"Trastornos Cósmicos" by LR Buckwalter Cunningham

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A sonámbula scrawls; WoRd SoUP brujerías,

transposing exclamation points into inevitable mayúsculas

that swallow you whole

the evidence archived in a ratty old notebook;

Lunar Phrases are disobedient to ruled paper.

heirs to bipolarity too refuse the horizontal,

nothing is linear

Lost and Found generational neologisms

the circularities of unhinged jaws,

animas’ cicadas whisper into ecstasy,

decipher it later.

frozen brain and fog in the early morning

convinced she had evaporated

away with a nymph in the left palm

pins and needles and a right hand

shivering rigors,

composition book otherwise decomposed.

The anima seethes again, as if deprived of an illegible idea

fratricidio-sobrenatural, bloodless fingers

with a persecution complex.

What I know about Shadow,

she is cast in shame and grandiosity

What I know about Spirit,

is traumatic alchemy

I cannot meet her in the eye

the evil and episodic one

Dark matter must be cold in nature

and I just want to go home

inside, bedridden invalid

crosswalking with chilled restraint,

obedience to the pavement that persists

until she evaporates under my feet

Tombstones are used to build roads,

skeletons of time

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LR Buckwalter Cunningham is an Assistant Professor of Spanish at the Defense Foreign Language Institute, where she teaches linguistics, language, and culture. Her academic work focuses primarily on Poetry and Performance, Hemispheric Studies, and the field of Ecocriticism. Dr. Buckwalter Cunningham, in addition, is a creative writer, poet, reviewer, copy-editor, and translator. She is currently working on a book-length project on autopoiesis and Latinx poetry, and a translation manuscript of collected essays and correspondences. LR resides in Salinas, California next to a broccoli field.