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    Onion Heart: the Selected Works of Alise Versella, Volume Two: Peel Back Your Layers
    Onion Heart: the Selected Works of Alise Versella, Volume Two: Peel Back Your Layers
    Onion Heart: the Selected Works of Alise Versella, Volume Two: Peel Back Your Layers
    Ebook141 pages1 hour

    Onion Heart: the Selected Works of Alise Versella, Volume Two: Peel Back Your Layers

    By Alise Versella

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    About this ebook

    In this second collection of poems, author Alise Versella takes to the mirror. Self reflecting on the images of herself, her world, and the person who was once a part of it. In beautiful prose she shatters the mirror and lets us read through the pieces. Undoubtedly bringing to light the very images we all wake up every morning to face.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateNov 29, 2012
    ISBN9781477283509
    Onion Heart: the Selected Works of Alise Versella, Volume Two: Peel Back Your Layers
    Author

    Alise Versella

    Born in New York and raised in New Jersey, Alise has always had a fondness for notebooks. Every trip to the drugstore with Grandpa resulted in the purchase of yet another Meade notebook. That infatuation with the crisp, clean pages of yet to be filled notebooks, and a voracious appetite for reading, grew into a desire to write poetry that would express what was in her heart. These poems are imaginative, inspirational, and thought provoking. High school and community colleges have awarded her with Teen Art Festival accolades and honor awards for creative writing two years in a row. People come and go out of our lives, but Alise believes they imprint something of themselves onto us. That impression leaves us to re-evaluate ourselves. Our reflections muddy for a moment and we must re-asses. People change us undoubtedly, but through her poems at least this young author will never lose herself.

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      Book preview

      Onion Heart - Alise Versella

      © 2012 by Alise Versella. All rights reserved.

      Cover illustration by Jackie Salemme

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 10/31/2012

      ISBN: 978-1-4772-8346-2 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4772-8227-4 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4772-8350-9 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2012921122

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      This book is printed on acid-free paper.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      CONTENTS

      Self Reflection

      Wants: Part Two

      Deformation

      Trapped

      Wandering Girl

      The Things I’ve Built

      Whole

      Fade to Black

      The Root of the Problem

      The Sincerest Form of Flattery

      Winter Face

      Exhaled Light

      Speechless

      Leaving Home

      Show Yourself

      Transfiguration

      La Boheme

      Apocalypse

      Forgotten City

      Dreamers Weep

      Throw Caution to the Wind

      Eternal Dreamland

      In Dreaming, Slumber

      Artisans

      Alien

      In Ounces

      Death of Light

      Under the Tents at Bryant Park

      Polite Society

      Poems for J.

      Perfect Autumn Day

      Creatures of Rag and Bone

      La Vie en Rose

      Mannequins

      Rigor Mortis

      Photographs

      Present Tense

      Magic Can’t Fix You

      Seasonal

      At Dusk

      A Sudden Downpour of Memories

      Miserable Me

      The Best Months are fleeting

      Mornings are the Worst Part

      Coffee Pot Melancholy

      In Conversations

      Sticks and Stones Lover

      Mirrors worth Breaking

      I Beg You to Lie

      Starve a Fever, Feed a Cold

      Light Footed

      Departure

      Everything but . . .

      Love Revisited

      Love like Arts and Crafts

      You’re Like Peter Cottontail and I Don’t Want You in My Garden

      Garden Green

      Love Eclipsed

      In Just Spring

      Above All I’m Forgiving

      August Lover

      The Ills of Fall

      Octopus

      Ariel

      Beastly

      Bookend Memories

      Zombie Hearts are Always Resurrected

      Farming

      How’d You Get So Happy with Your Big, Subtle Nothing?

      Olympiad

      The Demise of a Muse

      Senility Trees

      In the Bark of a Redwood Tree

      For Sisters

      For S.L.V

      Birdlike

      Blood Sisters

      Frankenstein’s Hospital Bed

      Live for Discoveries

      Poems for Witch Babies

      Witch Baby

      Mother Earth

      Demeter

      The Pierces

      Body Makeup

      Free of Form

      Anatomy 101

      A. Nervosa

      Vegetable Garden

      Layers

      Construction on the Internal Tracks

      Persephone Searching

      About Face

      Spirituality

      The River

      Out of Nature’s Quiet Nights

      Bodhisattva

      Zephyr

      Self Reflection

      Wants: Part Two

      Everybody wants to claim something as their own. People paint their skin with ink to claim the landmass of their own flesh, they raise that flag that says this is mine, and you can only enter if I invite you in. The raging storms inside our hearts are the waters only our vessel can brave—you have to own at least your own heart before you start claiming other possessions . . . I never wanted very much, material things only last for as long as they hold one’s interest. I wanted to see the world, travel to little hole-in-the-wall places, I wanted to meet new faces, people who didn’t know me, couldn’t judge me based on the preconceived notions of their peers. I wanted my words to fly across the pages of everybody’s morning newspaper, I wanted to be heard, but no one listens to the voices of youth. The youth of America is wasted. I’m still young but I feel it, the wasting. Something keeps me held back and I’d like to think it’s not fear for what’s fear but lack of strength? The strong don’t fear much. The ones who have the muscle, the money, or the power, or simply have that desperate determination to have more than what they were given, no, those people don’t fear much at all. Where did my strength go, my dreams and the innocence of youth; that wild rebellion that makes the elderly shake their canes while we shake up the system? Where did wanting go because I desperately want it to come back. When you have nothing left to want you sit and grow content with what you have . . . I don’t know what I want anymore . . . but growing content with the nothing I have is absolutely not an option.

      I yearn for independence, freedom . . . to make my mark; leave a stain on the manicured lawns and white picket fences of suburban America, I want to make a mess just because I can and no one can tell me no anymore . . . I want to make my own mistakes because life is so dull without them. I need to walk on the very edge of the ledges you built because life has more meaning when you realize how fleeting it becomes. I want to feel a rush of adrenaline because there comes a point, very soon approaching, when no rush can ever bring

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