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3/29/2021 Poetry by Camille Lewis Je suis Samuel CC Never Say Neverland I send my twitching mind to That place The neverland of neverlands Never-going-to-happen-land The vending machines sell Sweet, sweet validation I can drink ten cans and have a thirst. I share the same space as you I crackle like a current A tap of my finger could power a city! Perhaps, if all the stars align, and I cross my arms, legs, fingers and toes You will smile at me And it will reach your eyes. Nearness is enough: I dream of basking in your rays Your presence is a punch, a tonic, a gift. The animatronics mouths open and close Open and close, wordlessly You stun them into silence, as you do me Every night in my neverland As the clock strikes twelve Cinderella story You lace your fingers through mine And the world falls still.  Camille Lewis is an avid reader and aspiring writer. She can be found taking long walks with her dog, indulging heavily in the Plath fantasia and crossing off days on a calendar until the next instalment of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series is released. Camille resides in South West England.
3/29/2021 Poetry by Janna Grace eflon CC Someone Should Have Told You at 15 you are the purple that meets the red in an unripe plum, you may feel ready to eat soft, for the most part eager, but when bitten your insides show you are tart still you have a stone inside and time to sweeten to be soft all over, time to be ready to leave the basket for a palm, sure if you choose-- but know your pit first holds poison, can break the teeth that line the mouth of the world.  Janna Grace's work has been published in The Bacopa Literary Review, Otoliths, and Eunoia Review, among others. Between teaching writing at Rutgers University, editing Lamplit Underground, and reading for Longleaf Review, she works as a freelance and travel writer. Her debut novel will be published through Quill Press in 2021.
3/29/2021 Poetry by B. Fulton Jennes eflon CC HOVENWEEP Here the Ancient Ones farmed the mesa atop the rim of a meandering canyon, carved their homes, their silos, their kivas into the walls of steep sandstone cliffs. You and I creep closer to the edge of the maw, daring to see the crumbled ruins below. Holding hands, sure each will save the other if the ledge gives way under our weight, we smile and take another step, and another. Even your father calls us back: “Enough.” But you and I know this ledge-walking well: we’ve danced on edges of our own making, explored paths of exhilaration no one else could fathom or forgive, danced alone, as all addicts dance, even as our dances devolved to madness. And then you, a damaged daughter, saved me. And then I, a mother damned, saved you. Now, the voice of a park ranger, God-like, calls us back from the precipice. Grousing, we stumble back, hide our relief. We did not really want to see how it ended.  The Poet Laureate of Ridgefield, Connecticut, B. Fulton Jennes serves as poet-in-residence for the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Her poems have or will appear in Anti-Heroin Chic, The Comstock Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Night Heron Barks, Connecticut River Journal, ArtAscent, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, Naugatuck River Journal, Frost Meadow Review, and other publications, and her poem “Lessons of a Cruel Tide” was awarded first place in the Writer’s Digest Annual Competition in the rhyming poetry category. Jennes’s chapbook, Blinded Birds, will be published by Finishing Line Press in the fall of 2021. She is in her (blessed) 13th year of recovery; her daughter, now grateful for six years in recovery, recently completed graduate coursework in Addiction Counseling. There is hope.
3/29/2021 Poetry by Jeni Bell eflon CC After The first time I saw you, After, You were leaning against your brand-new car In the parking lot of my apartment complex, Sporting black shades and a carefully groomed goatee, Waiting. I saw you from the corner of my eye As I stepped out of my car, But there was something about the way you stood there, Confident, Almost cocky, That made me feel exposed, As if you could see the skin of my stomach, Rumpled like a deflated balloon, Two months postpartum. As if you knew my heart would lurch The first time I saw you. As if you expected That I was hoping For more than just the introduction You’d traveled 300 miles for. And truthfully, I don’t know what I was hoping for, When I hadn’t seen you in 10 months, When you had yet to see your son, even. Maybe I was hoping to find A glimpse of a crack In the walls you'd erected So many months before. Maybe I was hoping you’d found your way back to The sweet boy I’d met two years before In that college newsroom. Maybe I was hoping for “I’m sorry,” even-- “Sorry things didn’t work out;” “Sorry I made things harder.” But I knew, The way you leaned against your car, Arms folded, Waiting, That you hadn’t come with sweetness. And as I strode toward the steps to my apartment Without a glance in your direction, Opened the door And shut it behind me, I knew that even though you were finally here, You were also Gone.  Jeni Bell is an award-winning fiction and non-fiction writer with credits in Guideposts for Kids, Guideposts for Teens, Sweet 16, Highlights for Children, Boy's Life, Pockets, and more. Most of her fiction is middle-grade fiction. She also works as a healthcare writer full-time. She lives with her husband, children, two dogs, two cats, two guinea pigs and several fish in Munster, Ind.
3/29/2021 Poetry by Bree Bailey eflon CC I am Falling Hopelessly in Love with Someone Who Won’t Remember Our First Year Together If there was a booger contest, You would outsnot me. You are nine pounds of icky, and I’m certain there’s at least ten pounds the scale can’t pick up that is the weight of your radiance and life source. You are heavy joy. You weigh down my boots. My feet swear to never leave you. You’re at the cusp of starting everything, full of new beginnings. You are a timer that starts and has no end. There is no end to all that you will become. You are the new home. You are the perspiration of new first times. (I’m so nervous for you to go to college) These impossible new starts that you’ll have and I will bear witness to. And of those that you’ll have that I won’t bear witness to. I never knew the ache that comes from loving someone so deeply. I already mourn the moments I won’t be around to see, and desperately pray for the moments that I will. You make me weep over the heartaches you’ll have that I won’t be able to cheer you up from. You make me terrified of the future and so undeniably smitten with every new day. You and infinity and yesterday. You give me so much doubt in everything I do. Guilt never hung like a cold satin robe until I ate two bites of food while you cried for my attention. You give me so much confidence in everything I’ve done. You are my inspiration. You are my courage. Pride never soared the way it did when I held you close to my face and you burped into it like a truck driver. You are this tiny package of possibilities that will always astound me. A tiny vessel of a testimony that it does get better. You make me better. You are my motivational poster that can’t affix itself to anything. You are the pint-size pilot of my happiness that lacks all motor control and education. How terrifying the thought. You hold my life in your tender and clumsy nectarine hands. I am thankful to be uncharted.  Bree Bailey (she/her) is a new mom who lives near NYC with her husband and her beautiful baby poet. Bree has written since childhood and tends to reflect on growing up, falling in/out of love, and family. Bree loves tacos, cheese, laughter, and friendship, but gets anxious and delirious if they happen at the same time. Follow her on Instagram @breebaileypoetry.
3/29/2021 Poetry by Mary Ann Honaker emilykneeter CC
HOLD Imagine a bucket of clean, clear water. At night it holds the moon, the archer, the big and little bear. In daylight, it holds arms of trees wrapping themselves around it in an embrace. At the heart, endless blue, or a gray encroachment of clouds. Imagine you are the bucket. When the sun falls down and nothing wears its usual face, you still find crumbs and crescents of bright. There will be times when in the dark all you see are darker shags of wind-harassed trees, beating rather than embracing you. But you hold this too, serenely, with a shimmer. You will soon feel a tint of rose limning you on one side, and it will continue to bloom, until the sky is a bright eye and the trees friendly again. It will happen. It is as inevitable as the second deepening, purplish in hue, that on the other side of you proceeds the deep dip into another night. What if you could just hold it, whatever it is, the caverns of your being quiet and clear? So when one drinks of you, that person will feel refreshed. Mary Ann Honaker is the author of It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015) and Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, Drunk Monkeys, Euphony, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Sweet Tree Review, Van Gogh’s Ear, and elsewhere. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart prize. Mary Ann holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She currently lives in Beaver, West Virginia. 3/29/2021 Poetry by Beck Anson Paul Sableman CC Hope Street The night I decided the universe would be better off without me in it was the same night the universe decided it had other plans for where I ought to be. When I crashed into that 16-inch wide oak tree on Hope Street, the oak tree punched right back and said you’re not going anywhere fella. Glued to the bucket seat of my SUV, I sat gutted by the fact that I was still very much alive. Tears started to bubble in my eyes, my legs shuddering like the engine still running, my lungs infusing with dust particles escaping from the deployed airbags, the air as stale as outer space. Neighbors left dinner cold on their tables to hold my hand and tell me, “life is hard, honey, but we are all survivors of something.” I thought maybe I wasn’t meant to take my life by my own hand — I was meant to take my own hand in life. And be my own best friend if I was ever going to survive that other more insidious thought — that I was all alone in life. Because it’s true what they say about depression — thoughts only feel like they’re real. But the real truth is that all alone is never just all alone. There is always somebody that wants you here. If it’s true that we are all survivors of something, then we cannot forget that before we became the wreck, we were once the ship at sea. And that if we are still here, we are still here for a reason and staying alive is our best bet at finding out why and for the record, there isn’t a chance that I won’t still be here. If I can be braver than what I write, then I might actually become the hero of my own life. Because today, I saw a hole in the clouds through which the late fall sun streaked through on my way home from picking up my belongings at the tow yard. I looked like just an ordinary guy walking home with his groceries in the first snow flurry of the season. No one knew it was myself I was carrying back home. But I left behind the softness of my body and embraced the razor sharp edge of my own existence, in order to find that sense of wholeness I’d been searching for, my mind not strong enough until I gave it permission to heal from being forgotten — erased. Until compassion for myself became my own street sign guiding me home. And even though home these days isn’t what it used to be, I promise we can still make it warm. There may not have been anybody there when you became the wreckage but there will always be a hand to hold on your way back to being whole again.  Beck Anson (he/they) is a queer and trans emerging writer whose work is featured in Humana Obscura and Rattle and is forthcoming in RHINO. His poem “I Admit Myself to the Psych Ward in a Pandemic” was a finalist for the 2020 Rattle Poetry Prize. Beck writes to start a conversation — with others and with themselves — and to explore aspects of the human condition they cannot otherwise express through other forms. He has two degrees in botany but don’t ask him how to keep a houseplant alive. Follow him on Instagram @beckansonpoet and read more of their work at www.beckanson.com.
3/29/2021 Poetry by Christine Higgins emilykneeter CC
Beloved Son She heard about some young guys sleeping under the JFX. She asked me to drive her there to see if we could find her son. We went at midnight, and found him asleep, wrapped in a dirty blue tarp. We brought him home. His arms were scarred with needle marks. His eyes were bloodshot. He had scabs on his face. My friend made him take a shower, and gave him a banana and yogurt to eat. She begged him to get help, and he promised he would after a good night’s sleep. In the morning he was gone. A whole day went by with no word. She decided to check the breakfront where she kept the family silver— two silver candlesticks were missing as well. Next time, we went before dawn, and her son was there under the same tarp as last time. Someone had left a half-pack of cigarettes under his chin. We drove him to rehab. He sat numb in the back seat with only his cigarettes for comfort. My friend’s family said to her: don’t coddle him, don’t let him worry you to death, age you, take from you, but she ignored them. The long days of recovery worked. Recovery steadied by helpful medicine. I keep the empty cigarette pack in the back seat of my car-- a talisman of sorts, a reminder: we may find ourselves here again. A Cautionary Tale When my daughter heard about her high school classmate’s death she called me from Mexico. A little brown boy named Paulo was sitting in her lap. She read to him practicing her new Spanish skills. She called to tell me how sad she was. Her friend had been shot in the shoulder here in Baltimore. The story she told me was that Marco was sitting on his friend’s couch, hanging out. The rumor was the shot wasn’t life-threatening, but his friends were scared to call the cops, and he bled to death. I rejoiced when she said she planned to go on the mission trip with the good kids from church. I wanted her to start her life with giving back and travel adventures. I wanted her to be safe. I knew she was buying pot, smoking to help with anxiety. Here’s my chance I thought to give her the lecture: don’t take risks with your one life. Oh my cautionary tale, when what she wanted, what she needed was for me to grieve with her. She died a few years later in a car accident. She took my car, my keys to go rescue a friend. Words can bounce off the walls at that age-- while we wait for their delicate brains to develop. Daughter You wrote a poem called Cigarettes in the Shower, even though we agreed you would only smoke on the porch. There were some many things we handled like this, bargaining with your mental health, really. I knew you loved your cigarettes. I knew you felt you needed them to be okay. I knew which store sold them to you even though you were underage. I began to refuse you money. So, you washed all the windows with crumpled newspaper to earn enough to buy a pack and brought them home anyway. I know they soothed you-- your racing brain that would not let you slow down and rest. You must have been calmed by the nicotine, that deep rush when you inhale and for a moment you tell yourself: everything’s going to be okay. In a box of mementos, I’ve saved your eyelash curler, love notes, a half-empty pack of Newport’s. I imagine the burn of tobacco as it chased down your throat and into your waiting lungs. You pulling it in, holding fast-- like the last line of your poem-- Inhale, exhale-- thinking it would keep you alive. Christine Higgins is the author of the full-length collection, Hallow (Cherry Grove, 2020). Her latest chapbook, Hello Darling, was the second-place winner in the 2019 Poetry Box competition. Her work has appeared in Pequod, America, Windhover, Nagautuck River Review, and PMS (poemmemoirstory) She is the recipient of two Maryland State Arts Council Awards for both poetry and non-fiction. Higgins is a McDowell Colony Fellow and a graduate ofThe Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. You can visit her website at: www.christinehigginswriter.com. 3/29/2021 Poetry by Alicia Elkort Torsten Behrens CC A Girl Needs Her Mother The truth is no one asked me to hide. I jumped the thicket, piled rocks until a wall of misshapen stones, chains surrounded what was left of my thornèd throne. I dreamed of hands, scratched, & rusted nail so threw the lock’s key over the fence, crawled into the dark, gritted my teeth, drew blood. Who can blame me, a mother is no light. She hides behind silk— blue triangles against cream, a scarf too tight around the neck her head tilting towards the grave, our ancestors piled in an unmarked grave-- her fear resonant while I wanted to play. Instead, I mothered myself. I smothered every joy, howled every peaceful word against a raucous wind. I hate myself was the litany. I’m not really here the amen. Everything I did, I did with my right hand while my left held mother’s tethered heart, dripping. One match, one flame is all it takes to scorch stone so the rocks will fall-- so many useless hatreds. Repeat after me. I belong.  Alicia Elkort has been nominated thrice for the Pushcart, twice for Best of the Net and once for the Orisons Anthology. She was the finalist in the 2020 Two Sylvias Book Prize and has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. She lives in Santa Fe, NM and goes to great lengths for a mountain breeze. For more info or to watch her two video poems: http://aliciaelkort.mystrikingly.com/
3/29/2021 Poetry by Bailey Merlin dailyinvention CC Interim He is sleeping by the traffic lights when police find him. The capture is dramatic: he is dirty, naked, so resistant they must restrain him with a rope like a wayward bull, hauling his body into an emergency room for cataloguing and sedation; they will not let him leave, preserving him in the white sepals of his hospital sheets. Sitting at his side, we discover the world in travel sections of last week’s paper, marveling at the edges of waterfalls and learn how best to follow good sounds, not ghosts; he reaches for me: Please, I want to give you this truth. He squeezes tight, ochre eyes confessing: Sometimes it’s water, luring me to the well, daring me to jump; sometimes it’s a drum––boom, boom, boom, follow me here. He touches my sternum, tapping for entry–fails and falls away to neuroleptic nest. Oh no, he shakes his skull to disrupt the dust, tugging at the IV that feeds him to sleep, not there, but here, in my head. I can’t live there anymore. He is rheumy; the medicated body a scaffolding for an actualized self. His voice hoarse and sour: Each time I come home, my old life rejects me, and I become something new.  Bailey Merlin holds an MFA in fiction from Butler University. Her work has been published by Into the Void, Dime Show Review, Crack the Spine, The Indianapolis Review, among others. She recently released the spoken word/jazz hybrid album Bug Eyes with Shore Side Records. She lives and writes in Boston, MA.
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