Lukas Hall 

Melancholic

Lightning drips from 
the green clouds
outside my house 

and become stuck on 
the woman taking pictures 
on her roof without her noticing.

I sat for hours debating
if I step outside myself
and tell her of the fingered

bolt developing a cape 
shrouding over her whole 
backside. But then, I remember,

I desire to be that 
lightning drip if only 
to smell her hair,

or hear her thoughts, or 
dismember her scalp
and construct something

both of us could be proud of. 
And before my thought 
finished, the lightning 

expanded and sent a 
staccato of electricity
through her body

and her blackened corpse
tumbled off the roof into my pool.
Where I keep her body in hopes

that the drips will return
and I can learn of how they became 
in the first place.

Rainbow String

Our hands, once
sewn together

with rainbow colored
string, peel apart. 

The veins bifurcate
and stretch as we step further

from the other. Eventually,
our hands are separate

and a neoteric lake,
a billabong,

has formed between us.
The red reflects

off the night sky
and consumes the discernible

light in our vision.
We wave,

from behind the substantive curtain 
of effulgence and say good-

bye. Not to each other
but the spooled

out rainbow string, circling
the mezzo of the lake.

I don't keep many things. I cycle through wanting to keep souvenirs and wanting to throw everything. The one thing that I hope to always keep though, is this collection of hand-made books I wrote back when I was four, five or six years old, I'm not sure, but they always remind me of my love for writing, and what I hope to achieve some day.

Lukas Hall, born and raised near the Twin Cities, MN, is currently in the BFA Creative Writing program at Hamline University in Saint Paul, MN. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Paper Lantern, Aviary Review, East Jasmine Review and Souvenir Lit. He also won the Patsy Lea Core Memorial Award in Creative Writing, for his poetry.