2 Poems by Ava Dwyer

Fields of Amaranth

Endless plains before me
White glaring sun
No warmth on my skin, no wind
Like the haze of what’s behind,
The horizon always beckons
Whether framed by dreary badlands
Or nestled behind cloud crowned peaks

Waiting for what will never come
To be whisked away in a shiny black car
Through ceaseless fields of amaranth
Searching till no end
Bearing no fruits to fill
What I was born missing

For the phantom riding a ginger horse
Cradling robins eggs
Candy blue and shattering
At one wrong jerky movement
He always disappears
No matter how fast I run
Through shallow foaming waters
Tasting a salty familiarity

For the veil of the night
Making me a beautiful stranger
With pale glittering skin
Turning sallow and blemished
In the morning light

Respinning the threads
Of what I can only recall
Into a thick yarn
Stripping the wool of its scratch
Dying it with dust from mollusk shells
And the vain blood of pomegranates
I weave a revisionist tapestry
Some sharp selective symmetry
Some fuzzy dream-like abstractions
Threaded with glass beads polished over red coals
Arranged for the pleasure of the viewer


Ode to Margaret

There she lay, fingers splayed
Encased deep down
In the bed of the stream
In a crystal casket, visited by dreams
Of the forgotten things
Forgotten things, a lost world

She takes her lantern to the tree
Kindred curiosity
On strings her fate depends
The deeds were done
And done again
Curiosity killed the cat

Sugared devout figures all around
She leaves the garden
No trace of sound
Oh what a life
Oh what a life

Said he’d follow anywhere
It was their world to share
Now his fingers untie
Melon fibers gone dry
Cast aside
Under dangling feet and many suns

Ghosts of tigers cry
After all went awry
Technicolored fish sing their hymns
A new woman in white bends to his whims
Adam and evil are no more
Drunk on all forgotten


Ava Dwyer is a 21-year-old writer and visual artist from Burlington Vermont. She has been writing since childhood for no audience except her private journal but has recently decided to try and showcase her work. Her surrealist-inspired art can be found on the Instagram account, @avasechochamber.