Serena Tome
 
Serena Tome launched an international reading series for African children to connect, learn, and participate in literary activity with students from around the world via video conferencing. She has literary work published and/or forthcoming in The Litchfield Review, Foundling Review, The Legendary, Breadcrumb Scabs, Word Riot, Calliope Nerve, Counterexample Poetics, Full of Crow, Boston Literary Magazine, The Stray Branch, and other publications. She is currently working on her first chapbook. You can find out more about Serena at www.serenatome.blogspot.com.
 

Hand Grenade (Issue 14.)

Two Poems (Issue 7.)

 

Hand Grenade (February 20, 2009. Issue 14.)

fear
bathed in camouflage
took one last breath

as an exclamation mark
was placed behind my decision
to proceed

I
closed my eyes
pretending that I was holding walnuts,
plucked from my grandmother’s tree

then, I pulled the pin,
squeezed tightly
catastrophe’s balls and released—

putrefaction subsided with the powerful
smothered blast away in the distant.

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Two Poems (July 20, 2009. Issue 7.)

Warming

the house is alive
the air smells like bacon
and burning pine
flames twirl as they
leap up the chimney
fresh flour bread waits, warming—
floorboards crackle
like fire as grandma
walks towards us
everything in the house
awake—

Healing

I cannot find the scabs
that paved
my skin

The body
relinquishes all rights
to show and tell
the story of abuse

My face wears a smile like sandals
in the summer,
so transparent,
cool,
free

Confident
like wings
of a butterfly
after
metamorphosis
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