On the pier

We changed that winter
when the leaves dried and
turned in on themselves.

The sea stays the same
standing on the shore
it is seasonless.

But then turn and see
the leafless trees scratch
complicated shapes
on an otherwise
soft sky
their upturned hands
damning and blameless.

As if they were
always this empty
as though their wigs
were a joke
in the spring.

We walked along the iron bones
of a road that wanted to grow
to the size of the horizon-

did we look back
and see the trees whipped clean?
Is that why we’re abbreviated
and the sea is complete?





Forgetting

when one day was far away now
time is played like an accordion
that does not open back out.
When I think of hills
I see a catch all picture
for all hilly things
when I try to stack these hills
in front of my eyes, I hear our words
the same sounds, sometimes
louder. That sound: water over rocks
I came here to see where we sat, from a distance
but all I see is the same feeling shaping the place.





hello tree

​you’ve been torn in a storm
but you drink like it’s a sunny day.

The back of you is charred
like steak, inside the crack
you are clean as a snake.

Dried wings
of summer’s
leaves hang
with the unflown

birds come and live on you
and weave their twigs and leave freely.

You will outlive us. The edge
edges closer each day.
Your decline is romantic.

Little lives come to you
and grow through you silently

tearing the careful pavements,
we will be still and clutching
to your roots

when you break your concrete feet
and you move move move

​


----------
Image - Stephanie Kac
https://www.flickr.com/photos/stephaniekac/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Photo by Amy Dickerson


               Laura Cantrell keeps the musical flame of the past burning brightly, weaving together both the old and the new in an almost seamless groove, songs that are both timeless and timely. Whether paying tribute to her heroine Kitty Wells or penning her own uniquely vibrant tunes such as 'All the girls are complicated,' Laura's music and career are a shining example of what it means to put artistic integrity before all else. 'Not The Tremblin' Kind,' steadfast and soulfully searching, archivist and creator, Laura Cantrell is quite simply one of the best voices and advocates for country music today.


AHC: What has this journey, this life in music been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way?

Music was definitely a presence in my family growing up, something we derived pleasure from and shared with one another in different ways. Now I've spent many years pursuing music as a profession and am also raising a daughter who, at 10 years old, is obsessed with the Beatles and is learning an instrument. I feel like I'm at one point on a continuum of a music life and I'm looking at where she is, or sometimes looking forward to my parents who, in their 70s and 80s, are still great appreciators of music. I guess my takeaway is that music weaves into your life along the way, helping you express yourself as you grow, maturing with you, helping you remember as you age. It is one of the many non-material things that can make a life rich.

AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them?

My dad was of the Grand Ole Opry radio listening generation and we always had WSM on when he was in the house, in the morning or in the car on the way to school or doing errands. I remember clearly from about the 7th grade, sitting in the car while one of my parents was in Kroger; it was evening in the spring and dusk had just fallen. George Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today" came on the radio and it still feels today like I can remember every moment of that music, there in the car, George singing the story, the king of broken hearts. I think I was susceptible to records that pulled the heartstrings, but we also listened to all kinds of music in our house -- trad jazz, classic tin pan alley, show tunes, my mom is ten years younger than my dad so when she was listening on her own, the Joan Baez and folk rock records would come out. Nashville had its country punk moment and REM was just becoming nationally known when I was in high school, there were a lot of directions this could have gone for me. 

AHC: Your release Kitty Wells Dresses: Songs Of The Queen of Country Music, is described as a meditation on femininity in country music. Could you talk about Kitty's importance in country music as a whole and her impact on you?

Kitty's importance to me comes from the juxtaposition between her personal conservatism and the groundbreaking career choices she made with her partner, artist and husband Johnnie Wright. Despite their relatively modest careers in country music and status as young people with family of three young children, they chose in the early 1950s, when Kitty had a surprise huge hit with the song "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels," to pursue her career jointly, by writing more hit songs for her that would appeal to her newly attained audience of men and women stirred by "Honky Tonk Angels' frank refutation of the idea that wanton women being the cause of men's cheating. Despite advice from industry leaders against trying to make Kitty the headliner of a concert or an artist who would release full albums, she and Johnnie decided to approach her career just as they would have if it had been Johnnie who had the sudden career momentum. That doesn't seem like a radical idea today, but as of the early 1950s it hadn't been tried in country music. Within ten years, several female artists came forward who would top Kitty's success, but every one of them in some way based their opportunity on the foundation Kitty's career laid. The other reason I love her is her early songs and many recordings she made with Owen Bradley - Kitty's voice contained a lot of emotion, but her records have a certain restraint, holding some of the feeling in, not being showy but the emotion palpable. I think that simple quality is underrated in today's landscape of acrobatic, embellished singers.  

AHC: What were your all time favorite songs to play as host of The Radio Thrift Shop? 

That is an unfair question. There are a few records that struck emotional chords for me, the Hank Penny version of "September Song" for some reason, lots of Western Swing, the sounds of Washington Phillips "Lift Him Up That's All" or Sister Rosetta Tharpe's "Strange Things Happening Every Day," many more, Porter Waggoner's "Green Green Grass of Home," so many! 

AHC: From A Prairie Home Companion to Mountain Stage to the Grand Ole Opry, the UK and more, you've played with some of the biggest performers in Americana & folk music. Which gig or performance was the most transformative for you and which musicians throughout your career have you been the most ecstatic to have met?

Opening for Elvis Costello was an amazing experience, as a performer, he's not messing around, and I learned a lot about how to present a professional show on tour with him. I still get tongue tied around Dolly Parton or Willie Nelson, some people you're just a fan no matter what you've done on your own professionally. I'm still pretty psyched to see and hear and sometimes speak to Lucinda Williams, she's just about the coolest.

AHC: What are your thoughts on 'mainstream country music', as it is today? You've spent your life working with the classics, do you think we'll ever see a return to something similar to the musical landscape of the late 80's and early 90's, a sort of songwriters renaissance within popular culture? 

Hard to know. I do think, when you go back to early 90s country, there was a lot of great song craft that isn't part of what you hear on the radio now. Songwriting is changing, the rhythms of music change, and it isn't a bad thing. What is really interesting to me at the moment is watching artists like Jason Isbell and Sturgill Simpson and Margo Price emerge from current Nashville, or someone like Kacey Musgraves from Texas. These are all young writers with clear ideas about how their music should sound, they don't seem to be driven by chasing country radio, and are making interesting music on their own terms.

AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture, hope lost and regained? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener?

I think when you stumble upon something as a writer or singer that conveys a certain emotion, it is exciting in the same way it is to hear it and respond to it as a listener. It can be very satisfying to express yourself with words and melody, and I think people respond with a similar emotional satisfaction. 

AHC: Do you have any words of advice for other musicians and singer-songwriters or anyone who is struggling to create something of value out there, who are just starting out and trying to find their voice and their way in this world? What are the kinds of things that you've told yourself when you began to have doubts or were struggling with the creative process?

Someone gave me some advice early on - "what you do every day matters" - which I took in a Malcolm Gladwell sense of "if I'm going to get credible at singing and performing, I need to get my hands on the guitar and sing every day." Even when I didn't have a gig, I took some time to make my noise and dream a few dreams that way. And eventually the voice in me that said "why would you ever get the chance to ....(fill in the blank ... like "be on the Grand Ole Opry"), gave way to another voice that said "why not?" Play a gig in England? Why not? Go on tour with Joan Baez? Why not? For me, clearing out the internal naysayer and making room for the possibility of something unknown has been part of the hardest work. You can't control where you're going to land, but if you have the faith to take the steps, plant the seeds, keep moving, even if it seems so slow that you have no momentum, it will yield something. Eventually your destination might start to take shape on the horizon, but a lot of the day to day work is done on the faith that continuing the work itself, writing the next song, booking the next gig, finishing recording etc, is worth doing.

AHC: Do you have any new projects you'd like to mention? 

I'm starting a series of shows this year called "States of Country" at the lovely Sid Gold's Request Room in NYC. First one is on January 25 at 7:30 pm, celebrating the songs of Tennessee. We'll be doing one show a month, for the most part, through June of this year. I also have a collection of music out now called "Laura Cantrell at the BBC, Performances and Recordings 2000-2005."



Visit www.lauracantrell.com/

For tickets to Laura Cantrell's "States of Country" this Wednesday (25th) visit www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2790720

Trapped

Trapped in a glass box, as the world flows by,
They don’t see my darkness, for their light hides the shadows from their eyes.
 
I stumble through the dark, light is below me,
I thirst to see it, to be swallowed up by luminous flames,
But fear my eyes will burn,
And in darkness I will be stuck, forever more.
 
I try to destroy it, so I can live free,
But the box I hate so much is all I know
And all that I inflict upon it
Strengthens the box and weakens me.
 
The light is getting brighter,
Flames warm my feet,
Now I’ve found an escape but
This path has no door or stairway,
It is a decision,
One I cannot decide if I should take
 





Pull the plug?

As water fills the tub, and steam fills the air,
With my head fills the thoughts of the power i hold.
To end my life.
And how many paths there are to take
And how much pain they would cause me
How much pain they would cause other people.
 
I tell myself, to go through with it,
That would be cowardly.
And i cant bear the thought of her,
Walking in, to see, a bathtub filled with the blood she shared with me.
 
I yank out the plug with a pop, stained water slips down the drain,
But I go on to live another day.




---------------
Image - Natasha Palazzo
https://www.flickr.com/photos/olivebrown/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/



​
Bio: Lauren Neville-Hennessy is a 17 year old girl living in Galway, Ireland.
She uses poetry as a mindscape, and as her escape.
Her struggles with depression and self harm are a common subject for her poetry, and naturally many are dark in nature.

Evasion

At four in the morning the wind blew the front door open and slammed it, over and over, against the framed picture of that church on the wall.
I left it swinging,
Walked right through the glass on the floor,
into the dark blurry street.
That was the night I found you
Under a tree coated in star light and rust.

We tumble down a hill.
Our fingers catch tree bark, rough and rigid,
Dewy leaves coating my skin like unrinsed soapsuds.
Shadows loom in the shapes of things you once held tight.
You point at the moon: "Shall we go there and never come back?"
Of course. I'd follow you anywhere.



​
---------

Image - Alicia Soltani
https://www.flickr.com/photos/aliciasoltani/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Shedding Skin
 
wriggling out of used up skin
a different  chameleon replaces the one
the cross-words had solved as lizard on a limb,       
 
new spelling for new words that seek to find the same meaning
emphasis added    pinching pressure on the last syllable to
effect  that the cliché  isn’t a cliché,
 
 
deep into the exposed vulnerability
speaking again  a voice that loves hearing its own inflections
on behalf of the beautiful  discontented segments on the graph,
 
skin change again trails of sand mounds
miniature castles
cross word puzzle needing more fields to correctly spell your name,  
 
sorting through another stack  of  what is supposed to be you but
in effect not you 
but a blending in with the peeled colors        more stacks of not-you.





Secrets Uncovered
 
Each other’s closed palms mistakenly dropped open
spilling  
hoard up, compressed  secrets
scooping up     hard to scoop up
like the harbor’s oil slick     the faster wipe
spread a much wider discoloration
the grotesque
 
to re-fit
a pandora box’s bursting
with an  ill-fitted geometrical lid
to sit back down on these unmentionable things
to pull back in a loose tongue
to cover up Machiavellian schemes
to push back criminal fingers in side  pockets
because, as with a crowbar
something     pulling    something wrenching at it
 
prying
and prying
until the outer shell cracks
naked  unrestrained   visceral  now
searching for something to hide behind
but no fig leaf
no euphemism 
no polite smile
an exposed nerve      pulsing.





Open Mic

open- mic will go on  hearing you
your thoughts  diluted undiluted
your deeds your intent
what you never intended
what is serious what is jest,
 
open- mic has no decision in your right    in your wrong
open-mic  is a sponge lying idly there
hearing everything your breathing, the shaping of your  thoughts
your deleted thoughts  your re-written thoughts
in the middle of an empty, expectant stage open-mic
open mic stands    inanimate       center-stage
chrome, metallic perforated concealed ears
listening,
 
the silence like a fishing net
to catch stuff falling
between the cup and the lip
and open-mic has somehow managed not to entangled
itself in its own lead cord that disappears
somewhere behind the hole
countersunk in the counter.  

​



Image - Pavel Voloshin
https://www.flickr.com/people/indie-man/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

Photography by Anna Demarco



                California native Jaden Larue opens up about her songwriting process and abiding inspirations, about making fear our ally rather than foe, our capacity  "to create and generate love, art, friendships and all good things in spite of the fear" and learning to know things by knowing their opposite. 


AHC: What has this journey in music, so far, been like for you, the highs and the lows, and what sort of life lessons do you feel you've picked up along the way?

Overall the journey has been truly incredible with many highs and low lows.  Choosing to live life as an artist means consciously choosing a life of uncertainty and being asked to make fear your ally rather than enemy. In learning to be with the uncertainty and having to consistently brave the unknown, I've found that life feels fuller, richer, more joyous and has more depth to it.  I guess what I'm learning every day is to make fear my friend --that the greatest suffering comes from trying to "make sense of" or "outsmart" the fear.  That the best thing I can do is to pay attention to what makes every part of me feel alive and that the more I honor and respect that part of myself, the better I am at acknowledging fear as a tool that provides forward momentum rather than something that can paralyze.  And let me tell you, it's not easy but damn, it's exhilarating to live this way.  

AHC: What first drew you to music and what was your early musical environment like growing up? Were there pivotal songs for you then that just floored you the moment you heard them?

When I was 3 my parents bought me one of those toy xylophone things.  That was the beginning of it.  They saw how much I loved it and put me in classical piano lessons immediately.  (thanks mom and dad!) I grew up in a pretty strict and conservative household for the first 14 years of my life so classical music was what I was most exposed to.  I fell in love with Chopin's Waltzes, Bach's choral pieces, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and I would lie around listening to that music getting lost in my own thoughts for hours.  When I finally started to develop my own musical tastes outside of that, I fell in love with the likes of Radiohead, T-Bone Burnett, Patsy Cline, Regina Spektor, Jon Brion, Glen Hansard and bands like Deftones and The Mars Volta. The list could go on and on.  I won't even get in to naming songs, haha. 

AHC: Do you remember the first song that you ever wrote? Or that first moment when you picked up a pen and realized that you could create whole worlds just by putting it to paper? 

YEP.  I was 15 and picked up guitar for the first time.  I can't remember exactly what possessed me to say, "Hey, today I'm going to pick up the guitar and learn a song," but I did and that was the beginning of a life of songwriting.  I'd heard "Foolish Games" by Jewel played on the piano by some kid in my high school choir class and some part of me decided to go home and learn it on the guitar that night. Keep in mind that up until that point in my life, I wasn't a fan of guitar.  I was a piano kid.  I learned the song and it came easily for me so I immediately started making up my own chords and writing songs.  I still remember the first song I wrote and every once in a while, I'll share it with a close friend.  

AHC: Which musicians have you learned the most from? Or writers, artists, filmmakers etc?

Alan Watts and everything he's ever written/spoken.  T-Bone Burnett for the way he adds rich texture to music.  Glen Hansard for the way he wears his whole heart on his sleeve and writes/performs so authentically.  Chopin for the way he infused every note of music with such beautiful emotion.  ALL the romantic black & white movies of the 1930's and 1940's.  And most importantly, all of my fellow artists, songwriters, filmmakers, musicians and creatives that I call my friends.  They inspire me most of all.  

AHC: What do you think makes for a good song, as you're writing and composing, is there a sudden moment when you know you've found the right mix, that perfect angle of light, so to speak?

This is gonna sound weird but, I typically know when a song I'm writing is a good one if it makes me cry.  Doesn't matter if it's a happy or sad song or anything else on the spectrum.  If it's a good song, it hits me in an instant and I can feel it in my body and it moves me to tears.  What I look to create in my music and in the music of others is silence and space.  That's counterintuitive I know.  It's the moments where nothing is being said or played that a song is it's loudest, most truest self.  It's as if the sound in a piece of music is simply there to remind us of the beauty of silence and calm.  

AHC: Do you consider music to be a type of healing art, the perfect vehicle through which to translate a feeling, a state of rupture, hope lost and regained? Does the writing and creating of the song save you in the kinds of ways that it saves us, the listener?

Yes.  My songs save my life and enrich it while hopefully doing the same for others.  We all have the opportunity to be a "filter" of sorts.  My job is to take what is occurring in the world or happening directly to me or to those that I love --whether it be good or bad --and then to absorb it, process it, put it through my own unique, internal filter and then put it back out into the world as something that brings light to others.  We all have the opportunity to do that.  To take what life hands us and then spin it in a way that can do something good and heal others.  Many great artists have done that for me and I hope that I can do the same for others.  Bring me your highs and lows, best day or worst tragedy, and I promise you we can spin it into something that inspires others instead of adding more weight to the world.  

AHC: What are your fondest musical memories? In your house? In your neighborhood or town? On-tour, on-the-road?

I have so many but I'd have to say writing music with friends is taking the cake these days.  Seeing a symphony orchestra.  Sitting in the passenger seat of the car writing a song about that very moment in time while laughing my ass off with friends. All the little moments add up to make for a very rich, musical life. :)  

AHC: With the traditional ways that we listen to music rapidly changing, does it affect how you write and put together an album? Too often people are downloading and engaging with singular songs rather than albums as on ordered and thematic canvas, do you regret that your work may not be received in the way it was intended or created?

Lately I'm writing and recording from a more song-based approach.  Two reasons:  one being that it's cheaper to do it song-by-song and the other because I find it more fulfilling creatively.  When I write a song I ask, "what production does this song deserve and need?"  As opposed to, "how can I produce this in a way where it will fit as a package with the others?"  Of course, as I write and record I find that some naturally package nicely together and with those, I"ll release EP's.  The song based approach allows me to jump genres a bit.  I have the gritty Americana song I'm working on, the trip hop one, the anthemic, orchestral piece, the indie-folk singer-songwriter one, etc.  

AHC: When you set out to write an album of songs, how much does 'where the world is' in its current moment, culturally, politically, otherwise, influence the kinds of stories you set out to tell?

"Where the world is" filters into everything I do whether I realize it or not.  As I've gotten older, I've been finding that I'm much more tied into current events and have more of myself invested in writing songs that reflect the times.  Overall, regardless of what I'm feeling or what the song's message is, one thing I will never change is the way I infuse everything I do with an underlying tone of hopefulness, longingness and love.  

AHC: Do you have any words of advice for other musicians and singer-songwriters or anyone who is struggling to create something of value out there, who are just starting out and trying to find their voice and their way in this world? What are the kinds of things that you tell yourself when you begin to have doubts or are struggling with the creative process?

My entire life is one of doubt and struggle.  What changes is our ability to be more graceful in how we react to the doubt and struggle.  I suppose the only advice I can offer is:  get comfortable with the notion that the doubt and fear are never going to go away.  Remember that your magical power lies in your ability to create and generate love, art, friendships and all good things in spite of the fear.  I once read that to truly know something, you have to know its opposite.  To know creative fulfillment, love, happiness, etc., you must first know its opposite. So make friends with the opposite so you can make better love to the good things to come.  Oh...and in life...my general rule of thumb in all things:  if it's not a 100% yes, it's a no.  

AHC: Do you have any new projects you'd like to mention?

I'm working on a series of singles and an EP to be released this year.  To be in-the-know about all future shows, visit my website and sign up for the mailing list at  www.jadenlarue.com.  Oh, and guess what!?  ALL of my music is available for free download, here:  noisetrade.com/jadenlarue

​Pussy Riot

Did you hear about
the poet from
Myanmar
who asserted he got
U Thein Sein
(the president then)
inscribed upon his manhood?
He got six months for that
indiscretion. If only I was so

well endowed, such a brazen canvas, no doubt,
would make my father proud. I
don’t believe I'd like to see your face on my …

wherever
The bracing ingénue might break
the existential tundra
and I might find myself receiving

four years or even longer.

​




​Fluorescent

You see them around you, sun-bedding in the evening glow of their screens.

Walking back from the tea room, the water that is always hot, the tea bag that drowns for the second and last time.

Through the monitor stands in a corridor of necks.

Think.

              What will I do with all these emails?

Stuffing handover notes into the rigid folder that’s battleship grey. Ring Binders rattling empty on shelves, languishing like Soviet apartment blocks.

More notes, copious notes, for the man who will be doing your job. Your  job. Millions of tiny bullet points, Post-its waving from files. Fractals of yourself, reduced to paper. Reducing the irreducible self.

              Don't worry, I'll be able to understand them,Don’t worry, he laughs.

Someone else jokes about awkward goodbye hugs. You don’t. Embrace. Clutching that card with the clumsy expressions. You’ve done it yourself, more notes. Does it come true if you write it again and again? Does it matter if I don't remember your name? Reading handwriting searching for meaning, when you’re not the one holding the
pen. You hold the flowers bulging at their life-source end. Someone offers you a jug

Those emails that float upwards like feathers. Those lights ...

how home can be a passing phase, how we sit to feel safe. Sitting around you now, those faces in the sallow lights, and it’s evening outside. Setting like the nascent self. I think I will miss them, sitting around the split-open chip packets, but wonder will I miss my life? If I walked out, holding my box of desktop photos, climbed onto the train that glides, away and something breaks. And as you face those empty faces, know that Nothing waits, nothing but the end of the train as you walk

              through its corridors, and turn the lights off one last time.


​

-------

Image - deepbreaths
www.flickr.com/photos/breaths/
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

 Bio: Jo-Ella Sarich has worked as a lawyer for a number of years, and has recently started writing again after a rather long hiatus. Her poetry has appeared in Tuck Magazine and The Galway Review, and will be appearing in the upcoming Poetry New Zealand Yearbook 2017. http://mysticalfirenight.tumblr.com/


​

Potus

potus
poultice
poultry
poetry
podcast
pomegranate
pornography
porridge
pork
only
one
of
the
above
is
a
lethal
weapon
when
given
to
a
fool.

​



Trumputin (a romance)

Don loves Vlad
Vlad loves Don
Love as big as
A nuclear bomb.
 
Front door, back door,
Kremlin, tower
Nuclear love
Nuclear power.

​




When the Twittering Stops

​it’s all fun
and games ’til
the body
bags come home.

​




Post-Election Rag

(Walk that back
walk that back
I know I said it
but I walked that back.)
 
Attack dog surrogates
inveterate invertebrates
re-stock the swamp
with old white males.
 
Post logic, post truth
snake oil and kool-aid
re-stock the swamp
with old white males.
 
Post Obamacare,
post pussy-gate,
post gator aid,
re-stock the swamp
with old white males
 
Inveterate surrogates
attack dog invertebrates
re-mail the stock
to the old white swamp
 
re-stock the swamp
with old white males.

​
​

Bio:  Jim was born in Dublin and has lived in Vancouver since 1979. He has a degree in Chemical Engineering from UCD. His wife and two daughters complain if they are not mentioned in bio’s, so he would like to thank all three of them for their support.
​
​He has published previously in Cyphers (Ireland) ,The sHop (Ireland) ,  In-Flight Literary
Magazine, Oddball Magazine and others. He blogs at
https://stopdraggingthepanda.wordpress.com.

Jim also writes lyrics for "The Mitchell Feeney Project" (album, "Crossing Lines", available on iTunes)

Bio: Jenny Galipo is a multidisciplinary artist surviving in San Francisco and Los Angeles. She has done projects for city art walks and in multiple performance art spaces among collaborating artists, where she fostered the raw parallels between the play of action and the act of creation. She tried really hard to finish her B.A. in Art History from San Francisco State University, but has been more rewarded doing social work in the arts with artists with developmental disabilities. With writing, she tries to capture fragments of life. 

Ten Women

Ten women on what their vaginas would say to Donald Trump if trapped in an elevator with him.

1. “Hello, you little orange troll.”

2. “Aren’t you that guy from Home Alone 2?”

3. “I wish you were Michelle.”

4. “I wish you were anyone else, including a giant goldfish.”

5. “By the way, I’ve always been great.”

6. “Hands off my twat.”

7. “The only convenient thing about this situation is that I have to urinate…”

8. “You’re fired.”

9. “You. Will. Never. Get. Your. Hands. On. Me.”

10. “I am the future. I am the past. I am a blooming bounty of power, compassion, and humanity. I am the definition of life. I grab back. I fight back. I meow back. I scream back. I take space back. And I will never, ever, go back.”

​
​

Bio: Allyson's pantry describes her as a lovely, ferocious, and usually hungry writer.  She writes nonfiction essays about sex, relationships, anxiety, and other life altering matters, such as brain tumors and the underrated act of crying on the floor. She strives to connect others with words because she wants people to feel less alone. 

Her work has been published in Red Light Lit, Thought Catalog, xoJane, Writtalin, and Zaum.