3/28/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Julia Bortolussi DieselDemon CC
Walking into the night Imagine you walk into a kink club / you feel the night on you / but when you walk in / the hand on your back does not guide you into skin / but into the spoken word / imagine you walk into a kink club / and you forget it is so / regalia on the wall / batons posed like awards and homey photographs / of an inner life, a history / this is the pride of the place / yet you stumble / imagine you walk into a kink club / and don’t want kink at all / at least not the one that makes contact, breaking a visible layer / you needn’t say you’re not up for it / you just want to be / but they nod, yes / you can exist here / feel the waves of connection break the broken bonds inside / think about being with somebody / even chastely / but still they ask: your boundaries, bondage? baby, do you want this new trick i learned? / the first sounds the best / but their grin doesn’t falter / you haven’t even been touched yet / but you feel held / imagine walking into a kink club / and finding what you’ve been denied Julia Bortolussi was the founding Head of Design for IntroSPECtion in addition to producing regular contributions. Her work has been published in Serendipity, Messy Misfits Club Zine, All My Relations, and en*gendered, with work forthcoming in Snowflake Magazine and B222 Journal. She is in her fourth year of Creative Writing & Publishing at Sheridan College.
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3/28/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Hilary Brown Bill Tyne CC
Entreaty Please understand, I have helped to plan my parents' funerals though they are both alive. Please understand, I was named for an orphan in a mystery and my mother said most of us become orphans anyway (I remember how she turned her face to my father’s shoulder when she told us her mother had died). Please understand, I’ve been writing my last wishes on gum wrappers Please understand, I cannot imagine when I’m the orphan of a mystery with no shoulder to turn my face to. The idea fills my throat with pennies so I turn the page on that thought. Please understand, I’ve been dropping the clues to my own death like breadcrumbs to be eaten by the birds. Please understand, I call my mother every day so she knows I’m still here and we silently go about our tasks connected. by 5G till one of us hangs up. Please understand, time pauses between us, I’m using it to disguise my insomnia. Please understand, my mother is 2000 miles away and I need a mother today. Please understand, I made her promise she would never die. Please understand, I made myself believe her. Cancer It is a family gift. We are gardens. Our bodies grow blossoms for surgeons to trim or poisons to beat back. Our skin our breasts our brains our bones our limbs. Surgeons trim our branches, deadhead our roses before we bring ourselves inside for winter. We go on. The blossoms spread their pollen through the summer. Nothing lasts forever. Hilary Brown is an award-winning poet and queer disability rights advocate in Chicago. Their chapbook, When She Woke She Was an Open Field (2017), is available from Headmistress Press. Other work can be found in Queerly, APT, The South Carolina Review, The Ocotillo Review, Still Living the Edges: a Disabled Women's Reader, and elsewhere. They have enjoyed the opportunities and education that have come with being a 2022 Zoeglossia Fellow. 3/28/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Amy DeBellis Dave Cowley CC
Vesuvius Pulse I think that if I kissed you, it would taste like rust or moss. Something that forms when no one is looking. You teach me how to load a gun, how to hunt duck and rabbits and quaking deer, but I long for something larger, I dream of bears, boars, bison: bodies colossal pierced and falling to earth. In the evening the fields turn leaden gray like my parents. My father dying sunk full of silver morphine. No deer here, only a neighbor’s cat slinking through wheat thinking herself unseen. I watch us watching her, everything the color of ghosts. Everything with a heart fair game. Soon the woods will turn murky and raucous with dark. You smile, a trap twisting shut. Amy DeBellis is from NYC and has had a poetry collection published by Thought Catalog Books. Her debut novel is forthcoming from CLASH Books. 3/28/2023 1 Comment Poetry By Stephanie K. Merrill Thomas Wensing CC
The Great White Heron stands to the nth power begging me to pay tribute to the duendes dancing her feet wet with the baptism of shallow water sparkling in the arroyo offering her holy white to the world me wanting to rest in the eloquent silence of the morning blessing the largeness of this present tense so staggering. I remember packing my baggage to get to my mother in time for her dying the suitcase so heavy I knew I would have to rely on the kindness of strangers to help lift it into the overhead bins of the airplane. I missed you and isn’t it something how Mother you are still right here and I am still right here both of us now gathering at these wetlands and even though you had given up trying to find me and even though I celebrated your great egret of flight I will always regret my lateness. Mourning Comes Loneliness is breakfast in a dead love’s house on the morning of their burial. Even making the coffee is a solemn ceremony, a preparation for the silent days to come. Before you died I always loved a good funeral filled with the gravitas & the remembrances of a life fully lived-- so unlike a wedding with its fluff lacking all the tendrils of the dark. After you shot yourself I slept for a year. Last night the coyotes woke me screaming in the distance & by morning I knew that one of the deer living in our greenbelt was dead. Today I stand on the patio shrouded in the live oaks of summer & I see your old blue Buick rising in the Eastern sky. Stephanie K. Merrill (she / her) has poems published in The Rise Up Review, Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, UCity Review, Moist Poetry Journal, Amethyst Review, Dear Poetry Journal, One Art, Sage Cigarettes, and elsewhere. Stephanie K. Merrill is a Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Austin, Texas. 3/28/2023 0 Comments Poetry By MC Barnes Michael Cory CC
An Untouched Cake Sits On My Fire Escape My throat is closing up. I sit on my fire escape and wait for the ticking to slow down. We are too similar, I am also not a good man. I stole my sisters diary from underneath her beanbag when I was seven; I confessed at my first reconciliation. The Priest gave me five Hail Mary’s and an ever-evolving need for praise. In this world we’re not allowed to have our cake and eat it too. I didn’t want a bite, so I threw the whole damn thing out. When I heave only bile comes up. I fear I am becoming a redundant person; I fear I am a redundant person; I fear being redundant. I would disappear if I could, but I’ve heard it’s difficult to get nicotine stains out of wallpaper. I have fifteen umbrellas stacked by my door, I straighten my collection before walking out. All rooftops offer a choice. It’s a fucking party, people have fun at those right? Teach me the secret to being good, I can tuck myself in. I do not know how to write about JOY I scream into my phone and send to the woman who knows me. She responds That is not funny, but I laughed. And then I laughed too. Write about when the city meets summer air or the really good waffle fries or even turning that last page. Pick one and crystallize sitting in an empty fountain, warm off shitty vodka. Getting off work and going straight home. Finally buying a picture frame that fits and hanging it right above your bed. The nights where no one showed up so we brought out Jenga instead. A drinking game for two. The right pair of gloves for a New York winter. A call from your Dad. Try something that is decidedly un-joyful and remember the burn. Like waking up in his bed or the party where you chainsmoked out a classmates window and cried in the car home. Do not write about leaves falling or babies smiling. Erase the lovers that do not exist, the ones you made up. Name the simple. That can be your joy. My Mother and I Have A Secret Language Last week I rewatched Steel Magnolias and made a note to call my mom. The first time we watched it together it was snowing. I was fifteen and I started sobbing when Julia Roberts got married and didn’t stop till the credits rolled. I cried at everything back then. When I was twelve a doctor told me I might never be able to have kids. I cried in the lobby while my mom chewed her out. Then she grabbed my hand and let me skip school. We started every morning for a decade with a smile and a pill. Autoimmune diseases are a bitch. That’s why my mom and I can have such bad tempers, we’re so angry at our bodies that it has to spill out somewhere. Occasionally I think it has to mean something that I was the only daughter to inherit; other times I think we were just born to be unlucky together. Now we have a made-up language all to ourselves; we ask are the T4 levels alright? How about your TSH? I try to pretend we’re Tolkien compiling enough research to make our own brand of Elvish. Are diseases thicker than blood? Your medication is not optional. We live over one hundred miles apart, but I call her after my appointments to gab in our secret code. I pretend the people I walk past on the street aren’t listening. Most of the time I pray they are and that they feel left out. MaryCharlotte “MC” Barnes is a New York based student who got tired of people shortening her name, so she did it herself. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in HAD, Bending Genres, and Moot Point. You can find her on Twitter @mc_barnes_ 3/28/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Christopher Phelps Maxwell GS CC
Afterimage Stars in the sky bright enough to leave a mark in the darkest parts of the country, how is hatred possible? Hatred, so man-made churlish, so properly dispirited, why does it thrive here? For a few years I had a theory: wretches identify with wretchedness, feeling better to believe a god’s knowing better than we did meant those stars are God’s creation, exclamation! The problem was I wanted to give them that. Let them have their twisted faith and eat it, too. I was ready to be eaten, moth, hole by hole, until I wasn’t-- until I had enough left to want. Today I saw an old woman mowing her lawn in a florid heat. I thought about stopping from my run to offer her some help. But this yard, not so long ago, had had a sign that told me where to put my love. While still moving I paused in that memory. As the chords slowed, I plucked a thick ingrown twig from my face. I imagined leaving it in her eye. I waved, anyway, and her smile said at least her hatred isn’t proper; isn’t all-consuming. As it usually goes, in fits and starts we forget the stars are beyond consistent, beyond even gravity if sufficient mass wants back in on itself. Like pride’s famous fall, edges’ double vision. Something we could call, I guess, forgiveness. Christopher Phelps is a queer, neurodivergent poet living in Santa Fe where he teaches math, creative problem-solving, and letteral arts. He is searching for others who think poetry can be equal parts vulnerable and subversive communication. His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Queerly, Palette Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Nation. More information, personal projects, and a complete publication list can be found at www.christopher-phelps.com. 3/28/2023 2 Comments Poetry By Jessica Nirvana Ram Maxwell GS CC
enroute every red light is a god / what I mean is / there’s a reason I’m always early / I plan for delays / for divine intervention trying to keep me away from tragedy / what I mean is / once / we were going to the King’s Buffet for dinner / & my youngest brother distracted us / kept us from leaving home when we were supposed to leave home / & when we finally made it to the restaurant / a truck had driven through the back of the building / something about a seizure / or maybe sleeping / the point is / had we been fifteen minutes earlier / we would have been in the building / enveloped in chaos / & my mother in the parking lot / looks at my brother / who must have been eight at the time / reaches down & hugs him / thanks him / for saving us / & I think about Ganesh / how some call him the remover of obstacles / how he is also the placer of obstacles / how sometimes we need something in our path / to lead us to the right destination / & so when my car battery dies / I think / someone wants me to stay put / & once / there was a snowstorm coming in / & my father tried to get me to stay home for one more day / but I was stubborn / & persistent / & underestimated nature / so I left anyways / started the first half of my five hundred mile trek / got caught in the storm / the pileup along that stretch of I-95 in Virginia / January 2021 / the black ice paving the highway / downed trucks at every mile marker / I took an exit out of desperation / & out of sheer luck / & the goodwill of a stranger / I made it to my hotel / hungry & tired / with a half tank of gas after eleven hours on the road / the point is / even then / I still made it out / I still think someone was watching me / I try not to doubt my father’s intuition anymore / he’s always been more attuned to the world / than I have / he speaks to ghosts / & they listen / when I speak to ghosts / I’m not even sure they hear me / the truth is / there is so much I cannot control / & if I can believe god is behind it / some greater universe power / the moon even / I sleep better at night / I move through the world / lighter / like incense / I’m not saying I know there’s a god / only that they’ve come to me / on highways / when all I’m trying to do / is get home Jessica Nirvana Ram is an Indo-Guyanese poet and essayist. She is the 2022-23 Stadler Fellow in Literary Arts Administration. Jessica completed her MFA at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and received her BA from Susquehanna University. Her work–about inheritance, expectations, and radical self love–appears in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Hayden's Ferry Review, HAD, and Honey Literary, among others. Jessica is a Pushcart nominee and currently a poetry reader at Okay Donkey Mag. Find her @jessnirvanapoet on Twitter. 3/28/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Julie Alden Cullinane John Brighenti CC
Next Slaughter Our bruises from last month have not healed It feels more like a first time broken-heart Or when you kill an innocent deer on the highway Paralyzed, Please wait. Just let us process. Or was it last week? The red, deep gash has turned to white soapy paralytic skin: Blue bruises sink lower into the skin and are reabsorbed by the body Like blood clots Like placenta Like pain Pops in a parade On this fourth day of the sweetheart of summer But it is Everyday “Wait, wasn't it last month in Texas with 19 or was it 20?” I hear from the official BBQ master. Hard to keep track The violence now marks occasions, creates confusing remembrances. Too many “days of.” “Is that Chicago? Someone turn on CNN right now!” There is a big cake on the picnic on the backyard picnic table It is an American flag Red strawberry sweetness and blueberry stripes, the fruited plain Cool whip clouds and mountains' majesty There is a sparkler in each corner of the cake, lit like a birthday candle as it is presented to the masses. Children eager for it’s sweetness. I could buy an AK at the Walmart down the street if I wanted to right now. I have two abortion pills saved in my top drawer. I was supposed to take them to open my cerviz when geting my IUD out, but I preferred to feel the pain. We got a huge trunk load of fireworks this year, more than last year even though it’s illegal. We are white and the cops only show up if body parts get blown off. Pop pop pop Blasts are beautiful in the sky, the moms cover the babies' ears with their palms. Pull their stomachs in. Cover their uterus’ with full spread hands without realizing it. Don't tread on me. The dogs in the neighborhood are anxious and barking, Scratching at glass windows to get out and patrol Unsure why their world is shaking Where are the humans when the boom booms go off? No Time In between now To process We just move on to The next slaughter Gasoline Shampoo My father washed my hair in gasoline once when I was eight. Not because I had lice but because a letter came home from school saying that my whole class had been exposed to it. My father thought he was being pre-emptive against the little white invaders, but really, he was just too cheap to buy the eight-dollar lice shampoo they sold at CVS that came with the little wire comb. You could get a gallon of gas back then for less than a dollar, pocket change, or couch change we called it. There was always a red plastic gallon of gas in the garage for the lawnmower. To him, this was a genius solution. Those little suckers will never live through this! He laughs, all too pleased with himself. He laid me down prone, looking up to the sky on his newly built picnic table, the wood was still yellow and alive. My head hung off the edge like a face up guillotine. I remember my neck aching from holding steady above the red bucket on the ground beneath my head to catch the runoff for reuse. In my memory it is summer or spring because the backyard is green, and the sky is blue with cotton ball clouds. My skull was on fire, and I was dizzy from gravity, sunlight, and fumes. I remember my father’s rough, fat, calloused hands as they pressed into my scalp. After, I ran for the safety of the shower. I spent all the hot water I could trying to shampoo and re-shampoo my hair with my older sister’s strawberry Suave to get rid of the horrible smell. That week in school I had mysteriously lost a bunch of friends overnight for no reason. When I finally got up the courage to ask a girl from the neighborhood why, she said it was because I had been wearing my hair curly and that no one liked my curly hair. As I washed and rewashed my scorched, now straw-like hair, all I could hope was that maybe, if I was lucky, the gasoline would magically have taken all the curls out of my hair. Maybe it would be stick straight, silky and shiny like all the other girls at school. Then they would all be my friends again. Julie Alden Cullinane is a poet, writer, and artist from outside Boston, Massachusetts. Her artwork and poetry have been published in Stylus, Plexus, The Boston Globe, and The Graduate Review Volumes VI & VII, Chapter House and recently Red Wolf Periodical. is currently working in academia while pursuing admittance to a Ph.D. program and teaching opportunities. Besides writing, she loves being a mom to her two boys and dog and is hoping to someday escape from society and live in the woods and write. 3/28/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Nadine Koochou GörlitzPhotography CC
Ugly Poem This is not a beautiful poem. It’s about my dad killing people in the Iranian army. It’s about the Iraqi soldiers who were just as young and hungry as he was. It’s about the bombs dropped in Tehran his home each night. It’s about him visiting home and seeing half his cousins’ neighborhood in rubble. It’s about the body parts scattered amidst the rubble. It’s about him feeling safer in combat than in his own home (at least he had a gun out there). It’s about the time he got whiskey drunk at the dinner table and told us he’s buried his friends. It’s about my mom yelling at him to stop saying these things to us his fragile girls he’s scaring us. It’s about the way he hates the taste of dried lemon because the army khooroosht was full of them. It’s about the rats that crawled on his body sleeping in caves. It’s about the night he woke up next to a scorpion ready to sting. It’s about the photo I have of him holding a machine gun with his friend in a field of beige. It’s about the fact that he can still look at this photo and smile. It’s about my dad fighting a war in the name of Allah, not one he believes in but one who craves blood, wills war. It’s about my guilt that he ducked from bullets at this age when I write poems in the grass. Buta /byoo-taw/ love, in a general sense; the concept of love To live twenty years believing there was no word for love in our language: buta. Mom cooking two pots of khooroosht because dried lemon brings Dad back to war: buta. The iron in the voice of my grandmother telling me I lost too much weight: buta. My father discovering I like Chick-Fil-A, him bringing it home each week: buta. My older sister hiding while I shield her from our screaming home: buta. The language my mother invented so she could learn and tell me her heart: buta. Baking banana bread—half chocolate chip, half plain—for my respective parents: buta. The fact that I still don’t know how to say “I love you” in our tongue: buta. Gripping my necklace close and praying (God, please) for those holy words: buta. Nadine Koochou is an Assyrian writer and an English student at Santa Clara University. She believes the beauty of life is equal parts struggle and hope. As such, she often writes struggle in her mission to find hope. 3/28/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Amy Williams GörlitzPhotography CC
Susanville California, 1995 Twenty-nine cent Hamburger Tuesday, thrilling when dad was holding that white-greased bag. What mustard. What beef. What gorging hands. What church. “Watch this,” he said, ate three fries at a time. I remember thick fingers, his thick howl when I shoved fries into my small mouth. It felt so good to be getting. He built fences, my father, had rough hands. He was a prison guard, my father had slick polished shoes. Of course there was tenderness. Of course there was care. I made donuts from scratch and he said “I’m proud of you.” At the feed store he said I could have anything I ever wanted. I chose two goslings. Three pullets. Cotton babes in my grasp and I was loving their globed bodies, that dusty plume. I sat in the coop out back, watched the day sun move, watched the day hawks move. I was giving warmth, giving food. Most kids went to school on weekdays and I was making vows like I’ll never hurt you. Unconditional love. Protection love. Wire mesh in the yard love, I’d dig it with a trowel, with my own hands. This forgiveness love, bury your claws in my flesh love, tell me I’m dirt love throw a brick at my head because you’re right you’re right you’re right love I’m not expecting a thing love, not even talking back this time because (and this is true) that’s the best way to get them to love you. Amy Williams is a writer and educator based in New Delhi. Her poems have appeared in West Trade Review, Rust + Moth, Bodega Magazine, The Shore, Redivider, Sweet Tree Review and Contrary Magazine. |
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