Poetry by Amanda Chiado

Read More: A brief interview with Amanda Chiado

Cake

When my parents say the wolves are loose,
I roll around my lucky tongue in the firelight
As my grandmother comes windborne like a bullet
With her ghostly arthritic fingers, wrinkled smile
To map the land of the undead in ultimate query.
It is always late when they request shadows
And I cash out devil’s food cake like a howling.
This sacrifice is the only way to save myself.
Father calls me the dagger of the dark, asks
For the chase of good against teeth.  How
Can I say hello, hell no, no?  My mother says
The world bites to draw blood, but even
The moon chases danger into mud.  I run
Into the damp wood that is heavy with breath.
I dash to catch the wild things in their homes.
My father watches with a glass full of gold.
The wolves, like us, hide within warm stones.
I slip into their knowing, as they lick their young
With tongues that sit between rows of thorns.

 

untitled

Chew

When my parents say lay down in the margaritas,
They say they’ll take me back. I’m their favorite.
We lay all together under the slushy cloudscapes.
I eat handfuls of soil so I can swallow history.
They mean trouble, landslide, absolute slant,  […]


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untitledBubbly

When my parents say its a hot air balloon day
I eat a noose for breakfast.  My father chuckles
At the anatomical lung design, and fire blasts
Inside the angelic bulb pushing it into the skyline.
I have to find another kind of happiness within the gravity.
My breath is not made of threads that yank home
Like spider light. I imagine bubbly on their tongues, […]


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Amanda Chiado’s poems “The Devil’s Taken his Dress Off” won the Molotov Cocktail Shadow Poetry Award. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart, and Best of the Net. She has twice attended Squaw Valley on scholarship in fiction and poetry. She is a graduate of the University of New Mexico and California College of the Arts where she was the poetry editor for Eleven Eleven. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Witness, Cimarron Review, Fence, and It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip Hop, among others. She works for the San Benito County Arts Council, is an active California Poet in the Schools, and edits for Jersey Devil Press and Weave. She lives with her husband and two children in rural Hollister, California where she sings, dances and collects horror-movie memorabilia. Get weirder at www.amandachiado.com.
Amanda’s poetry was the winner of the 2017 New Writer Awards (poetry).