Tasha Lutek CC



DINER

It could be called a diner
or maybe a truck stop.
It was on the freeway that
led to somewhere.
You couldn’t miss it with
its bold lighting and off colored neon sign.
There was plenty of parking
up front and more in the back.
Tired faces greet you as you 
enter the door with a bell
that rang when a customer came in. 
The curly headed waitress brought the menu.
The menu was simple,
keep it simple. Breakfast, lunch and dinner.
“You want pie, we got pie. Pie
and ice cream.”
“You want to smoke, go ahead
nobody is going to tell.”
“Relax while you are here
but you can’t stay forever.”




LEAVE NOW

Leave now
before the wood
burns to ashes,
before the flames
curl like dragon tail in the spring
before the smoke turns to dust.

Leave now
before your tender flower
becomes pressed into a 
book of memories.
while the wine remains in the bottle
and darkness still owns the night.



CONTINUING DREAMS

It was 6 in the morning
and I couldn’t sleep due to
dreams that started, then stopped
when they got good. Dreams that
I picked up from one night to the other
as I recall. The wind would rattle the bedroom window
or the leaky gutter would drip 
and ping the car out side my window.
the dog wouldn’t stay still, he heard cats
prowling and a coyote on the loose
looking for dinner. I turned from side to side
looking for that perfect position but couldn’t find it.

I remember the dreams being about houses, larger houses
than where I live at. Too many rooms and not enough
people to dwell in them. The landscape was spectacular
with bushes that looked like celebrities straight from Hollywood
and relatives that didn’t exist anymore.  Ancient statues adorned the 
pool area with the water clear and smooth as glass. The air was
warm and delicious. The smell of roses rolled over the slight hills
and green painted yards.
Then a bear and an elephant wandered by the pool. I hurried to get out
but my feet had grown in the blue colored cement on the bottom of
the pool.

I rolled over again and the light began to twist through the window,
morning was upon me as the dog had already left the bed waiting at the backdoor
to see whether any cats had remained from their prowling. I got up and hoped
that the dream would appear the next night.

​

LOVE SPELL NUMBER ONE


If you love someone
who does not love you back,
try this spell.
You’ll need three strands
of his hair.
All good love spells
require someone to
give something
in order to
get something back.

Do this on the night
of the new moon.
The darkness signifies
new beginnings, hope.

Light a candle--
a red one, of course.
Bring something copper--
a shiny new penny.
Hold the coin
in the palm of your hand
as you light the candle
and burn each blond hair.
As the strand frizzles away,
much like his patience
for your mental instability
and your constant texting,
close your eyes.

Imagine his indifference
disappearing.
Imagine replacing it
with passion.
Imagine his eyes, his smile.
Think of the last thing
he said to you.
The old jokes. Your demeanor.
After your breakdown,
things just aren’t the same
anymore. It’s not your fault,
but…

Open your eyes. There
should be no “but.”



*Based off of a spell from The Good Spell Book: Love Charms, Magical Cures, and Other Practical Sorcery by Gillian Kemp. 


​
Jessica Drake-Thomas is a poet and freelance writer. She is a graduate of Emerson College's MFA in Creative Writing. She is the author of Possession (dancing girl press).Her work has been featured in Ploughshares, Eye To The Telescope, Ghost City Review, NewMyths, and Star*Line.

​we regret to inform you

we regret to inform you 
that you have the wrong
kind of disability

like diabetes
cancer 
or mobility issues

not socially suitable for posters or campaigns
or heart-warming pledge drives

your bipolar is rather uncomfortable for us
peculiar with its unscheduled cycles

no, it’s not a performance issue   
you’re getting your work done

but we kind of wish you were failing
it’d be more considerate of our needs

do fill the required forms in triplicate 
and you’re liable for the all doctor fees

we do hope you understand
about the long term disability
and don’t make a scene on your way out

        ​Tasha Lutek CC



Disarticulation

I’m dismantling the cabinet we inherited
from the house’s former owners, uncovering
the pencil hashes he used to line the doors,
finding the bonus nail he added to hold the trim,
wondering why he didn’t smooth anything-
unraveling armoires one begins to feel superior.

See how gracefully I slide this screw from out
the brace; I’m tapping the nails with such love
they keep their diamond points; I can save this
hardware and wood for future projects—there’s no need
for savagery; it’s obvious from examining its creation
that this cupboard has had enough.

​

​The Poet’s Attic  
​
i.
damaged poems wedged into
umbrella holders, broken lines like
displaced umbrella spokes
protruding from their
moldering barrels.
half developed images, some in
sepia, some in color, dangle from
the buckling walls. mangled
stanzas stuffed into musty
couch cushions, discarded
metaphors, mixed or maimed,
scattered across the floor like
the steel wool used to keep the
rats out.
 
rags of rhymes overflow
misshapen cardboard boxes,
the bits of (text)ile, now of no use
save perhaps for patching,
or perhaps for polishing the
poems of the present.
assonance and consonance
and glittery alliteration, arranged in
a delicate gold filigree, seem to
have had their intricacies hammered
out of shape by some Philistine
phantom of substance wielding
some blunt instrument of phonetic
destruction, deformed and distorted
bits of sound now scattered about
like decrepit dust bunnies.
 
ii.
ardent poems to old lovers
disintegrate like ash in dusty drawers
and verses in vases conveying
shocking revelations which never
reached their destination, addressed
to persons now deceased.
angry poems hidden in ceramics
that they might not scorch everything
they touch like cigarette burns to
a vinyl couch. sentimental poems
sewn up in secret pockets of suits that
slump in a pile of clothes like the
sad and sloping shoulders of a 
homeless person who has not known 
hope in many moons. and here and 
there the odd ode to joy, like scattered 
fragments of stained glass, the 
remnants of a happiness long expired.
 
iii.
is there no resurrection for bygone
poems, left by the wayside of our
wandering, wondering wills?
 
will these bits of poems ever age
themselves into the sweetness of a
fine cask of wine? are they like raisins
and bits of stems, leftovers lying by
which can do nothing more than
shrivel and ultimately turn into dust?
 
or are they more like precious gems
and findings of gold and silver, waiting
patiently for the expert jeweler to
fuse them into the perfect place in
the perfect piece, poetic ornaments
as elegant as they are eloquent . . .
 
So much depends on the owner of
this attic.

​

Tasha Lutek CC

      Tasha Lutek CC


​
​Arrival at NYC
 
I make my way through countries of bobbling headsat JFK into a whistling November breeze. A cavalcade of doppelgangers. Oh, what a blooming mass of humanity. Bombay’s long lost elder brother.  If the human race ever needed a reason to survive, it should come here to view its dorsal intersections. Backs and buttocks are anyways impossible to view in parliamentary mirrors. But when you’ve heard about a place or a person for long, you’re bound to be bewitched once you’re in them. I’m only two hours old in the city.
 
The skyscrapers spring on your eyes like feral cats. The subway is intimidating – not so much the platforms, but the artists and the lovers, the grandmothers and violinists spawning eggs of an underworld platypus. When you’re used to traveling in air and light and oblivion, this takes some getting used to. A museum of such ceremony. The iris needs time. To meditate. To settle down in a dark room.
 
I scour for directions to Columbia. On walls whose texture is face like.  Grainy and existential. They have seen centuries dribble by and their eyes are now notoriously singling me out. I yearn for something elegiac, yet light – an unexpected kiss from an old friend or a latte with a blueberry muffin. Either will do.




A Mouthful of Debris
 
Secrets of years spluttered to attentive strangers
          Over lattes assembled in sincere machines
The remembering now is different from the remembering before
          Which is different from the happening way before
Time & memory, oil & water
          What’s light, what floats to the top
The details vanish, immiscibility stays
          It’s fascinating how we resolve to remember dates
When we felt a new joy, a new grief
          Soon rusting in the metal of white light rubble
But real memory’s an obdurate cockroach
          It ingests its more illustrious cousin, its own temporal shell
Finding peace on ledges and drawers, corners and sinks
          Lives on seasons as if moving through dirt rings
Parades the wardrobe in times of strife
          Sliding through pockets with the philosophy of a knife
Compressing a life into a story, a month into a moment
          Because all said and done, it knows better than most
Survival is always the first step to any kind of happiness




To Write an Unhappy Poem
 
I wouldn’t have to think beyond
- bones decaying under layers of cement,
  confused with rubble in the muck of
  hoary downtown
- boys leaping from high balconies knowing
  the flight of a soul is the only salvation for
  homes growing to dust
- daughters & mothers trapped inside four walls
  for centuries raided occasionally by sunshine
  for repression & murder
 
These are stories from Syria, Beirut, Kashmir.
Here dead stars have left the sky hollow.
Here skin is inseparable from scar.
Imprints & paw marks are all that remains of
tethered lives. We forget names of places now
because memory is a plebian whim &
God in the throes of craft replaced tooth with canine
& marrow with gun. Back in the day when I felt sad,
I drank rum & swallowed pills.
I wonder if God glugs when he reads the news.
I hope the pills are over when he reads this through.

​

James Blann CC



Bug Out

As we pack up and move for
for the 10th time,
I reflect on all the couches
we've gone through,
the cushions we've lolled on,
where I rested my head
on your shoulder
and we laughed together
to something on TV,
or sat apart,
not looking at each other,
anger sealing our throats.
All the furniture
bought and unloaded:
the throw pillows,
the book cases.
This is the price
of a nomadic lifestyle:
of never being satisfied
with where you are,
of being a survivor.
At least half those moves
were out of necessity,
jobs taken and quit,
friends made and lost,
plans planned and God
doubled over,
having Himself
a real belly-laugh.
Every time, we say,
This will be the last time.
So far, every time,
we’ve been wrong.




Low

It is a testament
to the universe's cruelty
that a woman who underwent
a hysterectomy at age 26
now has a belly
as round as a melon.
No one warned her
about this rearrangement,
a sort of visceral musical chairs:
Your intestines hang low now,
the doctor says.
You’ll never have a flat stomach again.
Adhesions snake
their insidious loops,
tugging, squeezing,
long nights clutching
a heating pad.
The pain of absence.
The pain of being filled.
The pains did not go away.
They're just different now,
along with going through life
looking perpetually pregnant,
even though she is
curved
and empty
as a rind.


​
Lauren Scharhag is an award-winning writer of fiction and poetry. She is the author of Under Julia, The Ice Dragon, The Winter Prince, West Side Girl & Other Poems, and the co-author of The Order of the Four Sons series. Her poems and short stories have appeared in over eighty journals and anthologies, including Into the Void, The American Journal of Poetry, Gambling the Aisle and Glass: A Journal of Poetry. She lives in Kansas City, MO. To learn more about her work, visit: www.laurenscharhag.blogspot.com