Pinocchio, Breaking
Here’s the thing: if you’re put together, you can also come apart. —Jess Walter
Pinocchio blew his brains out. Cedar and spruce skull splintering to the floor. Infant timber torn apart by a twelve gauge to the temple. On one shoulder sat a cricket. On the other sat trauma caused by donkey-eared boys who said he liked same sex toys. Too much freedom comes when there’s no strings attached. What’s a wooden boy to do…? The Blue Fairy is nowhere to be found. The Wishing Star has burned out. Geppetto rubs a red feather against his cheek and cries in his dark workshop muttering Lies. All lies.
First Snow
—Charlotte
My insides are hot coco and pastoral.
This Southern sojourn is celebration
and self-discovery.
The barren trees have punctured
the gray sky’s jugular.
Invisible leaves leak
like a flurry of
dissected capillaries.
My white blood cell count is too high;
the doctor’s diagnosis is not good.
I’m a seagull lost in a snowstorm.
My psyche is learning to fly.
My arms are virgin feathers.
Daniel Romo is an MFA candidate at Queens University of Charlotte and lives in Long Beach, CA. His recent poems can be found in Referential Magazine, The Camel Saloon, and the Foundling Review. His first book of poetry, Romancing Gravity, is forthcoming from Pecan Grove Press. More of his writing can be found at danielromo.wordpress.com
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