Author: lisahartsgrove

I am daughter, born out of love and betrayal,
a mix that could have been fatal
but instead it enabled
my life to be.
Me: her, she.

I am woman, born into the sisterhood of humanity.
I still have my individuality
but I share the brutality
of this existence.
I am persistence.

I am bisexual, a lover of souls.
I don’t care for arbitrary gender roles.

I am artist, I make the intangible tangible.
I pull floaty ideas into something more understandable.
I never have an expectation,
just sit down and have a conversation
with my imagination
until the art emerges.
My muse urges.

Sisterhood, speak up. Our words are our weapons.
We’ve been fighting too long against gender misconceptions.
There are lessons
from our oppressions.
I understand our aggressions
but we must be the exceptions.
An eye for an eye makes the world blind.
So we fight with our hive mind.

I am daughter, I am woman, I am lover, I am maker.
I don’t let the Earth shake me—I am Earth shaker.

As published by Spillwords Press, fall 2023

All my life I’ve collected things:
shells, rocks, color-changing mood rings.
I’ve collected feathers. I’ve collected beads.
In springs & summers, I’ve collected seeds.
I’ve collected shoes. I’ve collected hats.
I’ve collected coins. I’ve collected cats.
I’ve collected photos. I’ve collected art.
One could argue I’ve collected hearts.
I’ve collected whiskers from my cat.
And I’ve collected other stuff like that.
Like all the collars, leashes, and tags:
memories of purrs and wags.
But the hardest part of having stuff
is knowing when enough is enough.
It’s not the easiest to clean
when you own so much of everything.
So, you know, I think, upon reflection,
I might just start a dust collection.

As published by Spillwords Press, spring 2024

We may be made of pixels,
but before he leaves for work,
he leans over my still sleeping body
and touches his lips to my forehead.

If this world were Disney,
he would be what wakes me up.
But I must be in a different realm
because I stay asleep,
dreaming in a dream
of kisses I don’t know
I’m already under.

In this reality
he heads into seamless sunrise
while I wake to Dog
nosing herself under my head,
burrowing into my body like blanket,
a different kind of kiss, too many.

Cat weaves
in
and
out
of each step.
The three of us move as one.
Dog impatiently sits. Cat meows.
Wet food plops. Hard food clinks.
Mouths crunch.
Coffee percolates.
I sit at home office
in my pajamas
wearing an engagement ring.

If this a video game,
I get all the coins.

I feel like a princess—
how nature sings in step with me
and I have my own prince.

But this is not Mario Brothers
Here, I only get
one life.
Here,

I haven’t even showered yet.
Still I feel like I’ve been standing
in the rain.
Maybe I have?

Later, in the car,
he takes one hand off the steering wheel
and places it on my leg.
I place my hand over his
and feel something
deep
in my ribs.

I used to want to unzip the sky.
But what’s real is what’s real
where it’s felt.

I’ve never not felt what I feel
when I am awake.
And when I’m sleeping,
I dream of feeling.

I want to nose under this blanket, like Dog.
I want to Cat into each gigabyte.
Weave this reality shut.

I don’t want the red pill anymore.
I like it here too much.

As published by Discretionary Love, September 2024

The sky is made of the same stuff I am made of 
but it takes up a lot more space. Or less. 

Is space a part of the sky? Is the sky in space?

How much of the sky can be contained 
while the rest of it remains? 

My hands are made of stardust, too.

The sky holds the thing that made it. 

The sky has hands that I can’t hold, 
but I can hold the sky in my hands. 

I can hold the thing that made me. 

Once, I loved an air sign. 
She ignited my fire, 
but together too long, we became explosive.

The sky needs fire to erupt. 
And fire needs the sky 
like earth needs to shoot it’s hot insides out—
all at once, then not at all.

I love an earth sign, now. 
He keeps me tampered, 
just enough to warm the hands of the sky 
without burning anything else.

But all of us come from space, 
take up space, 
look for space between us, 

when really the only space there is 
is the space within us. 

As published by Moonflake Press’ Astroflakes Volume 3, December 2024

I’m afraid of fear so it’s hard to say when I’m afraid because I’m afraid of naming the fear at all. My mom says not to name something unless you want to keep it. Names build attachment. Mostly she meant this in the context of all of the stray cats I kept bringing home and the cat limit that she imposed on our house. (It was two but I eventually talked her into three and at one point there were four.) So I say I’m not afraid of anything while fear tickles the back of my throat, scratching for significance, trying to scream itself out of my shadows and into the light. I think fear sees the way I constantly name the cats. I think fear fears that I will never name it. But I’d rather talk about the cats—protectors of the underworld. Cats combat the fear. I’d rather have cats scratching at me than terror; I could never fear a cat. It’s largely possible that death will befall me in the form of a large and dangerous feline, because I can’t see the danger between their whiskers, much like I can’t name my fear. It’s a dream of mine to someday lay in the arms of a lion. I don’t think about death because when I do it always comes with fear by its side. Actually, I think about death all too often, I just don’t name it. I think about a lot of things that I don’t want to name because I don’t want to keep them. Death will come when it comes and I want to find it the way I’ve found every cat—not looking for them, not running from them, just accepting them with open arms. If everything in life came like a cat then there would be no fear left to name. There might even be world peace, if not for a few things constantly being knocked over. Maybe I should name my fear Feline. Maybe if I call it Cat, it will transform into one, and then there will be no fear left at all. 

As published by Honeyguide Literary Magazine, November 2024

I want to be between your teeth, 
not lodged in your throat. 
I want to be on the edge of swallow, 
where life stretches 
into simple shapes and colors. 
There’s a dropoff before the void. 
I want to stand on that cliff, 
where evening amplifies the rainbows 
hidden in the clouds, 
where stars are just whispers.
Between day and night 
there is an answer 
or a question
or something that holds me 
just long enough to make me feel held. 
If this is a simulation, 
that is the moment our realities 
kaleidoscope, 
just long enough for blink, 
for breath, 
before dipping into darkness. 
The chew before the gulp. 
Don’t devour me; 
savor me.
Hold me in your mouth 
so I can see out.

As published in Moonstone Arts Center’s 28th annual Poetry Ink anthology, September 2024

He’s saying something. I pretend to be listening. I want to be listening for real but my ears aren’t fully working. Still, I look his way. I nod. I catch enough to know the topic is about a video game he’s been playing and something about frustrating glitches. I want to care. He’s not a writer but he listens when I share my stories. Most of the time. I want to do the same for him. But I keep getting lost in magnolia fields. Wondering if they remember the feeling of ancient beetles, if they miss the dinosaurs. Wondering if they, too, half listen as they think about distant realities. Wondering if they think at all. And then I’m imagining myself a flower, budding open into jurassic times. Can we be related to trees? Could my ancestor’s ancestor have been piston and stem? He asks a question that pulls me back for a moment enough to respond: “Hmm?” He says it again and it’s something about whether the games I play do that, too. I don’t catch what that is. I don’t play games like his. I design imaginary rooms with real furniture and I connect colors back into their spectrums. I play relaxing games while he goes to war. Now I’m thinking about him at war and each word that shoots from his mouth becomes a bullet or blood and I really want to listen but I can’t face the idea that any word could be his last. Did I even answer the question? Have I become the question myself? I interrupt him by opening my arms and wrapping myself around him like a blanket. He doesn’t question me. He is never the question. He folds himself over my folding into him and we become parentheses for all of the in-between thoughts we hold until they drop so we can better hold ourselves.

As published by Garden of Neuro publishing in A Safe and Brave Space Vol. 3, summer 2024

When we first met, you were as empty as me
and I loved you for it. (We could start over together.)

Still, there were fragments—
hair from an animal I’d never met, walls from people I wish I hadn’t—
but we vacuumed and scrubbed until your walls replaced mine.

It wasn’t long before I woke up and thought home. 

You were broken, same as me.
Your crooked doors, sinking foundation: my metaphors.
But we fixed our reflections.
So when the mice came through, 
I named each one 
before moving them to places of their own.

When it came time for me to leave, I didn’t. Not really. 
You named me the way I named the mice. 
So I could always find my way back.

As published by Garden of Neuro publishing in A Safe and Brave Space Vol. 3, summer 2024

Sometimes I call my split ends “dead ends,”
but really all visible hair is dead; 
it’s the root that’s still buried inside that lives. 
We carry dead hair and dead skin 
and wear clothes made of dead animals 
and yet our biggest fear is death. 
We are covered in what we run from. 
We run from what we cannot escape. 
Life is just one big dead end, 
a journey that always lands in the same place 
or no place. 
All journeys, no matter how different, 
end in the same unknown. 
Life is a sentence 
with a question mark 
never answered until… 

I’m trying to make death my friend. 
I don’t want to live a life in fear of what happens 
when I’m no longer living it. 
Because someday I will no longer be living it. 
So many of my loved ones now have the answer
I can’t know until I join them. 
And someday I will join them 
so someday I will know. 
And I don’t want to fear that day anymore.
I want to think wherever they are 
isn’t something to run from. 
I want to think that when death comes for me 
it will come wearing a wedding dress 
and promise me an eternity 
of love, or something like it. 
Hold out my past cats purring into the ether.
Grandpa, with both of his wives, 
unliving both of his lives.
David beside him, Aunt Marianne… 
I’d like to think the death that shrouds me
is less like a shadow and more like a blanket or a towel:
something to keep me safe while I travel, 
waiting for me like a bed at the end of the day. 
Something that reminds me that death 
never really leaves the living—
all the pieces of us that shed and fall 
don’t fall away.
Death doesn’t mean disappear.
Death stays.

As published by Red Wolf Periodical, fall 2023