Sternum Poems | Examples

Lies I never told, but never clarified

They with masks and scalpels
rewatch 
the seconds I was given without consent.
My breath      hitches
as warnings stillborn in my throat.

At this moment,
I am but
a body
opened 
for overdue answers no one asked for.

A poet’s gift lies in the voice of Truth.
No—
A poet's gift is to lie, 
constantly,
in lavender-gray syllables
threaded through with near-Truth—
The answer to unvoiced questions,
clipped out with tweezers,
a scorched coil—
my vocal cord.

I, a third-party haze—
rewatch
the moments I lived through like 
faint      breaths 
fogging an oxygen mask.

My lies will be forgiven,
when they split open my sternum,
and find Truth still beating—

They’ll know,
late Truth cuts deeper than scalpel.

Heartbeat

Breathing in acid rain, 
seeing red,
wrath burns through translucent veins, 
heartbeat rattles against a jilted sternum.

Confessional Booth Number 9

Streetlight dander. Jawbone asphalt.
Blink razors carve her iris script.
Rib stars ovulate in feral grates,
mechanical tongue juts a bloodline breath.
Keystroke ruin writes in collapse,
a waveform lodged in sternum glass.
Lipsticked rodeo—a gash in faded denim
Banana-knuckled hands torch filterless ghosts.

Tree-call through copper root systems.
Wire-pluck storm,
vapor chews the stock market 
Cancer caught in molar hush,
brined in citrine static.

She opens her throat like a coin purse.
Spine bows in semaphore.
We dismount the edge—
An incisor cusp,
the confession still blistering
beneath the flesh of no language.

Flightlessly

There are birds that leave the nest too soon
You are like that
All fumbling feathers and heartbreak with sternum kissing ground
You grew up early, Paige
I don't think you ever learned to fly correctly
No one was your teacher
You stumbled to near content
Walked right up to it's door
And you lost the nerve to knock
To ask for help
Now you are stuck staring at the doormat wondering when you'll be let in
When you will finally get your portion of warm soup
I think you are similar to a bird that learned to fly through a broken wing
Gritted beak and glassy eyes
Like a stone thrown, rather than skipped
Stunted, but trying
Still beautiful, but grounded without support
I think you're a woman that grew up only ever expecting broken glass under your knees.

Ephemeral Network

Written: May 07, 2024

                          ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

he peppered peony
petals, poems ...
                        past my path

scattered starlight, songs,
moonstones …
                        spaning my spine

friendship fell
                        in felicity.

hush the bee hum in
my hooters were hazel

Begonias bloom
                  bound

silent songs
strum my sternum

funneled fairly
fetching forward!
 
                  fettered

                  gramophone of love

Bosom Friend

I felt affection
By sudden press of her hand
To my sternum.

Get the Message?

If I were to take a sledgehammer
Grip it tender but tight
So its iron skull may send
A scathing speech to your sternum
Would bricks take flight,
Or are you truly that dense?

Sternum Scars and Secrets

Awakening burning scars
in my sternum begin 
invading secret strongholds 
buried inside my conscience
Struggling and fighting
restless consuming times 
to win resolutions

Moment In the Sun

Do you remember going to Bald Head Island? Must have been 		13 years ago now. Well, I finally went back & the wind off the ocean was working overtime. It was blowing in streams, kicking the dunes around like paper. When I stood up out of my chair, I caught the stream square in my sternum. It pushed me back    2 inches, 		2 feet
	10 feet,

								10 years–when time still hadn’t ground the pink and yellow seashells down into brown sand.               When you were still alive.
It took me a 		moment to realize where I was. I couldn’t see my chair anymore, couldn’t see the waves. I took   one step forward then 	another, 2 feet forward,					10 feet,

						10 years.
and I looked up through the breeze, into the setting sun and caught a glimpse of you smiling. It was nice to see you again, even if it was just for a 		moment.

Boundless Mutual Worship

How long will you stare
at my Blurry reflection.
Will we plunge into the enchantment 
Of the distorted .
Frightening tenderness so nicely 
Cuts the sternum.
As well sounds in the depths of blood - stained feelings , 
An affectionate command .
Oh, and it wouldn't disappear forever overnight ,
If we knew the boundless mutual worship.

Eye and Heart

EYE and Heart rambling pounding after death!
kissing bruised valves of mind
breaking ribs and sternum
into the ghost-kiss of afterlife!
aaaaaah!
Love grows a coat of fur, lips thicken
for the everlasting kiss!  Like crepuscular,
hiding under the table -- cannot bear to be
seen.   Born from an aborted fetus -- crumens beneath
its beautiful eyes!   Secrete waxy tears, senseless boredom eating
away within its four-chambered stomach barely
taking sustenance it crawls away!
Everyone refuses to feed her -- lips and hands
smell as semen and cigarettes;  god's cock hardening to woody bone for the anger
of his fallen angels!  Hey!  Go away! Go away!
Autumn rut.  The hidden gallons of evil passion
tips back it's majestic crown -- Christ with hands
nailed up, bellowing to Heaven!
the condom falls and again a new universe is born.
Again.  And again.

:: 11.12.2020 ::

Check

~ Check ~

I confess my discontent 
I was stifled
In restraints by suggestions and pretty things
The ones bought in the streets for a stroke of ego
The ones bought by the vulnerable and naive

I bought the bootleg covers of dreams
They left me empty and listless 
With an ache in my chest
It reaches, cracking sternum 
Calling out like an unmet fix
Crying out like an addiction

The empty digs down deep
Leaving pinhole scars that only I know exist
That only I know I keep
My sweet little drug 
Saturating my blood stream 
These chemicals will not rest
They flow and form malformed notions 
That I need you
Still

That is my illness
Knowing how you will continue to slowly bury me
Even if unknowingly, even if unintentional 
Because no one intentionally becomes addicted, do they?
Then I think, only an addict would keep coming back for the come down

So here I am, hooked
Chasing beasts and legends 
Surviving on fantasies of fairy tales that lay captive in my mind
That play chess with my unrest and I am forever... 
In check


Andreanna Escamilla
07/06/2020

The Skeletal Poem

The human skeleton,
is made up of 206 bones
By jove, they are hard,
as if made of stones!

The brain you think with
is in the Skull or Cranium,
the Maxilla and the Mandible
are for chewing bubble gum.

It's atop the spine
which has 33 Vertebrae in all
You're sure gonna break it
if there's a nasty fall.

The 12 pairs of ribs
act just like a big ring,
while 10 fix to the Sternum
the bottom 2 are Floating.

The shoulder blade or the Scapula
is joined with the Clavicle
How they organize the movement
Is another spectacle.

The arms have the Humerus,
the Radius and the Ulna,
The hands' have wrist bones
called Carpals (not made in China).

With Metacarpals and Phalanges
we complete our hand,
don't you forget the lower limbs,
upon which we stand.

The hip bones make the Pelvis
from which the Femur originate
If you gyrate it like elvis
the Patella is sure to break.

Tibia and Fibula
are there in the Shin
The Tarsals and Metatarsals 
shape your feet as it's seen.

Our journey ends here
Let me take your leave,
Take good care of your bones
for as long as you live.

Neil

I listen to Neil Hilborn on Spotify
Because I like to feel like a self-entitled hipster
But can’t afford a record player.
The breathy shouts of slam poets
Sound a lot like falling in love- 
If love was a sledgehammer 
Smashing repeatedly into my sternum.
I’m attracted to emotional self-mutilation.
What teenage poet isn’t?
After all, happy people don’t write good poetry.
Happy people write sappy bull about
“Eyes like summer storms”
And call it art.
Depressed poets write about dead people
And the boy who swore he loved me when I was fifteen
And all the stars I’ve felt blink out inside of me.
Poetry is to suicide 
What nicotine gum is to cigarettes:
It never quite dulls the craving,
And I’m still not allowed to indulge at work.

The Space Between

Petals
sharp
or fuzzy and soft
piled in heaps
like automn leaves
dried and cracking 
or green, fresh and sugary sweet.

The colors range 
like the whiteness of day, 
turning yellow and red orange,
shifting to night 
arranged in shades of blue, moonlit
shadows and silver linings 
where pink elephants danced before.

The rainbow of every moment of this existence
hidden
frosted with tiny ice crystals
or burned with brown sun spots.

When the sounds fade with the light
when my body dissappears into the floor 
my head floating furhter into this expanding emptiness 
searching for stillness
I find myself
in a flutter of flowers
squished between the sternum and the spine.

As if the wind blows straight
down drilling a hole in the sand
like a well

Drinking deep
reveals glimpses of the spaces between
the solid ground beneath
the vastness of the depth
slowly becoming the shallow end.

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