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2/17/2020 Discussions by Bill Abbott Discussions People want to talk about mental illness now while I sit in my living room, thinking about how much easier life would be if I just didn’t exist. Not suicide, though sometimes a flash of it in the moment makes sense. But to just not exist? That sounds sublime. No more worries, no more stress. The anxiety alone. The emptiness would have to find somewhere to go. The compulsions would form up around other brains. So maybe it’s a public service to stick around, hole up, give the neuroses a place to stay instead of infecting anyone else. Let’s talk about neurodivergency, about pretending everything is normal so nobody thinks you need that sort of vacation. Making your head space take up too little reality. Making your feelings hide until they show up in the wrong places. Taking up less space until people don’t bother anymore.  Bill Abbott is the author of "Let Them Eat MoonPie," the history of poetry slam in the Southeast, and the poetry collection, "(My Life and Other) Train Wrecks of Ohio." He has been published in Ray's Road Review, Radius, The November 3rd Club, Flypaper Magazine, and The Sow's Ear. Mr. Abbott lives in Ohio and teaches creative writing at Central State University.
2/17/2020 The Logos by Shane Brant The Logos Heaven? You would bat your eyes at Death as though some lightened form Preserves against a worméd state- yet still expect to have ye flesh disposed of In an ugly stomach; and this to me is eternity, for I make no company with an identity So powerfully as flesh- 'tis all I know of me. Spirit? Flesh.  S. T. Brant is a high school teacher in Las Vegas. They have poems in La Piccioletta Barca, RIC, Cathexis Northwest Press, and forthcoming in After the Pause. You can find him on twitter @terriblebinth. He isn't photographed a lot, so this author photo is the best he could do.
2/17/2020 Poetry by Gina Lomas Piece 2 This competition will endure until the end of time After I’m long gone and she’s immortalized. Possibilities gone, fluttered into outer space. I’m the antagonist who won’t leave a trace. I’m ill-suited to be in her divine shadow Of every gold standard she set in tragedy. Bad fortune that it was her life to give. Fate she had to die and I had to live. If suffering was a will, I was the main benefactor. It’s not a contest, and I’m not the winner. She is an angel, frozen in time - I’m left here with devils, out of my mind. I’m a poor man’s version of her- Scrutinizing myself to fill an empty place. It’s misplaced - I’m led astray, I’m lost in this world - This phantom rival has left a cruel space. Piece 3 I loved you in a marijuana-induced delusion Stoked into life by an inhale of a blunt. You were my idiosyncratic belief Someone worth my conviction The devil’s lettuce made me think That you were meant for me Obsessive nature took my head an abnormal fixation on what could be. My false impression stayed with me Until it pulled me down and made me sink Scaring my loved ones away with my obsession You were the object of my psychosis Fallen prey to my dark delusions. I was out of touch, out of my mind, I scared you away, I’m not surprised. I needed to put you out. And discard the roach. Breathe clean air in. And breathe you out. Manic and spiralling; Voices telling me you’re the one. I was deciding fate. You left as a ghost, Haunted me ever since. Stayed high to keep you alive. You were as good as dead, I put down the bong and lived life instead Realized the love story was all in my head You were a desire, one that couldn’t be How could I not tell that you were not for me The only way to keep you away was to tell you I loved you So, I did And I never heard from you again, It was the smartest thing I ever did. Piece 6 I sit very distraught, looking out my bedroom window. I am smoking a joint and holding a black coffee filled to the brim. I am weeping Feeling helpless Not sure why The body has its reasons.  Gina is a poor (wo)man’s poet. She is educated in heart break, loss and grief; with achievements in degradation, shame and contempt. She has the highest accolades in mental illness diagnoses, and she is her therapist’s favourite patient (uncredited). You might recognize her from notable presentations of bathroom graffiti, intrusive thoughts, and shadows in the corner of your eye. Small-town bred, big city livin’ fat girl who has been torn apart and reassembled again a thousand times over.
2/17/2020 Poetry by Alice Carlill Richard P J Lambert CC
earth when my middle sister was a child, she would sit strawberry-blonde marshmallowed in the dining room and eat earwigs. she’d cut them in half with her fist, and thrust each bit into her mouth, swallowing them down to sit in her stomach with the pureed carrots and powdered milk. I thought of this when I watched the woman fill her mouth with soil. I understood that primal yearn, the need to return to the dark and fertile – the oozing secretions. if I – she – we – are the natural, then it is of us. give me the legs of a millipede, the supple sliming worm. I will swallow it down gullet-full stomach-stretched. fill my mouth with mud, with earth, fill me full. hold my hair whilst I vomit. wipe my brow, I am contorting. watch me writhe. soil is a place of birth & death & birth again. it nourishes and starves – it teems and contains. it heaves. it is heavy. let me lie here under this. i am empty. Slivers there is a moment when the late afternoon sun slants through the pines that everything stills. it is a landscape of verticals – a renegotiation. language bursts berry red against these slivers of gold, but the silver birch stands, a poetics of possibility. you close your eyes, smell the settling frost, and think maybe – just maybe. Alice is a female-identifying, London-based, queer dramaturg, script supervisor, poet and performer. As a script reader and supervisor, she has worked with Theatre503, Finborough Theatre, & Katzpace, and has performed her poetry at various London venues. She is currently collaborating with The Actor’s Box on performance-poetry workshops, writing a performance piece on queerness and liminality, and studying for her MA at Goldsmiths. Alice’s poetry has been published by Ghost City Press, and is forthcoming in GoldDust and Factory Magazine. She can otherwise be found reading a book with her 5 dogs somewhere. [Pronouns she/her]. 2/17/2020 Poetry by Matthew MacDermant Richard P J Lambert CC Memories and Reveries Memories of memories of memories Fade back and back and back I recall a moment A feeling The sound of laughter on a Saturday morning Seashore spray on a shore raised face Sunshine Splashing waves Winds swept across sand and shell I am a reverie I am the past I am brighter days Colors vivid Experiences fresh and new When life was a bit more... What are the words The sights The sounds I’m searching for? How was it that my younger self felt? What was that thought That creative, chaotic, contemptuous thought Lost to time’s eternal grind In the back of my eighth-, tenth-, twelfth-grade mind? I am the child Peering around the corner in darkness after bedtime I am the teenager Yearning for the day I can drive away I am the grounded The disgruntled calendar counter Ticking off days until graduation My friends and I are bored again I guess we’ll ride bikes in this well worn town I guess we’ll jump fences and steal a few waves I guess we’ll sit around after curfew Long to X our eighteenth Our twenty-first What comes after that? We just can’t wait to grow up To leave To be free But will this growth bring wisdom? Will we ever arrive? Will we be too late? Will the world give up the wait and close the gate? Is it even possible to liberate? Or will we just stagnate Procrastinate Commiserate Pay homage to nostalgia And then to fate Until the future is all used up Until then and there merge to one Until all that’s left is a setting sun From the clutches of time we cannot run We only have here We only have now But when is now? Is it even real? Is it something you can feel? The past holds my memories The future my reveries But neither holds me Neither holds we Neither holds anything the eyes can see We spend our days dreaming We spend our days dwelling We spend our lives locked in a loop We can never be free We can never be we In a memory Or a reverie Until we set those dreams on fire Let fate and nostalgia expire And let the universe conspire To bring us back Back to a child like knowing A sense of living and flowing Upon a stream we are constantly going And if we let those phantoms keep growing We will have no seeds for sowing No paddle for rowing The current Or the path Just victims of time’s wrath So I say to myself And to all who will listen Let go of those ghosts Let your present self shine It’s not a perfect path but it’s undoubtedly mine There are no better days Not before and not then We rise from where we are From the blood and the dirt And don’t expect to feel alive and yet be free from the hurt Cast off your false pretenses And your mental defenses Life is only lived in present tenses. Taking Space I can’t deny that I take up space And not a little bit The footprint of my shadow can be If I am presenting unconsciously Like the shaded hues of an impending storm From horizon to horizon In all four directions Clouds dampen every contour in sight It is not that I intend to take this space I do not demand it I do not find myself incredulous at the presence of others No I balk at self-important men Straight white men with mortgages and advanced degrees Suits and suites at the Sheraton And yet I take space still Sometimes with words or mannerisms Always by the weight of my born identity People just believe me Take me seriously Offer me praise Jobs Zero interest loans for which I did not apply This is not because of who I am It is because of what I am I cannot deny what I am. I cannot deny that this construction shapes the world around me. I cannot deny that I rarely feel Threatened Excluded Passed over Judged unfairly At least not in ways that compromise my physical safety or my ability to pay rent I cannot deny that I have used this privilege to my advantage. I have hidden in the wide open spaces of my own shadow I have relied upon this space to edge me into opportunities I didn’t deserve I cannot deny that I have been fragile when these clouds have been peeled back to let in the light The light of other people People who I Love People to whom I have professed unwavering solidarity and allyship I have crumbled under my own weight I have turned the grief of comrades, lovers, and friends into a story about me A story about my inability to be an ally I know this is because of my conditioning As a settler As a man As a white guy Tall and handsome With good grades I was born into the normative narrative I am the unconscious violence of race and class Gender and colonialism This is what I am The question of who I am can be a different story If I am willing to make it so And bring fire and fury Light and space Into this cloud covered world. Learning to Cry Poised Confident Put together Hours and days and years have been spent accumulating certainty The right words and arguments for things I know nothing about Analyses of books I haven’t read Definitive answers to questions upon which I have barely reflected It’s important to be right It’s important to know what you’re talking about Well, it’s important that people think you know That people think you’re right That’s how you get praise That’s how you get prestige That’s how you rise to prideful pomp and prompt promotion That’s how you reach perfection That’s how you win When I was 32, I learned how to cry I learned how to fall apart I learned how to grieve I learned how to lie upon floors Hair disheveled Eyes pouring out decades of accumulated manhood and perfection I learned it’s not important to know everything It’s not important to pretend It’s not important to be a man Falling to pieces is the only way to be whole.  Matthew MacDermant is an editor and contributor for The Philadelphia Partisan. When he isn’t musing with pen and notebook in hand, he is working with the Student Conservation Association building trails, organizing political education and environmental justice events, or hiking in Philly and New Jersey area parks. He is currently researching and writing about the links between colonialism and climate disaster, and exploring identity, gender, ecology, and the embodied experience through short fiction and poetry. You can reach him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @QuillandNote.
2/17/2020 Poetry by HLR Richard P J Lambert CC
(Ador)/(Deplor)able Once upon a time my odd behaviour / strange way of thinking / outrageous antics were endearing: everyone loved me and my wild ways (perhaps even because of my wild ways) Once upon a time in a busy supermarket on a Tuesday afternoon I climbed into a chest freezer with the chicken nuggets and pies and closed the door tightly behind me because I was so tired and needed to lie down and the shop was too noisy and scary and I needed to be cold because I thought my blood was on fire and I just wanted to be dead Omg you’re sooo mental hahaha / What a nutter, you’re so funny! / Lmfao I fucking love you, you crazy bitch! / You are SUCH a legend / Girl, you psycho! / Wowww batshit cray You’d call 999 if I did that today. You’d scuttle away from ~the scene~ shaking your head, failing to hide the embarrassment on your face but not before telling the crowd of dismayed onlookers she’s been that way for years Because now that people have a “greater awareness” and “understanding” of mental illness, my behaviours are appalling / tragic / sad / dangerous / pitiful / distressing / such a shame The idiosyncrasies of mine that were once adorable are now utterly deplorable and I’m still just as sick as before but at least you “get it” now, right? At least that’s something: at least some good came out of all of this bad. (This) Isn’t It I don’t know what I want in life But I know this isn’t it. The more perfect you become The less you seem to fit. And surely something must be wrong If life attached feels just as shit As it would do if we were to split. I don’t know what I want in life But I know this isn’t it. I’m waiting for a stranger to admit That he still loves me more than a little bit, Chasing that glorious high I know exists But knowing that, whatever I find, It’ll never, ever be as good as that first hit. I don’t know what I want in life But I know this isn’t it. To Love X Y and Z Most of her sentences begin with, “I used to.” She used to be / to go / to enjoy / to do / to love x y and z. Now she dwells, angry and bitter, writing furious lists of all of the things that The Thief has stolen from her. She used to enjoy painting. She used to dance in crowds. She used to wear dresses. She used to be smart. She used to do sports. She used to enjoy the sunshine. She used to have real friends. She used to be pretty. She used to travel abroad. She used to enjoy sex. She used to speak several languages. She used to throw parties. She used to make people laugh. She used to be skinny. She used to be popular. She used to be able to do anything. She used to be a daughter, a sister, a niece, a granddaughter. She used to be brilliant. She used to trust people. She cannot get over Her [old] [true] [real] Self; she misses Her and grieves for Her. The person she is now is not a person, rather a half-human living a half-life. But The Thief cannot be caught nor punished. Already locked up in the prison of her mind, The Thief paces day and night, making her brain ache while waiting for an opportunity to strike, destroying her dreams before they can be realised, converting her hopes into fears, stealing her life one memory, one chance, one possibility at a time. The punisher cannot be punished. You can’t hang the hangman. The Thief will only leave when there’s nothing left to steal. The Thief will leave soon. Things You’ll Find When I Die Is this what’s left, what is left of a life? A human being boiled down reduced to a handful of possessions. I think about how and when and why, and the pieces of me that you will find when I die… Rusty hoop earrings. Melted daffodils in a Kronenbourg pint glass. Note that reveals the secret ingredient of my guacamole. Two winning scratch-cards. Hunting knife wrapped in a bloody tea towel. One million kirby grips. Punnet of overripe nectarines. 3 x deer skulls. Pile of cigarette ash. Several hundred books. Diet pills. 5 x rabbit skulls. Flutter of coke on a copy of Vogue (Paris, December 2015). Rosary blessed by Pope John Paul II. My Hit-List. Fancy dresses that I’ll never get to wear. Emergency £50 note. 1 x Black Ibex horn. Tangle of leggings. Custard-cream crumbs in the bed. Array of plastic carrier bags—various sizes (under the sink). Bowl of ‘easy peelers’ that are not easy to peel in the slightest. Shoebox of acrylics, watercolours, inks. Academic records, including my prize-winning essay on poetic energy in William Carlos Williams’ Spring and All. Shrine to my father. Broken Rimmel lipstick (colour #30). Two vintage Arsenal scarves. Box file filled with cards and letters from family, friends and exes. Empty notebooks. Enough filled journals to (hopefully) explain me away. And finally, a locked wooden box containing The Truth—my truth, and yours, too. The keys are inside the Buddha. Lent I don’t know what to give up for Lent… carbs? cutting? cheese? cocaine? chocolate? crying? casual commitment to Catholicism??? I am not afraid of Hell: it is here, at home, in my head: Hell is at home in my head. HLR is a 20-something writer of CNF, short prose and poetry. She writes primarily about her own experiences with mental illness, grief and addiction. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in The Gravity of the Thing, streetcake, Dear Damsels, Dust Poetry, In Parentheses, Chantarelle’s Notebook, Lunate, Re-side and The Hellebore, as well as several UK and US anthologies. HLR was born and raised in north London and is yet to escape. Read more at www.treacleheart.com or @treacleheartx 2/17/2020 Precious Piece by Paul Kohn Precious Pieces “I’m sorry for everything that has ever hurt you," I cry out. The pain you feel, I feel, bleeding from the same wounds that afflict you. “Know I am deeply sorry, but know I am patient and strong.” Believing in something far greater than me, I press on with courage. To fight for you, for me, for what is right, for what we believe in. I gently clean your open wounds, bandage them so no scars remain. I help you back to your feet, steady you as you stand, walk again. But there is something still not right. My head hangs in shame. Then I see it, your broken heart shattered before me on the floor. The pieces stain my fingers as I carefully gather them, pick them up. You look at me, wonder why I’m here. The tears stream down my face as I put each precious piece back into place. “I am here to mend your perfect heart with my imperfect hands.”  Paul Kohn is a writer of poetry and short stories, performer of spoken word, and creator of music and lyrics. Residing in South Australia, Paul writes as a way of processing, understanding, healing and growing, and shares his work in the hope that it helps others too. Words at https://paulrkohn.wordpress.com/ Twitter: @mikanopy
2/17/2020 Poetry by Ankita Chatterjee For You Blue I pick through grass in the yard like a dog. I tell her in confidence I’m destined to make meaning from nothing. Her pride is splitting her through in two; I flee from sight. That which I cannot control must be my own fault. Don’t look as I empty myself into the hollow bowl of her ear. She tells me the future but only the bad. That cold slick feel in the heels of her gut comes in round her ears and pulls her down. We’re growing like mangroves, rubbing dirt in our ears. When did I start to fear for her? It trickles down her neck, slow shame, dried saltlike, a film of bodily terror. In the morning we sit and forget what the night brought. Salad Days My rage, steel-toed, and you’re sobbing. The light slips and shatters from under your door. Through my fingers, just out of reach. I wish for a kind of learned deliverance I know will never come. And now I am afraid of forgetting these things I’d felt in the past, how the blood under my nails tasted the next morning, how my stomach flipped. Oh but I want to be buried inside the moment, always. I grasp at a night on the roof with you, tapping ash onto the railing. Breathing you in then out. We listened to the nothing of the street and felt peaceful. Silt I’m walking uphill when it starts in earnest. Things flood past before I feel them, faces that gleam white and dissolve, gone, and I can never stitch my hands together like a fisherman’s net and catch them fast enough. I chance a moment without my umbrella. I examine my glossy reflection as it’s shattered by a car: I’m surrounded by rivers. Makeover I was so alone today that I cut my own hair with a pair of scalloped scissors tucked away the gore in a plastic bag and felt no one would notice my digression my mother had a fringe over her high forehead like a helmet of soft velvet until one day she unfurled and it seemed she had never hidden not once I walk now with half of my expressions veiled I am sick of having a face  Ankita Chatterjee is a student at UC Berkeley whose work has appeared most recently in Barren Magazine. In her free time, she daydreams.
2/17/2020 Poetry by David Sabol Richard P J Lambert CC
Tartarus Eastern State Penitentiary We are the ghosts. haunting these rust-charmed remains we want to see what torture looks like here in the sunlight. what humans can do to the damned. oh how Tartarus looks lovely cresting, steeple crushed into its place oh how the ceilings arch . the stench of us lingers we have propped up the dead to sing for us and won’t we suck the silence from their bones there are skylights in the cells. heaven is above you. You cannot touch it. it is the sun’s blaring eye. your sins, wallow in them. supine. prostrate. and we will bag your head in the sun. you. are grain to be reaped, and burned for the old gods incense for their cavernous halls. smile. don’t you know? This is freedom. Phoenix-Borne I used to think that people who love when they know it’s killing them wanted to slowly kill themselves. slowly, one magnificent blue smoke signal after another. But love is not about dying. Love is about truly embracing life. Listen to the long sighs of a lover as they exhale. You will hear a red smolder riding the coattails of their indigo breath: I am love. let me flare. Can’t you hear the Roar of flame rumble in their vena cava? your love has nicknamed you “Kitty”, you say. “Yes, let me arch my back for you.” you say. Can’t you hear the bloom of their soul. souls, murmuring in deep deep ripples under porcelain skin pink smoke swirling around our heads. you say, oblivion. (has got me). I say, no it doesn’t. Hold my hand. Today we spit in the face of oblivion, and bear down on the nape of god. The chapel is burning. And none of the mahogany notices. and we are the arsonists. Shiva Penweaver I was told by my father’s eyes today that I am weak. I said I am a wildfire burning the world in front of me today. I said I am Shiva today. I have one thousand hands each holding a pen and I will break every one on you, today, Sir. I said today I am a lion. I see now that I am the whole PRIDE. Weakness? I swallowed giants that tried to break me and I spat their splintered bones at the foot of my Molten throne.! Me, weak? I lived with monsters under my bed for DECADES. I climbed into the darkness and hunted them down One by. One. Their blood is nothing but warpaint to me now. I am a gladiator in my own rib cage. Weakness hasn’t been in my vocabulary since the age of three. Tell me I’m weak again. I dare you. Mental Illness as Tempest I am holding fast at the helm sky black and brooding my pale face spattered scarlet wind lashing my blood swells the horizon line embolism become mountain mountain become pantheon. My name is God-killer Today I will cleave the impossible in two. David Sabol was born in San Diego, and flipped pages to kill his thumbprints in Ronkonkoma, NY. Now, he’s studying English Literature at SUNY Geneseo. 2/17/2020 At the Gym by Tom Simmons At the Gym As the treadmill dowels spun I had a recollection of you A dream I had last night; you were in it It was you, but it didn’t look like you You sported a wire-brush moustache but it was you I also have a dream where I’m unfixed down a path in the woods This occurred to me while I was running on the treadmill too Naturally enough I recollected it And it doesn’t start there, on a path It just is there My slumbering-self isn’t interested in thinking, or deciding It’s interested in doing Or at least patrolling a path And that’s funny Because all-you’re-doing when you’re dreaming is thinking or deciding You’re not doing anything. Simmons is a lawyer and a tenured professor at the University of South Dakota School of Law whose scholarship and teaching focuses on trusts and estates. His poems can be found or are forthcoming in, inter alia, El Portal, Corvus Review, Nine Muses, Thirteen Myna Birds, The Showbear Family Circus, Amethyst Review, Nebo, and North Dakota Quarterly. |
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