Category: Tori Amos

Past the Silent Earthquakes Series inspired by Tori Amos: Poems by Lynn White

Bio: Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and a Rhysling Award. Find Lynn at: https://lynnwhitepoetry.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/Lynn-White-Poetry-1603675983213077/

After The Earthquake


It needs strength to break new ground
when it’s as hard and solid as
silence.

It needs strength to break
to break the mould and
reform
to pick up the pieces
broken 
by silence.

But when the earth gives up it’s power
then sounds can break through.
Beams of light bring colour 
so fragile forms can bloom
through the self-shattered soil,
ripping it up 
to melt the frozen silence
and so we find ourselves again
both fragile and strong.

Under The Skin

My outside skin no longer fitted me well,
didn’t always represent me
didn't look like I still feel
like I still am.

So I dispensed with it,
wrote it off,
turned it
inside out
and now I’m intact
in the pink
myself 
at last
I think.

And therefore I am
the same person
under the skin.
I’m sure I am.

The outside has changed
but inside my skin
I am still intact
in the pink
of myself 
as before.
I think
I am.

Past the Silent Earthquakes Series inspired by Tori Amos: poem from Wendy Cartwright

Wendy Cartwright is a poet/author/reporter/columnist/weirdo out of Columbus, Indiana. She has had work published in Night Owl Narrative Issues 1 & 3 by Cajun Mutt Press, Ovation, an Anthology collected by Jimmy Broccoli, SPREAD, by Chris Dusterhoff, and Older Lifespan Vol. 11, by Pure Slush. She has been a Featured Writer on cajunmuttpress.wordpress.com and dearbooze.com . Wendy was also featured in the blog spotlight The Beat Poetry Must Go On! by Fevers of the Mind (feversofthemind.com). She just released her first volume of personal poetry, Everything I Said I Wasn’t. Wendy also writes human interest and news articles for the North Vernon Plain Dealer and has a bi-weekly column called Midwest Wonders in The Seymour Tribune. She has self-published two compilations of articles from the column. Wendy has also had articles published on businessinsider.com 

Precious Things

Memories are precious.
Driving, CD’s in the pioneer stereo
with removable faceplate I’d throw in the glove compartment to prevent theft of my music box.
Nostalgia.
The way I can’t listen to some songs,
and how I can’t sit still listening to others.
Visions of times past, just a kid in adult clothes,
trying to figure out where I fit.
Smoking bowls with the hippies
to family night at the club.
Connections made with the misunderstood, misfits
drunken wet kisses and meeting in the morning,
if we’re lucky.
I was always lucky.
Thank you.

Silent Earthquakes Series (inspired by Tori Amos): Jennifer Patino

Bio: Jennifer Patino is a poet who lives for books and film. She has had work featured in Door is A Jar, Half Mystic Journal, A Cornered Gurl, The Chamber Magazine, Fevers of the Mind, Free Verse Revolution Lit, and elsewhere. She lives in
Traverse City, Michigan with her husband. She is also co-creator of http://www.thejamfiles.com.
Visit her blog at http://www.thistlethoughts.com.

Spring Haze
counting on it all
coming back around
like strewn seeds

the dandelion fields
hold splendor
& the May sky speaks

she reaches for the last
bit of marrow in the twilight,
by dawn she'll be

a withered sparrow,
face kissed by moth wings,
swimming in dew drops

on the back lawn,
still inhaling
the magic of the night

before the sensation
of apathy took hold,
after the numbness returned

rinse & repeat, like seasons,
like recycled trauma,
waiting for the last

exhalation before
facing a sun beam
head on, squinting

to see oblivion
in the bottom of the bottle,
in the clear light of everything

Scarlet Keeps Bees
& Sleeps With Monarchs

The icicles were weapons. Jagged
instances imprisoning moments,
dangling reminders of
violating times.

The girl in front of me
has a raspberry swirl

for a mouth
& she invites me
into melodic mutilation
via shared earbuds.

I needed this at sixteen,
ripe from the shock of loss,
from the terror of
a transforming body,
from the sparked memories
of hotel interludes
haunting my sleep struggles.

I chased Mother’s headlights
down a glistening dead end street
& she never even glanced back.
Under the watchful eye
of a poolside muse
I bloomed & withered
too soon.

Mermaid jeans under
the pink sky, amber waves
shining, I am jealous
of their tresses &
their sundresses. Boys flaunt
their golden guns in everyone’s
direction but mine until one
clings to my back
& never leaves.

I didn’t invite this vampire in,
but he drains me to this day.
I am always rejuvenated by Pele.
A touch can be fire. A kiss
can feel like ice. I melted away
into a thousand oceans. I woke
up as a trembling lizard &
I’m still crawling my way back
from the volcano’s edge.

                                    the whitecoats never left the room

They hide in the corners to drag
me away the next time I feel
too much when I hear
a piano played. I don’t know
whose girl I am anymore
but they’ll let me know
once I’m primed.

Nothing but meat
mistaken for a blood rose.
A light princess weighed down
by neglect. A shaded siren
spoon-feeds me cornflakes
while I create my own
rabbit holes to burrow into.
I carry all the keys around
my neck but I have always
had trouble locating
the locks.

The choir girl saves me.
She sings to my veins.
Her screams silence
Father Lucifer & force me
to fill a dancing girl’s
ragged ballet flats. She slips
an escapeway to the clouds
on my tongue & I succumb
to her beautiful air.

These little earthquakes
reinforce my fractured stability.
I must crumble before
I come to.
Yes, Anastasia, I will be
brave. I will embark
on my journey
through the orbit
of truth.

From Venus to Little Amsterdam
& always back to you.

Mermaid Voices from A.M.Hayden inspired by Tori Amos (the Silent Earthquakes Series)

Mandy Hayden, M.A., RYT
Poet Laureate | Sinclair Community College
Professor | Religion, Philosophy, and Humanities
Course Coordinator | Religion and Humanities
Humanities, Government and Modern Languages Department
Pronouns: she, her, hers
https://windychickenpoet.com/

Mermaid Voices (A Tori Amos poem)
by A.M. Hayden

For an atheist, she was terrified of ghosts, preferred hiding under floppy hats 
as little girl snake charmer, picking up a hissing garter on the trail to give 
it a rub against her cheek, cooing, it wants me 
to be its mommy, interrupting her own story 
about reading Virginia Woolf, who waded into the river with rocks 
weighing down her pockets to drown the voices, to wash away life
they told her she was crazy in the same tone you give 
a woman a compliment, in admiration, in objectification, in transaction
she knew to look to a woman to take care of her, to look to me
to stop her from stumbling off cliff’s edge as she danced daises 
through her garnet hair, as she ignored locals’ warnings and glided 
her backstroke in the cloudy Rio Grande, she told me she wanted a mamba 
tattooed across her belly, but feared the pain
sweet sting of infusion in her tender blushed skin, pink as a suckling piglet
told me this as she swirled her one neon sandal from her fingertips,
orphaned by the other still crevice wedged somewhere during canyon climb
every guy she knew pointed her in the direction of her own destruction
accompanied her to the edge singing sweetly to steady, to give
illusion she could not stand on her own, clove cigarette smoke and mirrors
when she was 11 her mother locked her in the bedroom closet, she told me,
she screamed inside the slatted door as her mother recited scripture
nearly choking on her duty to drive the demons out, she remembered 
her mother’s jaw trembling when she spoke in tongues, my
mother would have been the one burning the witches, she said
she always liked toast and she swore she would burn out young too 
just to spite her, her aching arms wrapped around herself,
snuffed out before she could be stripped of her beauty
and this is why I only feel air when I reach for her, she was always ether
her words echoing against canyon walls, plunging deep into ocean’s abyss
still waiting for shrilled chorus of mermaid voices to summon her again




*give me life, give me pain, give me myself again from Little Earthquakes, 1992.