whatcanyouseenow! ghosts and stuff CC



What


What I miss most is a bunch of unsound landscapes
trimmed horizons sucked into the gaps between ramshackle mansions
I can’t find a crack in the sky nor food for a foot
I take heed of the lakes insane like butterflies and sunflowers
radio stations are crumpled masks for divine sleep
flat tires and hiccups blow up each asshole I love
evaporate manifold puddles that soon become their eyes
I am to hear rare drops of water inside the roadkill
good music always means death to the listener



​

​In the Silence of Molten Tea Spoons


It’s time again for bananas to swear 
under the dirty rugs of the sky,
when ghosts ask themselves if they breathe or not
and guinea pigs cross the Atlantic in droves.
Allergies amplify the wallpaper, but backyards 
kill the winds, mock celestial noise and widen
the wounds of the residents. Firefighters usually 
appear at the parties out of the blue
with a man that has a crocodile tail on a leash.
It’s time to look for a $22 bill
in the pockets, to sing like a horse
with a dead rider, to watch the stars frying
at the bottom of the world, tasteless.
It is the duty of mirrors to quarrel with the void.

​

                  ​whatcanyouseenow! ghosts and stuff CC



​Safe


After 3 days free on the street, 
I was returned to parental custody.

Then they punished me for my escape--
age 13, to places safer than home, like a motel, 
a garage floor, under a laundromat table, 
like Dave’s kitchen eating rigatoni with his family--

Father demanded I surrender 
the t-shirt I always wore,
a souvenir from performing in the 7th grade play.
He claimed it symbolized my rebellion and deceit,
said I would not eat till I handed it over.

The next day, I couldn’t protect it anymore. 
He threw it in the fireplace—I watched it fade 
just to get a damn tuna sandwich.  




Help


I realize that since I’m often sick, 
you and our teenaged son are 
uncomfortable with me leaving the house 
alone for a few minutes to clear my head. 
 
It’s your say since it’s your money.   
I haven’t had a job in 20 years.  
Your house. You choose who can’t visit,
who must slip around cameras to say hi. 

If you’re furious with me, it’s because I’m bad.
I meekly disagree because I’m hyperemotional. 

Why don’t you like me? I’m sorry for this fight. 
I’ll be quieter by the time you come back 
from your angry walk to the river.




​Eve Said


Don’t fuck this up.

You get to be a poet by profession
with a collection of cookbooks. 
You live in a damn garden.
I want that life.

I want to have what I want 
with no consequences--
that shit you put on Front Street.  
Doesn’t matter if you hide 
if you speak it into mics under spotlights.

I’m sorry I didn’t tell you this before.   
But you’re my homegirl and I’m telling you now:
don’t go fucking this up. 




Bookcase
 

Sitting in the corner makes you 
map the living room floor.
You find places where tomorrow 
you can hide. Eye level just above 
carpet level, you see things 
they don’t see. The curtains breathe 
in and out Summer Sundays.

When you’re assigned to 
rewriting verses from Second Peter, 
you repeat a word down the page, 
then repeat the next. 
And the meanings fall apart. 

When you lie beside the bookcase, 
you stare at the covers.
A Great Revival in the Southern 
Armies during the Civil War.   
Scientific Proof for the Great Flood. 
Ten heavy Theological Dictionaries
of the New Testament.  

Spending the afternoon in a corner 
sucks, yet your mind runs the 
landscape whenever you sit still 
and you open wide your eyes. 

​

Catherine Zickgraf’s main jobs are to write poetry and fold laundry. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Victorian Violet Press, and The Grief Diaries. Her recent chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press. 
​
Read and watch her at caththegreat.blogspot.com

                   i wen† lef† CC



Sunday Morning
​

Copper veins throb behind the bathroom wall 
                 and pound a quarter-sized hole                     in my forehead’s middle. 
The Home does this out of love, it seems, the free cranial carving. 
I press a thumb in, scraped and kissed by bone and brain-goo, 
suck the head-pie filling from my nail and stumble down its stairs, 
                                                                                                    scatter light and cats across the linoleum I picked for myself.

Wall pulse shudders the living room, 
                  stigmatas another hole through my palm     when I drag fingers on its drywall. 

Wound me enough to keep me inside The Home
searching for a needle and thread, superglue, and staple gun. 

I think this space is mine, mine to with what I please,
but occupancy does not equal ownership                   or domination over dominion. 

                                                                                                                                               It is easier than you think to build a trap
                                                                                                                                                                  that you will catch yourself in.

The Home pins me to our dining table                          like an exotic moth found dead on the doorstep, 
tips the wood with ease to pull me up
onto the mantle and burrows slow in my spine.


The Home does me like so many homekeepers/wreckers before,
                                                                                                                                                                    forwarded to new addresses.



​

It’s Normal to Fear the Ocean


I tell myself, considering the plummet
into the cordierite waves twenty feet below.
Fully clothed, plus wallet and phone,
I don’t move, of course I don’t—except
when the wind, exquisite and violent,
pulls me against splintered railing
and whips my hair into my eyes.
For that blind moment, I’m airborne,
but my grippy yellow sneakers still pinch the wood.

In that choppy second of darkness, 
I miss the dolphin a pier-stranger spots.

             Did you see that?  he asks. 
                   Tell me you saw that too.

​
​

Haley Davis is a poet and occasional writer of other things from Arizona. Her writing concerns gender, apocalypse, nature, and how awesome and beautiful it is to be queer. Some of this work can be found in QA Poetry, Boshemia Magazine, The Tunnels, and Arizona’s Best Emerging Poets: An Anthology. You can find Haley on Twitter: @haleythepoet

                    Nicolas Henderson CC



Mirror


At the hometown bar of good ol' boy locals
your name reversed on the Lowe's tag you
forgot to take off in the bar mirror lined
with pour-spouted bottles, bookended
by whitetail buck's head and largemouth
bass, a female classmate with rings climbing
the helix of one ear sits down, looks at you.

You remember her as quiet with a shy smile.
You're surprised to see her here where
you've started coming after work, soothed
by the muted talk and soft clinks of glass,
low lights and neon, two months home
from the Army.  Her white hand in the mirror
moves to your forearm and you turn to see
the same shy smile, and she says she has
been looking for you and blushes.  You don't
remember her friends really so conversation
is awkward, slows quickly.

After awhile she quietly asks what the war
was like, and you stare through the mirror
into the coughs and yells of your team,
slowly beehiving through mud-brick interiors
of Fallujah, finding hidden turbaned assassins,
trading shots in dark rooms, coming back out
into a street's shake 'n bake white smoke
of battlefield phosphorus where some angry
local scratched your name on a bullet:
American, that sears through your bicep
like a circular saw and drops your rifle
in the sand.

And you do something unexpected, by her,
by you, you roll your sleeve to show an ugly
memento from a world ablaze -- easier, better
than words.  She rests her head of dark hair
on your shoulder.

​

Steven Croft lives on a barrier island off the coast of Georgia.  An Army veteran, he left Iraq and the Army
to find a job in a public library where he has worked for the last thirteen years.  His work has appeared
in Sky Island Journal, Poets Reading the News, San Pedro River Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social
Change, Willawaw Journal, Gyroscope Review, and many other places.

                   whatcanyouseenow! ghosts and stuff CC

​


​​The Power of Release 
​

I'm walking up the path to the Cloisters,
the one by Fort Tryon Park near Jewish
Memorial Hospital where we spent an
afternoon having my chin stitched up after
that nasty fall I took in the hallway of our
art-deco apartment building on Arden Street.

The trees are still standing their ground
except for the few sick ones that now lay
dead and broken in fragments across the trail.
The clouds are still moving steadily across
the river and I'm naming them with the same
knowledge you passed along to me.

I'm still sucking on watermelon candies and
Tootsie roll pop, but I miss the chocolate
shortbread cookies you used to get me, the
ones that made me smile when I was feeling
down. The child is stirring Dad, against the
winds that run wild moving empty swings.

The world might go to war and I'm scared
even as I think about that blue-winged
dragonfly we once saw low-flying then
darting upward in winter. And I dream about
the wonders that will bewilder once this
story is told.

Maybe that's why I seek some kind of blessing
through poetry. I stop and take in the
scenery of the woods and the stonewall that
brings your memory from afar with the same
fleeting happiness I once had while smelling a
pink carnation.

If I write with velocity it's because I'm mindful
of the fact that I'm dying. Cancer may not be
eating away at me as it did you but I can feel
my body shutting down slowly and without
compassion. Mamma Della says she's got some
kind of gris-gris bag waiting on me at the Botanica.

You remember Mama Della, don't you dad? The
Santera who said she was under the protection
of the thunder god Chango. The one who kissed
my forehead after Elegua claimed me as a child
of his own. As I reach the end of this path I
feel perilously unanchored.

Yet I still remember to release while I take in
small breaths.





Impending Doom


The horizon shifts and I feel it in the form of a vertical movement,
my soul an independent system aligned to the impending feeling
of doom, transferable between dimensions, related yet separate
and independent.

My life’s force takes me to the next level where I await the ‘crash’.
There are bridges that collapse as I take a step beyond my own
consciousness, and I’m aware of the electrical sparks that suddenly
shatter in my internal environment.

In actuality, I’m riding it out, and once the process is complete I’ll 
be okay again as he dawn stretches out rolling hills, fertile, wide, as
black drapes open to the morning light. Today the confusion comes
from vulnerability,

From finally reaching the point of knowing that everything that begins
must come to an end. It’s the threat of rain that has me choosing my
words so carefully, as I pace anxiously between realizations and
understandings.

I fear something more personal, beyond self, beyond mortality. I fear
abandonment, the routine symbolized in the lethargy of life that weighs 
us down, stains our souls with solitude, as I pick up handfuls of cold
sand, letting it settle, frozen, between my fingers.

​


Theresa likes to write about matters of self-inflection and personal experiences. She likes to write about matters of an out-of body, out-of-mind state, as well as subjects of an idyllic, pagan nature and the occult. Theresa writes horror, as well as concrete gritty and realistic dramas. Theresa is said to be witch and a poet. (within the horror writing community).

                  Valerie White CC



​The Jukebox Played Surrender


Ya’ surrender your last dollar take back the quarter
From the edge o’ the bar ya’ stumble ya’ stagger
To the corner where she stands there prettier than ever
Underneath the ceilin’ fans spinnin’ like dancers
 
The jukebox the beerlight plays off o’ her shoulders
Surrounded by the others the loveless the lovers
Seemin’ handsomer smarter somehow wittier than you are
The leerer the gawker her admirer from afar
 
Who wades through the amber the glimmer o’ Budweiser
Sayin’ hey there bartender how ‘bout another
But kisses ain’t promises an’ bartenders ain’t creditors
An’ that’s one bitter chaser whatever your pleasure
 
To fin’ all your longin’ glances receivin’ no answer
From the one who ya’ hel’ once but not any longer
Feelin’ further away the closer ya’ are to her
An’ colder colder than when the  last call lights flicker
 
As ya’ sidestep ya’ swagger towards the bar door
Where ya’ shiver an it’s winter your breath in the air
‘Til back in your bed with your clothes on the floor
Ya’ pull your pillow in closer an’ whisper this prayer
 
Hi God it’s Johnny I don’t know if Ya’ remember
The last time we spoke was ten years ago if not longer
An’ though it’s been a while I still sorta wonder
If You could help me out now that I’ve lost ‘er
 
I was a drunk when we first met now I’m even drunker
An’ I feel like I’m drownin’ in some very deep water
Deeper ‘n’ lower this time I’m really goin’ under
An’ I need You before I drop another heartbeat further
 
‘Cause I’ve never felt lonelier or angrier guiltier
For anythin’ I’ve ever done to anyone before
I didn’t wanna hurt ‘er I didn’t wanna leave ‘er
Jus’ what I thought made a savior created a martyr
 
So give me some sign some knowledge that You’re up there
By listenin’ to me now by answerin’ this prayer
To forgive me all my debts as I forgive my debtors
‘Cause I’m tired an’ I’m drunk an’ God I surrender 



​
 
Drivin’ on the Black Ice
​
 
Love . . . shriekin’ on a hairpin hot rubber squealin’
Over soft shoulders breakneck speed exceedin’
The point past the distance o’ my overturnin’
Suicide doors openin’ but no room for jumpin’
 
Dead air on my stereo speakers blown ‘n’ crackin’
‘Cept on a.m. radio some evangelist is preachin’
In Jesus you can find all that you are seekin’
Hammers nails ‘n’ crosses for your own crucifyin’
 
Drivin’ on the black ice frost heaves upwellin’
With St. Mary prayin’ by dashboards lights glowin’
Across three lanes o’ highway tires hypdroplanin’
Guardrails on the edge my only grace o’ savin’
 
(Tremblin’ I’m sobbin’ cryin’ out rememberin’
Your strokin’ my forehead promisin’ whisperin’
From the futile arguin’ no cats ‘n’ dogs fightin’
As I lay there helplessly noddin’ yes believin’)
 
Fearin’ from this death ride I may not be returnin’
White knuckin’ through the thunder ‘n’ the lightnin’
Gettin’ off the exit on the nexus reemergin’
Out o’ my alignment bearins loose ‘n’ wobblin’
 
Burnin’ up the breakdown at sixty ‘n’ acceleratin’
Teardrops on my windshield once again are fallin’
Lookin’ in my rearview I thought I saw ya’ wavin’
The image o’ your figure recedin’ disappearin’
 
An’ so go all o’ my crashins 'n’ my burnins
Stoppin’ at a crossroad a fork o’ my own choosin’
Left or right no turnin’ back shiftlessly I’m idlin’
Knowin’ that I’m lost searchin’ I’m still drivin’

​

                      whatcanyouseenow! ghosts and stuff CC

​


​LA Stories: Urban Mountain Lion, South African Transplant

for Milo

You didn’t want to come here. Los Angeles took you. Down to the basement, near Parker
Center and the Deja Vu Strip Club, next to the new marijuana mall. Where tourists take
photos and buy souvenirs while freshly tatted dazzling dispensary girls sell them strains
with names like “Flying Monkey” and “Ganja Goddess.”

Cornered but wild, like P-56 the four-year-old mountain lion. Not killed, you are trapped,
tagged and set free to roam, not quite feral, uncertain of your role. So you maul the sheep
and eat the llamas. Grow grey-skinned from being locked away in the dark dank
basement. Dream of safe savannahs and freedom and foraging that won’t get you
stunned. Or killed.

Like the coyotes that saunter brazenly, morning, noon and night, across Pasadena lawns,
you roam, restless, discontent, wondering where the hunger will lead.

​
​

Bruised Arms

Purple, gold, red and yellow.
Blue too, where the elbow bends,
the space where eczema grew.
When you were six,

your teacher said you caused 
yourself to itch. Mrs. Ovens 
was her name and some teachers tied
kids to chairs and taped

mouths shut. The screeching rip
could have been Kenny Wade’s lip
or a scream from him or a classmate.
When I was 36, my arm covered with needle marks,

tightening bands to pop out veins, unseen
by squinting eyes, tapping arm.
I scream ouch use the butterfly,
reserved for little children’s hard to find veins.

Blood mixed, ingested, taken 
and given. Medical voodoo transfusions
prescribed. Pooled blood, red blood cells.
Bully bruised arms, all in search to bring a baby to life.

Alternative ending: Veins collapsed, worn out, rejected. 
Began with once, then a hundred times, later turned 
into forever chasing highs, floating into sky, 
leaving earthly bruised collage.



                                

Dreaming Sobriety

I’m like Dorothy flushed with joy, awakening, surrounded by Aunty Em and the lot.
Yes, and you and you were there I tell my older sister and my son, Raphael. All three
of us looking for a rehab where we could check in together. Dancing down
the rambling road to recovery.

At the first place they interview Rafa while my sister and I wait droopy, long hours 
vanquishing determination. I grab a staff person rushing officiously by and demand:
“Tell me the truth, it’s not our first rodeo, why the long wait? Did you just fire
someone?” You see it’s looking mighty empty. A snarky smell, piss yellow walls.
Lone poster of empty beach.

“Yup, honestly Ma’am, the place is fallin’ apart, best keep looking.” We scratch our
heads, wonder who will take all three of us, And the money? Not looking for equine
therapy or sober surfing, but still, we are a package deal and recovery doesn't come cheap
or “three for the price of one.” Feel the weight of inevitable failure. Awash with dingy
sweat, butts sink, stuck to chairs.

“How about Beit T’Shuvah?” my question pops out like a perky jack-in-the-box. 
The Jewish recovery synagogue with the Rappin’ Rabbi and the soulful choir led
by the lovely soprano who my son’s friend is smitten with; he’s mad about any girl
that can sing or speak a foreign language. They don’t turn anyone away there for lack
of shekels. Then I realize, shit, it’s Friday night, can’t check in on Shabbat. 

We begin to fade – greenish sickly cast – when our oddly un-demented mom, Rafa’s
grandma, pipes up, (Yes, she’s there too. And you. And you.) “Who says, there’s no
money?” Then she goes dark again, her words vanish like a dust devil
​sliding into the horizon.

“Well now I just feel like having a drink,” to my older sister.
“Go ahead, no one would blame ya” she pats me on the knee.

​
​

Carla Sameth’s debut memoir, One Day on the Gold Line, was published July 2019. Her work on blended/unblended, queer, biracial and single parenting appears in a variety of literary journals and anthologies including: Collateral Journal, Anti-heroin Chic, The Nervous Breakdown, Brevity Blog, Brain, Child & Brain Teen Magazine, Narratively, Longreads, Mutha Magazine, Full Grown People, Angels Flight Literary West, Tikkun, Entropy, Pasadena Weekly, Unlikely Stories Mark V, and La Bloga. Carla’s essay, “If This Is So, Why Am I?” was selected as a notable for the 2019 Best American Essays.

​She writes about addiction, trauma and resilience with a sense of humor and connection to her readers. 
Carla is a member of the Pasadena Rose Poets, a 2019 Pride Poet with the City of West Hollywood, and was a PEN in The Community Teaching Artist, She teaches creative writing at the Los Angeles Writing Project, with Southern New Hampshire University, and to incarcerated youth. Carla has an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte (Latin America). She lives in Pasadena with her wife

                      One Trick Pony CC


​
Pony  

It is still a common practice 
at fairs 
to tie ponies to turnstiles 
so children may ride them
they wear blinders
walk in circles 
we pay their owners the price 
of the ticket

It’s called domestication 

While I am here to take 
the world as it is 
rain falls hard on my parasol 
at the pier 
the wind’s bluster tears 
at that canopy 
until my hands feel 
they cannot 
hang on 

This is interpolation 

So I wonder where do I 
meet that pony 
when do her 
poll
crest
and withers 
experience the sky 
with wide open eyes 
like an umbrella alive 
to its potential 
how does she stay awake
to her function 
without becoming 
an object 

These are my questions 

In the pupils 
of that little horse 
I meet my desire 
for God
between hemispheres 
of dark we both walk.  

​
​

Jeremy Nathan Marks lives in London, Ontario. Recent poetry, prose, and photography appear/will appear in Apricity, Right Hand Pointing, Red Fez, The Blue Nib, On the Seawall, Dissident Voice, Mobius, Rat’s Ass Review, Muddy River, Literary Orphans, Floyd County Moonshine, Barren Magazine, 365 Tomorrows, New Verse News, and Unlikely Stories.

               ​ Christine Kuncke CC



​
Collections

We
spend time
collecting our
thoughts
but never
with
the intention
of letting anyone
into
our museums.
Halls
echo with
memories.
Save an entire
floor
just for
missed opportunities-
and another wing
for the
best daydreams
and hours
of hoping.
But with the doors
locked,
this space
is
nothing more
than
the realization
that
there is no room
for anyone else.

​


Epitaph

I want you
to choose your words
carefully
because
I will be buried with them
in
whatever
mangled, twisted
interpretation I choose.
I will – 
eventually – 
weaponize them
and blow apart
this entire
interaction
as soon as I’m done
holding them hostage,
Close enough to
feel their heat
but far enough
that I don’t get attached.
I need you
to regret
every word of it
so you will not hover
above me,
a ghost to my grave.

​


Creation

I
without caution
invented you in my head.
Explain away
each flaw,
justified
each shadow.
Projected
what I wanted
and
never
saw through
to the truth,
to the damage
being done.
Holding on
to this image
feels so real.
And for you,
walking away is so easy,
because this portrait
looks nothing like you
and it is easier
to not even try
to match my
brushstrokes.

​


Imprint

I can’t
affect you
any more than
you let me.
If you
Give me
permission
to come inside,
perhaps I’ll stay.
Sink into your
favourite
chair,
let it take the
shape of my bones.
If only for a brief
time,
I can still
leave a mark.
But if you fear
the skeletal remains
that you
cannot banish
to a closet,
then this was never more
than dust,
easy enough to
let collect,
but unmistakably
removable
once you regain
the strength
to exhale.

​

                S A Kindstrom CC



​
What Kind Of Faggot Are You?


Are you a cherry blossom or evergreen?

The online quiz determined that I would be a giant sequoia,

but the German in my last name translates to oak.

What I’m really asking is

what would you grow to be

if they didn’t sliver you down to sticks

and feed you into the fire. 

​