three poems

by Karina Longo

Insomnia Beats

Water

drops

in my sink,

bombshell leak

wrecking

silence;

it keeps going, as if
to make a home
for algae &

weird fish.

Next door,

sweat drops,
I am

drowning—
too much happening under
a goose duvet.

Blue smoke, violet choke;
I am
falling.
Are you and I
still a thing?

Making love

with a mirror,

I’ve always

been your

dark-haired Nico;

glass bruises
my comatose

feet.

Your eyes like a casino,

the coin falls and flips,

falls and…

If closing my eyes means
only meeting you in a

dream,

I’ll hold my

breath;
bring the

insomnia

beats.

It’s been fifteen years since I last spoke to my dad

and one of the last times I saw him,
we were in his cramped Chevrolet.
I was introducing him
to Radiohead’s Karma Police,
his green eyes like neon
flickering inside a black hole.

Then silence.
Maybe a horn outside.
He mumbled, but it came out loud,
like a detuned ghost alarm cutting the air:

“If someone listens to this three times in a row,
they’re done with this world.”

Noise piled so high it collapsed into quiet.
Well, Dad, you might not hear it,
but listen —
I’m still here.

Vox Aeternum

Have you forgotten them—

the Angels?

Though Heaven is as far

from us as listening

to an echo dying next door,

I still remember their faces.

I still hear it: the harps,

the beauty; the lifted weight

of a cream-silk silence

we were stolen from the calendar,

as it ticks in its shivering

violence.

The hourglass fills with

dried blood, not the salt

of the earth.

Time, posing as eternity,

fails the promise

we withdrew ourselves

from, cor at anima.

Even if you shout

to the Angels, they won’t

make a sound. Not because they can’t;

their laments are the beacon,

the symphony the clouds

cling to.

You have forgotten the Angels.

Silence now is the shadow

that lasts.

BIO: Karina Longo is a neurodiverse Brazilian-Italian poet based in Milan. Her poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in Expat Press, Be About It Press, Eunoia Review, Resurrection Mag, Some Words, Dodo Eraser, Michigan City Review of Books, Burning House Press, Prosetrics, and elsewhere. Find her on X: @TheDarkestStar_