Lucas Mamaril
Lydia
waking up: water in my ear & flowers in my beard
a creek dream crowded with visitors
old frenemies swarmed that well
my eyes opened to an itchy cheek
my face woke up deformed
&
my eye was smeared with sleep
a tear drizzled to the well
my ear had drowned
pollen at the roots of my beard
&
flowers on my forehead
pink ‘n red on pale
my creek drinks beer but
sore canals refuse to leak
&
i chewed gum until it turned to paste
i flicked my thumb in the canal
the wishing well still sectioned off
my ear won’t cough my ear stays drowned
Lucas Mamaril is an emerging poet from Maryland and is currently at work on a manuscript. Mamaril’s work is forthcoming in #Ranger. Lucas writes poetry because it provides a way to make intense feeling and complicated thought legible: especially around romance, yearning, loneliness, paranoia, mental health, mixed-race identity, and Lucas’s experience as a demi-pansexual ace writer. Mamaril’s tone often leans blunt and wry and is drawn to both compression and sprawl: micro-poems, longer prose-driven pieces, and work that uses typography, spacing, and form as part of the poem’s meaning. Lucas is especially interested in concepts that let the page do emotional work.