch them crudely
into alien strings
woven thick and craggy.
 
I write for the heavy, bleeding
meat of poetry
that slaps and satiates,
 
for the pulse and sting
of unrepentant sensuality
​
only language can articulate.

---

condensation

By Anna Navarro

It’s been so cold
that the windows are crying— 
 
not the wet, vibrating tears
of a June thunderstorm,
or the grey sob
of September rain,
 
     but a slackened drip;
          a still, breathless chest.
 
It’s almost like they’re playing dead
with their flat, clear faces set
as ice,
 
but in secret,
they shiver at the bleak prairie wind,
at all the cold ghosts passing through.
 
They leak this way
into puddles on the floor,

     slick, wobbly pools;

          almost breathing.

---

Anna Navarro is a young writer based in Calgary, Alberta. She is a student at the University of Calgary, an avid reader, and a lover of all expressions of art. She has been published in Plenitude and NōD Magazine, and has work forthcoming in Genre: Urban Arts.