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3/29/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Lady Red Ego Torsten Behrens CC Down and Swallow Tender, the meat that you chew down and swallow. In your mouth, that genitalia, which rounds out like a vowel. Let me tell you about the days where I missed you, behind the curtain, in the bedroom, those golden phrases that I turned over in my mind like a pill. Down and swallow. Let me tell you about a night, blue like a bathroom light, where I stretched out my body like a rope – and hoped. I cannot keep going. Gender, that slender member that keeps my words in check. My words and my throat.  Lady Red Ego is a Chinese/British lesbian concerned with intimacies. Her second pamphlet, Natural Sugars, is available from Broken Sleep Books.
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3/29/2021 1 Comment Poetry by Jax Bulstrode Je suis Samuel CC Sideoftheroadbeing I am in the night space In between a broken phone line And the creek Rushing and cracking Just a sideoftheroad being But I am at home Only half lit by a Foggy flash of headlight Sunk down into The gravel and mushed bank Mud in my shoes This is what I want For the passing by cars To recognise me As the river As the whole thing Running alongside them Carrying on into the dark In the morning When the sun burns away I get up Stretch my tender bruised knees And carry myself home to bed To wake and become The thing the world Wants to see Believes I am When I wake I go to work With a constant shiver Cold river water running Through my blood In the end I always return With the dusk To the side of the road To my fear And the crickets Under my toes Two feet in the water It is always the same I swim until the morning And tell myself This is what I cannot be The thing I am now The world tells me I am its creature. The world tells me I am its creature like I am the thing it has resulted, moulded and scraped together over the years. The world tells me I am its creature and I refuse to belong to anyone but my 3 pm shadow. The world tells me I am its creature and after 100 years of believing it, listening to the screaming of the empty winter snowfield, I become the world. Lay down in the grief of who I was to every other person, feel the ice become my bones and the thing I breathe in.  Jax Bulstrode is an Australian queer poet. Her work covers the quotidian, the feeling of coming home after a long day and what it means to discover oneself. She has been published both in print and online in Twilight press, Marmalade journal, Soultalk magazine and Stuck in notes magazine. She loves mandarins and is currently studying a BA in creative writing, gender studies and digital media in university, and how to make the best tofu scramble in life.
3/29/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Ashley Sapp   Ashley Sapp (she/her) resides in Columbia, South Carolina, with her dog, Barkley. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of South Carolina in 2010, and her work has previously appeared in Indie Chick, Variant Lit, Emerge Literary Journal, Common Ground Review, and elsewhere. Ashley has written two poetry collections: Wild Becomes You and Silence Is A Ballad. She can be found on Twitter @ashthesapp and Instagram @ashsappley.
3/29/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Audrey Gidman patrick yagow CC notes on letting it go dear body / sweating beer & / mystery broken clock / calling drunk after midnight dear body who drew blood you knew where to look / to find someone / like me dear love / who never stayed / long dear love / I wanted dear wounded little boy you kept me close / enough to touch / sometimes lover / turning over / in the bed I tried to get it / right I asked good questions dear shipwreck dear empty locket the flowers / never grew I watered / & watered ode my grandmother said braid your hair tight my grandmother said be quiet my grandmother said bring him his breakfast my grandmother said sit still she said smile my grandmother said chin up chin up my grandmother said bring him his lunch my grandmother said save bags bread ties anything useful she said my grandmother said powder blue walls and statues of sailors my grandmother said black tea with milk in a powder blue mug my grandmother said keep an umbrella in the car she said storm my grandmother said you are my october girl my grandmother said keep an empty canvas close she said paint yourself standing my grandmother said bring him his supper my grandmother said hang crystals in the windows she said keep busy my grandmother said dove soap my grandmother said wipe everything clean my grandmother said keep busy she said count the rainbows on the walls my grandmother said no need to cry  Audrey Gidman is a queer poet living in central Maine. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in The West Review, époque press, FEED, Anti-Heroin Chic, and elsewhere. She received her BFA from the University of Maine Farmington. Her chapbook, body psalms, winner of the Elyse Wolf Prize, is forthcoming from Slate Roof Press.
3/29/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Arielle McManus patrick yagow CC
Promise Me This One Thing Why does the rainwater that rushes under the grate at Hart and Tompkins smell the way a penny pressed to the roof of the mouth feels? The space between our bodies was negative space – until it wasn’t – and then became unbridgeable, which then made the space between my body and all other bodies feel unbridgeable. But then again, the stretch between Bedford and Nostrand used to bring me to my knees and I got over that. There are a lot of versions of myself I swore I’d never become. Yet here I sit, taking photos of myself crying into a gilded mirror. I need to know that I’m capable of loving a person forever. Sun Salutation I picked up burritos at the corner shack. I hate beans and I hate tortillas, but fuck, they’re cheap. Split the cost of a nip of Jack to pour into Coke cans that we got from the vending machine on the beach. I try to peer into binoculars on the shore, but they’re blacked out, and I spent all my quarters on the lotto. Only because you told me to, directly after you told me that you think about me. A lot. And in that moment I was feeling lucky. (I didn’t win any money and now I’ve been washing all my clothes in the shower, because I spent all my quarters on the lotto) Sun rises like candy floss, the color of blankets that swath newly birthed babies, and wanes in fire. The same way I imagine we do. Arielle McManus is a writer, learning as she goes and crafting one liners from a tiny, sunlit room in Brooklyn. She is an assistant editor at Atlas & Alice, and her writing has been published by a variety of literary publications including Passages North and Entropy Magazine. 3/29/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Ashley Bunton Alexey Gaponov CC The Hole I Left In Mother I put a bone through my mother's neck wove it through her heart from the soft spot right above the clavicle down the blood that drips for rain like breath upon a frosted glass window I split my lip on the wooden frame tasting my blood missing her and what I didn't know about my body that came from her before I was born before I was the hurt in her memory  Ashley Bunton is an award winning writer and journalist currently based in Moab, Utah, where she frequently retreats into the desert to work on her projects. Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including Lucky Jefferson, Mock Turtle Zine, Salt Magazine, The Antioch Record, The Salt Lake Tribune, Moab Sun News.
3/29/2021 3 Comments Poetry by Nora Pasco Bruce Guenter CC
Winter Cemetery For Richard Against the plot of memories I press my palms — attempt to sculpt a future from your silent stone. If you can hear my voice, how do I sound? Am I as much a ghost as you, shrouded in snow, here yet not here, body, yet ash, yet sky — soft winter crows crossing me? What can I say with words I cannot proclaim with hands on grounds of loss? How quiet is the requiem of touch when you are earth and I am only love. Nora Pasco is a 38 year old poet currently working as a hospital nurse tech and completing her degree in Human Services. She has previously been published in Freshwater and has a forthcoming publication in the online journal Pink Plastic House. 3/29/2021 0 Comments Poetry by MJ L'Espérance patrick yagow CC Becoming my Mother’s Daughter "You are Marie-Élène's daughter!" No insult stabbed me deeper than the word daughter. At home, I was called by many names: “ungrateful daughter... undeserving daughter... dirty daughter... disrespectful daughter…” I did not want to belong to her. My mother - A crown of auburn curly hair that frames her stern, regal face. A roaring voice that needs to climb on top of everyone else's. A thunderous laugh that shatters the ground we walk on. So I straighten my betraying curls until they hang limp over my face like a weeping veil. I soften my voice until the words become shadows of what I yearn to say. I swallow my laughter so many times it shakes me from inside, like a fist pounding to break free. My mother - An ever-changing litany of rules designed to catch weaknesses and faults. A wildfire temper that blasts, that screams, that blinds, that taunts. Iron hands that love so hard they squeeze until all the eggs are broken. I move out from under her grip, farther than harm’s reach. I still carry a dozen eggs so I am certain I always have enough shells to walk on. I still put a bolt on my door. I still sleep with the lights on. I play music to drown out all the voices that aren't mine. My mother - Empty-handed, robbed by misfortunes and illnesses. Bowed neck and brow from giving in to tenderness. Deep lines etched on her skin: love lines, life lines, death lines. One day, I feel safe enough to let my hair curl in the storm, to shape my words back into substance, to let my laugh come out as open hands. One day, I call home and I say, "mom, can you give me the recipe of the Sunday roast?". I say mom, and isn't a curse anymore. One day, I visit her, and at the market, a stranger grabs me by the shoulder. “I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else!” Yeah, I get that a lot here, I am Marie-Élène’s daughter!  MJ L'Espérance is a bilingual writer and teacher who lives in Montreal, QC. She writes about mental health, chronic illness and disability, loss and lust. In her spare time, she likes to run after cats in back alleys and wander barefoot on the grass.
3/29/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Vanessa Escobar Canan Çengel CC It Might be Too Late to Learn Quantum Physics Mornings are weird and there are no time machines. Your plant is still alive on my windowsill. She is a cactus with tiger stripes and for a little bit she was drooping. I gave her too much attention and water, so I backed away for a couple of weeks to give her space. And I waited for her to get stronger. I waited for me to get stronger too. And sometimes I leave the blinds open like you used to when you’d come over. She likes when the sun comes through and I like when its night and I can see the trees up close. She’s doing better but it still hurts to think about you. Her leaves are getting firm and I’m always sticking my finger into the soil to make sure it’s not too dry. When I water her, I’m always afraid I’ve poured too much. I hold her up to my face, try to give her the love that remains. At night I spread my entire body across the mattress and think it might be too late to learn quantum physics. Too late to make one more grand gesture. Too late to ask you to stay. I pick the scab off my busted knee, you always said I was clumsy. I think of your face on my pillow. And I wonder who was actually there with me  Vanessa Escobar is a 31-year-old queer Latinx poet living the corporate America life but always dreaming of something more. She’s in love with the city of Houston despite no desire to live in the South. She has a nefarious, escape artist dog named Stella and is currently at work on her first book of poems. You can find her at escobarvanessa.com.
3/29/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Andrea Lynn Koohi Dane CC
I Wish I Could Tell You how we held our flashlights as though they were guns aimed them at cracks along ceiling edges beating back roaches who dared to emerge though often they’d lose their gluey grip fall upside down onto our beds while just beyond the door each night our parents transformed into things unseeing rage shards shooting as trails of liquids and powders soiled each crevice of our lives like the roaches. I wish I could tell you before you check that box that we wielded the light until it died, but they kept crawling through. Andrea Lynn Koohi is a writer and editor from Toronto, Canada. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Maine Review, Pithead Chapel, Streetlight Magazine, the winnow magazine, Emerge Literary Journal and others. |
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