Praise for Roadrunner

When the canvas
is painted white, and
the flurries fend off
the day’s work,
you blaze in a trail
of smoke, cleverly
blinding your victim
as he tries to
victimize you;
oh, what a
buzzing blur you
so boastfully are.

You conduct every
snow-day rerun
with the hair of a
cockatoo and a tongue
sketched by
a four-year-old.
You zoom across
the undulating canvas
of bachelor blue
until an abrupt
boing:
your impression
of a door-stopper.

Yet,
in my dreams,
the percussion of your
revving talons
accompanies my Zs
with memories.

Speedomitrus-maximus,
in your wake lingers
the scent of fresh cookies,
steaming with sweet revenge.

Fleeting ball of feathers,
you are the flipped pancake
crisp with defeat
and powdered with gravel.

Mr. Roadrunner,
you are the bittersweetness
on my burnt tongue
after the first sip of hot cocoa
with marshmallows sprinkled
atop–each a promise
of your precocious prowess.

Eve

In the garden, I hunger for something
of young blood to deride and devour.
He says I smell of spiced rum
or feel like a pomegranate;
I long for a taste of the Red Sea.
The garden only favors him on the days
that follow nights, and me, never.

No one has yet picked trios of plums or taught him
how to bleed; I will teach him to worship
me. He pleads in the midst of hunger songs,
and I am charged for the crimes of snake skin,
banished as a scrap of his vile rib.

They will understand when the cherries
finally sprout, leaving a forbidden slate of wax.
They will see my peaches, soft as wool sweaters,
and want to hang them upon tooth and nail.

Until then, I watch as the ripe
plums weep in unison,
one dropping after the other.

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Peyton Bender (she/her) is a junior at Allegheny College studying Creative Writing and Behavioral Neuroscience. Her poetry appears in The Allegheny Review and Collision.