Jacksons Everywhere

As we left Tuscaloosa in ‘68,
heading north to the place
we called home in Ohio,
before Dad left for the war,
my brother and I sprawled
loose in the station wagon
in deep night so we’d sleep,
I heard Johnny Cash’s voice
carried through the air to us
by some high-power
AM station. When he sang,
I’m going to Jackson,
I wondered if we’d see him
and June, if maybe they were
family I’d yet to meet.

Years later, I learned
their Jackson was not mine,
though my people sounded
like them, and my daddy
played guitar, sang old songs
and made my mama laugh.
Our hills weren’t their hills,
and their Jackson was damn near flat,
while ours rolled along
the edge of Appalachia,
a county seat in iron country,
even then starting to fade.
As it turns out, I’ve learned,
there are Jacksons everywhere.

Before we rolled into town,
we cheered the sight
of the red apple water tower
hovering over the town.
It hovers there still,
painted and repainted
over the years, shining there
like it marks a city
a star may dream of
running to, not a town
children dream of leaving.

​

       Chris Hunkeler CC



z’s pslam

yo look down here                                                                                                                                                                                        
see me    feel me                   
up here on myrtle

man i’m scared                                                                                                                                                           
the young ones be chasing the dragon
they gets crazy violent
i'm dead if i go into a nod                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
i’m crawling  patting the cement                                                                                                                                                     
i gots to find a spike two grams         
they’ll get me to the promise land

listen  you don’t look like no hypocrite                                                                                                                                                                          
i know one when i see  one
they walk by me every  day
they be selling getting into heaven magazines                                                                                                                                                                              
going to church wearing   badges   crowns
shouting   praising jesus’ name

them people treats me worser than a stinking dog                                                                                                                
betcha they won’t be sitting up in my father’s house

yo  have mercy                                                                                                                                                                              
pat the sidewalk with me       
all i need is a spike  two grams
they’ll beam me up                                                                                                                                                                              
let me sit in lap of the lamb

July
 
A night without stars,
and the air so full
of late July heat, nothing
can travel through it.
The buzz of hornets
and cicada song float,
caught just above
the ground. The warm
metallic scent of gasoline
and cigarette smoke mix
together in a haze that
clings to each brown
blade of grass, sinks
into my skin, and makes
me think that tonight
I could bathe in the thickness
of the wind. Tonight
I could float down
into the saturated warmth
of the soil. Tonight
I could cover myself
with the weight
of this solitude. Or,
tonight I could
step out onto the air,
climb it all the way
up to the moon.


Laura Thorp received her MFA in Poetry at North Carolina State University in 2015. She currently works in the English Department at the University of South Carolina where she is also earning her PhD in American Literature. This is her first poetry publication.

OUROBOROS


The great cycle makes good on dichotomy—what’s one thing,
a thing divergent. I am making us coats out of mutton, I am stewing
Arithmancy into tongues & graciously devouring them.
We talk about a future of Brimstone, you say no future at all.
We watch angels die on the crackling tv screen—we wait
as they come alive in our living room. The serpent in the tank
beside us chews on its own skin. It is shedding, it is hungry.
I have dead skin stuck between my teeth. You are widening your mouth
inhaling perdition, turning inside out the tv. What is lovely has been
eaten. Angels watch us from the other side. They are tethered to
our alchemy. They are smoking weed, drinking booze, & laughing manically
at our bad habits. They are hanging on to every drama, every romantic Satan
comedy. The true tragedy is to see ourselves in this dream. The true terror
is suffering from our own intangibility. We are lost things—to the angels
we are fading quickly. Our inexplicable fragility clings to the ceiling fan
of a celestial waiting room, rounding ourselves, mouth to feet
ripping off our skin—teeth & gnash—eagerly.

​

Courtney Leigh is the author of "the unrequited <3<3 of red riding hood & her lycan lover (Dancing Girl Press, 2016)." She is The Bowhunter of White Stag Publishing, & the creator & Kitchen Witch of Crimson Sage Apothecary.
​

MOTHER WOUND

1.
Every bottle is filled with blood.
Like a Stoker-drawn mother, you
drain the thick fluid under the cover
of darkness, leave the empty containers
littered across the hardwood floor.
You sleep late. Your daughter wakes.
She opens her own veins
without complaint, spends the day
dripping fresh iron into each bottle,
watching translucent glass transform
into opacity, viscous maroon. Everything
is bloodied, everything is blood. Your
daughter's body is spattered along the walls,
an unconscious lump slumped in the corner.
You don't notice her there.
You swallow a clot, something
that almost staunched her bleeding.
It feels good sliding
down your throat.

2.
The walls of the house are drenched
in boiling blood. Melting. Outside,
meteors shaped like mother’s skull
crash into the vodka-filled vat of the the earth.
The stars have fallen out of the sky.
In space, she orbits an empty bottle
and a floating faucet called God, one that leaks
thick liquid psychosis.
The world is ending
and there is only the one bitter divinity.
The daughter doesn’t pray.

3.
Family portrait framed in gold:
Lipstick virgin’s blood-
colored kiss runs in the mitochondria, all
mother. All smothered by the mother
before. Spirits inside the
still-living, echoes and old perfume.
Glass bottle broken, teeth
coated in maroon. The smell of
it is everywhere. Women upon
women choking on ghostly fumes.




OPEN LETTER TO MY FATHER

I have asked for you and been gifted silence

I have pulled out each of my teeth, one by one
wrapped them in beautiful boxes as birthday presents to you,
so every year it becomes more difficult for me to speak,
like a child aging backwards, the tongue increasingly clumsy,
the words garbled, the air between us growing as still as space,
where sound waves have no medium in which to travel

I have tried to drag the words out of you,
have cast fishing lines down your throat and caught nothing
but “okay”s and “see ya”s, once or twice a rare “love you” and
even then half-hearted, even then punctured, even then
nearly impossible for my bony arms to reel in

When did you become so quiet, father? Has your voice
been captured, held hostage by apathy or anger or fear?
Has mine been taken, too?

Are our vocal chords elsewhere, disembodied
but in the middle of a lively conversation about books or traffic tickets
or films or politics or parents or pets or problems or anything,
anything?

Is there a world where we hug like we mean it,
where I get to keep my teeth and give you guitar picks instead?

Are we speaking, somewhere?​

​

      ​  Araceli Arroyo CC



This is Where You Belong

This is twenty-five miles southwest of Chicago, a shadow
the Sears Tower cast across Gatling's old land, a wheat field
cleared for a billboard announcing an outlet mall that never broke ground.

& this is the Zenon J. Sykuta Elementary School
playground where kids broke skin against mulch. Splinters swam
in blood, boys kissed girls, lips wetted with dares.

& this is Atkin Park, where a sock-swaddled padlock swung
an eviction notice to an eye. Blood speckled hopscotch squares.

& this is Chris' backyard, where concrete chipped
knuckles, where boys chased a jump ball, shared sweat,
put up shots for games of twenty-one, wobbled defenders.

& this is the creek ditch where victims emptied
pockets of a few bills, Pokémon cards, & Frooties. Big Moe peddled
away on someone's Mongoose. He said he was coming back.

& this is Kostner Avenue where kids flew
downhill on the same bike, arms extended, wind coasting over palms.

& this is another U-Haul truck going. & this is another U-Haul
truck coming. & this is another U-Haul truck
with a belly full of furniture, engine idled for arrival or departure.

& this is a For Sale sign. & this is a For Rent sign. & this is a For Rent Sign.

& this is the streetlight on 180th, outside St. Emeric,
where Keith's mom whooped him in front of all of his friends
because he stayed out with lightning bugs, mayflies, & stars.

& this is the teal-on-black Cutlass Supreme with 24-inch rims
that rippled bass down Ravisloe Terrace, up Idlewild Drive.

& this is Country Pantry. That's the AMC Loews. That's the Walmart
where teens posted up in the parking lot, loitered
around their mother's sedans, revved their hips to summer hits.

This is Country Club Hills, where I-57 & I-80 lace
like fingers interlocked over the city. The American flag,
two hundred fifty pounds of polyester, flaps over the land.

​


​After the Towers Fell, Black Boys Felt American

                     She's a terrorist. Her sister's             a terrorist. Her daddy
                     flew a plane into the towers.            You see him,
                     their family, walking                         down Baker Street.
                     You know it isn't true,                      him a sleeper.
                     These kids waged war                     before America crumbled.
                     Snatched hijabs at gym:                  twin columns of smoke
                     rise from these daughters,            stand in New York City
                     still. Orange flags. Red flags          flap on Pulaski Avenue.
                     Even with your black skin,             without cowboy boots,
                     say Bin Laden at Dunkin.                Say these girls aren't welcome
                     in your country.                                   Don't spit in their faces.
                     Don't stop it, either.                          Today you are American.


​

the body, unarchived
​

existing in comparison with and i wish

—oh, how i wish—but i won’t
instead i will empty
then heal then
symbolize. From
saints to their gardens and icons, what
is left for me?

Worship this hollow.
this hollow calculated,
this hollow algorithmic,
this hollow beauty*hurt=meaning
and no more joy
but aren’t          you        glad       you
did it     ?

unwanted naps stick to plastic,
but it’s easy to lie about
what goes in

how was i to know
to swallow spirit alone?

i’m barely any older now but i
              know how brittle looks
i’m barely any older now but i
              have built a shrine
i’m barely any older now but i
              accept the offerings
i’m barely any older now but i
              know this vessel is
              like the stars that are the
              crust of all that is
and will
not be destroyed by
mortal means


​
Lindsay Hargrave is a senior journalism major at Temple University in Philadelphia. Poetry is a focus of much of her writing alongside non-fiction, and both of these writing practices inform one another.

​Shevirah
 
You say break and people think of vessels
Fragile things holding something else
There is the shatter, the spill, the fragments and ruined insides
 
Everything sharp and disconnected from what was
I think of breaking like waves.
I have a theory that waves are as singular as snowflakes,
 
Energy embodied for miles, then at the end of one story
Reabsorbed and returned to the sea for what’s next.
The concept of infinity sinks into you and you see
 
Science requires faith, even when the observation is complete.
Moving parts, magic lanterns
That which is full of light
 
That which exists only through contrast
We are stuck in moments that whir past
Embrace the illusion that a story unfolds
 
In the repeating circle.
Turn light over in your hand and
From this angle we might call it hope.
 
Darkness breaks into fear, despair
Is it the absence of light or is light the absence of darkness or
Are they unrelated companions that travel together and
 
Do not interfere with each other’s nature
It’s exhausting, thinking like you
Normal people think – I am full of fear
 
Full of hope, breaking constantly on the rocks
And the energy has to go somewhere.
It’s razor sharp, the boundary between
 
I got this and Oh fuck
I’m drowning please
Help me no run away I’m beyond
 
Saving – no daylight between
Where I bounce back and forth
Trying to balance and my feet
 
Bleed where the fine line cuts through.
I no longer believe in opposites
Everything nestles more like bodies pressed
 
So close they overlap like atom clouds
You could say they are still one and one but
They are a new thing full of each other.
 
I am always full of joy and despair, brokenness and return
But only see one at a time
Shuttling between, shaking shivering shattering
 
In the reconciliation of my truths.
Dear god, make me a zoetrope
Where the light and the dark and the glimpses between
 
Blur into more, into meaning, into motion
Faster and faster until you refocus and see
Horses racing, someone dancing.
 


 
Ice In The Desert
 
Before, when it was just desert and tents
No radio, electric lights, butane cook stoves
 
I wonder if the world felt vast
When we could not pinpoint each other on a map
 
We knew how to make ice, before we invented
Written language, the timeline an open question
 
Of priorities, elemental needs unfolding in
Purposeful order - what can we learn from this
 
Or coincidence, the lucky discovery in which we recognize
Desire before we understand what we’ve done
 
I file this fact with cross references:
Revelatory history, human ingenuity, survival skills, miracle
 
Our ancestors, too ancient to trace through trees
We bind ourselves with DNA swabs and family legend
 
Those nomads made long, shallow pools lined with stone
Filled them with water in the early evening hours, then
 
Returned before first light to collect
The ice, then stored in hollow domes over deep holes
 
As you unpack the implications of science deformed
By imagination let me whisper the poetics of the process
 
Water laid out throws heat in the form of light
On cloudless desert night, all space is laid bare above us
 
Our atmosphere cannot hold on to what radiates
And a window opens to the universe
 
Light, which is heat, which is energy, sent to and through the sky
Giving more, giving up, cooling faster than
 
The world around it, island of change, of
Metamorphic discovery.  We are the ice, born
 
Too early in time to be understood, loved nonetheless, we
Are the stars, receiving more than we return.

​

Shana Ross is a writer, mother, occasional muse, sometime wallflower, middle aged ambivert with a BA and MBA from Yale University. Since resuming her writing career in 2018, she has appeared in over a dozen different publications, including Anapest Journal, Chautauqua Journal, Ghost City Review, Mad Scientist Journal, The Sunlight Press, and Writers Resist.  

​SORROW OF SORROWS

Sorrow of sorrows
you have softened 
my bones that once
stood firm as you
have rained so

hard on me. In
the elements
sorrows’ lesson
left me to die.

I refuse to

give in. I show
my teeth. My bones
take the blows and
sorrows’ wallops.

I take it in.
My demise is
near. I go null.
I have been bashed

to no end. I
am beyond grief.

Feel my wound on
the meat of my
heart. How I itch.

The wall is built
while sorrow climbs
it with such ease.




BRING IT
 
Bring a little sadness
to my plate,
morsels of sorrow,
little crumbs
of doubt,
I will digest it all.
 
Toss in disgust into
my coffee cup,
sugar cubes of
disappointment,
milk of
hard lived life.
 
I will drink it up.
 
Dream up shreds of anguish
for my soul,
slivers of
anesthesia
and oppression,
I will sleep and awake.
 
In the mutilated light
I will walk,
take steady and
hesitant steps,
until I find my pace.
I have stamina.




​SO FAST
 
I feel you
when I put
my hand
upon 
my breast.
 
The heart beats 
so fast all
the time
you are
near me.
 
What does it
all mean? I
do not 
want to
love you.
 
I do not
want to fall
in love
just to
lose it.


​
Luis, born in Mexico, lives in California, works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His poems have appeared in Trailer Park Quarterly, Venus Versus Scorpio Ezine, and Yellow Mama Magazine. His first poetry book, Raw Materials, was published by Pygmy Forest Press. His last two chapbooks, Make the Light Mine and Digging a Grave, were published by Kendra Steiner Editions.