GRACIE PHILLIPS - POEMS

Gracie Phillips is a 20-year-old emerging poet from a small town in Indiana. Her other work can be found in Belle Ombre, the Haiku Journal, and Kennings Literary Magazine. Updates on her current projects can be found on her Instagram, @gracewritesbooks, and her Facebook Page, Grace Writes Books. 

​Wee Willy Shakes

​When painters die, we truly see the art.
Vincent Van Gogh put a gun to his head.
Poets abandon a piece of their heart.
We read between lines only once they’re dead.
We learn to love how words begin to fade,
As students worship how the story ends,
Wee Willy Shakes has it made in the shade.
See, I blame Will and all the plays he penned.
Shakespeare showed us beauty in tragedy.
Now it’s romantic to die for a cause,
My poetry is not a casualty,
I’m a writer, I’ve got plenty of flaws,
Pushing up daisies is Will’s poetry,
but headstones are not big enough for me.

Will and Way
​

If there’s a Will,
Then its hands will tremble at your touch.
It will try to draw away from you because it
isn’t used to being held like that.
Its hands will be cold at first touch, will warm
under your embrace.
There will be soft callouses on the fingertips from
constantly pressing against typewriter keys “If there’s a Will…”
The sound is clipped, short, and angry,
its hands clenching and unclenching as it stands, strong in its resolve
and sterling in its repose.
It sees possibility, it sees an answer, and raises its hand to point at it because
a Will doesn’t ask questions, a Will knows the solution.
But it clings to you, because despite its steadfast constitution and its quick-witted mind,
it reaches out for you, holds on tight with those trembling hands. 

If there’s a Way,
Then its hands will snatch yours up before you can even reach for its own.
It will hoist your hand up high, the adrenaline thrumming
through its veins throbbing against your palm, through its fingertips.
You can smell the perspiration, sharp and sweet
radiating off its warm gripping fist.
It will stand, pulling you up with it as it rises above
and squeezes your hand, holding it high above your head and you hear its voice,
Strong, immortal, and loud.
You hear the song it makes as the free hand cups around its mouth
and screams “There is a Way!”
You hold its hand, teach yourself to breathe through paper-bag lungs.
If there’s a Will --- tugging insistently on your jacket sleeves, demanding to prove itself ---
then through the daze of disconcertion, quandary, and commonition,
there must, inevitably, be a Way.

​Song for the Moonwisher

Moonwisher,
Do you know how you look right now?
With those amber eyes gazing at starlight
the way a dying man stares at his wife,
like you’re trying to memorize the way the stars look tonight.
And goddamn,
I wish your eyes were always this bright.
Moonwisher,
Do you know how I feel right now?
Watching you watch me but pretending I don’t see
as I study the stars with you and wonder what it would take to show you the moon
and how you’d react if I told you I put it there for you,
and goddamn,
I wish I was the moon you wish upon.
Moonwisher,
Do you know how I dream right now?
Hoping upon hope that one day you’ll be among your lovely stars
And maybe if I’m lucky that’s where I’ll find you again,
dancing the way a comet dances,
teasing the moon and kissing its craters
and goddamn,
I wish we could dance again under the moon.
Moonwisher,
Do you know how I miss you right now?
My tears sliding like stardust, leaving tracks like astronaut footprints.
Tasting salt on the Gemini lips you never kissed and
somebody once told me there’s no air in space and there’s no air in my lungs anymore.
They say you can never miss what never was
And goddamn,
I wish I could see the moon from here.
I wish I could see you from here. ​