Dear Suki: Rio de Janeiro, April 25th
at the top of the world, the fault down
the valley affords me an early morning
dream. My eyes meet the gorging sun,
fast as though through a musical box
to nettle my heart's roseate blooms. I
scale the concrete steps with you here,
gilt damask charts the seven notes in
my breaths breathed low. A wrenching
anecdote in succession of sounds are
my inverting sky without you. Dearest
Suki: you, who are never still, a restless
skirt tossing my brindled grey, a surface
to my bottom, always letting myself be
teemed with a luster so fine that I weave
stories depending on the slant of your sun.

A Pushcart nominee, Lana Bella is an author of two chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016) and Adagio (Finishing Line Press, forthcoming), has had poetry and fiction featured with over 300 journals, 2River, California Quarterly, Chiron Review, Columbia Journal, Poetry Salzburg Review, San Pedro River Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, The Homestead Review, The Ilanot Review, The Writing Disorder, Third Wednesday, Tipton Poetry Journal, Yes Poetry, and elsewhere, among others. She resides in the US and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom of two far-too-clever-frolicsome imps.