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Alice Leaves the Page
By Lisa Markowitz
She pushes words with grown up arms,
Stands on white plains made of paper.
All things grow into what they are—the trees,
Tall stacked minutes full up with bitten lips,
New beginnings, relationships with cats.
Alice is emerged from paragraph apartments.
Remnants of dark sky, a scarf around her shoulders.
Here is her going—outward a torso spins, in awe
Of even the sidewalk. The night is still on her,
Quotation marks like combs hold back her hair.
Alice is erupting in foreign—
No name opens into the earth, into disease,
When she only wishes to speak to a synapse.
What happens when words live.
She is waking and sleeping like humans,
Bottom’s not stopped but falling.
The peak is not a mountain but a moment
In so many lights, her book become a bloody heart.
The billboards convince her she’s in need
Of much plastic fixing.
She remembers Wonderland summer
And midnight setting sun, sits like a queen
Without a crown, overlooks the people-city.
There she is a memory, a puddle of rain.
There were children before her, and children
In Wonderland now. The ground splits
With the seasons. She knows life is uneven,
That cycles do exist.
Alice is no world outside of her flesh,
But for words—a brown plant grown over
Into being, if only in the silent exchange
Between strangers.
This is not what she strives for, but what strives:
Separate ached parts, matches and mismatches.
Lung and liver, pages of a book.
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