Dark Love – Poetry by Gabriela Marie Milton

green, you smell with your tongue
your thoughts pollinate mine
your fingers endanger the sailors
a water which opens its lips and drinks them
ah, hour of man
when did you become the hour of horrors?
a book cover reads: Dictionary of Superstitions
I see the girl who tears out the heart of the pigeon
white feathers and blood spasm under the moon
the man she loves will marry her
in the street of the tall Cyprus trees and small mandarins
we meet
you give me a pigeon blood ruby
superstition,
I think of dying
dying without you knowing me
I touch with my cheeks the walls that you touched
adrenalized you think of me
your skin calls my name

love
dark love
with pins in his heart the pigeon still flies

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About the Poet

Gabriela Mare Milton (pen name) is the author of the poetry collection Passions: Love Poems and Other Writings (Vita Brevis, 2020). Gabriela also authored three novels. Under the name Gabriela M, she was awarded Author of the Year at Spillwords Press (2019) and her poetry was featured by Spillwords Press, Vita Brevis, Indian Periodical, Gioielli Rubati Poetry (translated in Italian by Flavio Almerighi), Tuck Magazine, KashmirPen, “Heretics, Lovers, and Madmen,” LiteraryYard, Proletaria, Free Verse Revolution, and other venues. Gabriela was selected “Author of the Month” at Spillwords (April 2019). Her poem “The Breath of Love and Death” was voted “Publication of the Month” at Spillwords (November, 2019). Gabriela’s work was included in the following anthologies: America’s Emerging Poets Southeast Region (Z Publishing House, 2018); Florida’s Best Emerging Poets (Z Publishing House, 2019); and Pain & Renewal (Vita Brevis Press, 2020). She blogs at shortprose.blog.

“With lush language and lavish imagery, Gabriela M. evokes a fantastic world ripe with emotion.” Christina Schwarz, New York Times Bestselling Author.

Gabriela Marie Milton’s book “transports us on a journey of love as much as it delivers us a thematically diverse set of emotions. This is a superb collection.” Bobbie Peyton, San Francisco Book Review.

For the first time in nearly five years, Vita Brevis is closed for submission. Read the full story here.