​Nicolas Henderson CC



What I Bring to the Table

Not my conversation, a collage of scraps overheard from restaurant patrons.

Not my midnight, whose foreman is a moon with a white hardhat and a rolled-up blueprint.

Not my mind, which, if a river, is teeming with carp.

Not my will to live, once likened to a pickup truck that runs OK but gets shit mileage.

Not my sky, abounding in snowflakes like down from a burst pillow.

Not my solar system, with subway stops on planets you wouldn't be caught dead on after dark.

Not my soul, iridescent like a puddle of gasoline.

Not my feet, worn down from stopping the Flintstones car of my urge to escape.

Not the palms of my hands, the lifelines ending abruptly like a heartbeat when a stethoscope is cut.

But my love, which fits you tight as shrink wrap, which fits you like a throat fits a scalding draft of coffee, or an envelope fits a cash payment. Which possesses you, holding you suspended like the notes of "Let's Get Lost" in Chet Baker's broken jaw.

​

​

The Golden Age of Country Music

The drawl was a panel wagon driven slowly at night
so as not to arouse suspicion.
The pedal steel notes were teeth in a smile
that had lost the will to live.
The hi-hat hits were coins in a sack
once the bank account was drained.
The Nudie jacket had constellations that guided you
so deep in the desert sidewinders sounded like Jesus.
The trap kit shuffle was the scrape of shovels
as graves were being dug.
And each song grew fainter
as we walked deeper in the pines,
snatches of music little shots of nicotine
as I took you to a glade the moon had forgotten.
A place with no way out for crying brides
or young men in uniforms
with all their mortal doubts 
tucked between cheek and gum.

​

Richard-Yves Sitoski is a songwriter, spoken word artist and the 2019-2021 Poet Laureate of Owen Sound, Ontario, Canada. He has released two books of verse, brownfields (Ginger Press, 2014) and Downmarket Oldies FM Station Blues (Ginger Press, 2018), and a CD of spoken word poetry, Word Salad (2017). He came within 8 years of obtaining a Ph.D. in Classics. His house is drafty, his wife is patient, and his cat is impossible.

                    Elo Vazquez CC




Imagine If I were Home in My Body
                                                           a meditation
 
Imagine if the planets could circle
here, intrinsic to my stardust hippocampus,
imbuing their celestial knowledge
on my fragile, mortal mind. What weeks
 
would grow from my spine? What
blessings would pour from my palms?
Beneath streetlamps, I’d glow, burn,
orbit a new purpose; the gutter would collect
 
my clothes as I ascended, ready to
enter a new plane of existence. The body is
what we make of it: I intend to
redesign my fingerprints after meteors, extend
 
my tastebuds into galaxies invisible
to the naked eye. My gaze is a word away
from perfect. If there’s an opening
for nebulae, dig my roots into the sky, now home.




​
Saltwater Heart as Tidepool with the Waves Washing In

I’m terrified to write about it
               because to pin it to paper
                              would be to admit. I’m terrified
of the admitting, of the truth
                barreling me over, demonstrating
my weakness, my stupidity.
                              The truth is: I wasn’t weak or stupid.
                Victims aren’t weak or stupid.
We’re endurance as rock, as kind-hearted
                 cardinals giving the dawn songs,
                                we’re flashing sunbeams, the reason 
                 everything grows. We radiate, gleam,
and this is celebration. This is carrying
                 the world on our shoulders, getting shit done,
and giving second chances. Brave heart,
                 wanting the best for someone isn’t a flaw.
                                 You care, and you tried, and you made it out
                  shining, a seastar made of emeralds.
And you will love again.

​

                 Jarrett CC



Against Your Word


A hard fall into winter,
the year’s final act, chill
weathering shrubbery, light
a precious asset, darkness
come to hold sway over the land.

And a single thought that wanders off,
left by the roadside, that follows
train tracks, that camps on the outskirts.
A single memory washing its shirt
in a cold stream’s heavy water.

Be it a word or scent.
Be it the day you said you loved me.
When you crossed your heart,
scouts’ honour, but never loved me.

​



Dead Metaphor


The morgue is a beehive,
a factory making dark honey.
It’s where we store the raven’s feathers.
Where death goes when it’s sleepy.

The morgue is a hole nicknamed Corruption.
Former gods come here to marry their errors
and it stinks of disillusionment.
Such a divine abode, its reluctant citizens
the colour of old money and tartar.
They who only whisper when they speak.
A hoarse cough in place of laughter.
A bone that crumbles very like a sigh.
Death has painted every drain and knife
the colour of mothers mourning.

​
​

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,600 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are ‘The So-Called Sonnets’ (Silenced Press); ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy’; (Cawing Crow Press); ‘Like As If’ (Pski’s Porch); ‘Hearsay’ (The Poet’s Haven).

                  S A Kindstrom CC



Night Moves

Tired, he asks what she wants, and she says,
 “You know that old Bob Seger song?
The one about sex in the car with the lines
I used her/she used me/but neither one cared?”
He says, “Yeah” and she says, “The song is over,
then right at the end, a tambourine comes in.” 
He says, “Okay,” and she says, “No, you think 
it’s done, and it is, pretty much, and then,
it starts driving forward again and you feel it,
but you’re not thinking, ‘What the hell?
That instrument hasn’t been in this song at all.”
That’s what I want. In a date, a dance, a life.
I want to be thinking that it’s almost over 
and then have a fucking tambourine come in.”

​
​

                 lillie kate CC



Redress

Angela. Wish I knew how,
where to find you.
Would you remember me, or that I sat behind you
in our eighth grade English class?
As we discussed Animal Farm, other works of the 
Eurocentric canon, I studied the
swell
twirls
twists of
your two neat plaits.

You were the only one of us who hadn’t been 
seated
bent at the nape of the neck
by the stove in her mother’s kitchen
or in Mrs. Johnson’s salon,
hot comb 
Dax
Blue Magic
Ultra Sheen
or 
Dark and Lovely Creme relaxer 
scorching her coils into submission.

Fed up with your confidence 
in revealing 
kinks and kitchens 
our mothers tried to hide,
I asked you, 
“Why don’t you straighten your hair?”

I remember your smile.
You turned around, announced, 
“my hair doesn’t need to be straightened”
and turned back to your work.
“Yes, it does,” I snickered.

I wish you had been there to see me 
at 18 
when I heard Farrakhan accuse
sisters and brothers 
who “do things” to our hair 
of being dissatisfied 
with the way God gave it to us.
I was angry until 
I realized my shame of its texture
and determined to never chemically alter it again,

the day I walked down 125th Street, 
scarf secured around my head,
strands springing forth,
wrapped around each other like
the roots of a mangrove, 
when an African sister offered to braid my hair.
I smiled through my no thank you,
her pointing. 
“You’re going to wear your hair like that?”
My eyes affixed on the horizon,

at 40 when I undid my last box braid,
threw away my last 
plastic bag full of unraveled Kanekalon hair,

at 46 when the last comb infiltrated my crown.
I wish you could see me work 
my scalp, 
my hair over with 
witch hazel, water, peppermint oil.

At 48, locs caress my shoulders.

Yesterday, a little girl looked up at me,
my locs framing my face. 
She said, “You look pretty. I like your hair,”.
It is what I should have said to you that day in class,
though you never needed me to.

​
​

                Nicolas Henderson CC



Patron Saint of “Here We Go Again”
​

Shadrach said to Abendego, "I don't feel 
these burns, brother, do you?"
 as Mishael hid his palms. It is only easier

to sleep with your demons rather than fight them
if you can prove you know them in the first place.
I'm not struggling to breathe 

                I'm just 

rewilding my lungs. This isn't praying 
its reclaiming, this isn't searching for 

this is hiding from. 
The only problem with being 

a follower of the gospel of Saint Knives
is making sure you are not so sharp you cut yourself.

A year of moments missed
because you were too busy
finding out how to live, is seldom an excuse, 
but you can pray if you really believe
you will change.

I've read more convincing scripture 
written in breath on mirrors I'm disappearing in
Today,  “I will not” is
 the "remains to be seen" 
of grieving and

my understanding 
is a schism, my stigmata a shibboleth
 I don't expect anyone else to pronounce.

Yes, this martyr complex is self inflicted.

​



The Doctors Morsecode Is Faint But Seems to Say Help Yourself


I mistook poison for  reward so often,
 prevention is just the process of knowing
most medicines are toxic,
whilst decorating cakes with painkillers the whole time.
 
Congratulations, you have one year since your last
tautology. Can I interest you in being both
in and not in a regressive state?

My immunity to good intentions
is unaffected, my tolerance to advice
is single pixel thin right now. 

What we have is a case of miscommunication,
her job is to ensure I continue
for a given value of onward.

Medicating on loss is easier
side effects look like symptoms
or lost functions. I am paradigm of un-purpose
so I just sit and swallow, hope for something more.

​
​

Blood Orange
 
I met a blood orange at the grocery store. 
I wore gloves when I picked up the blood orange.
I wore gloves when I brought the blood orange home.
I wore gloves when I took off my gloves. 
 
I asked the blood orange to get a test,
But the blood orange said that tests were hard to come by
And to trust her, because oranges are organic 
And I can trust organic. 
 
And the orange asked me if I had been tested, 
And I said no, but I wore gloves when I picked her up.
So the orange said she wasn’t worried, so I shouldn’t be worried,
But if I was worried, she would just peel herself. 
 
But I was very hungry. And her peel looked very clean. 
 
So I ran the blood orange under some warm water. 
And I lathered her peel until her peel relaxed.
And I peeled her peel with nails clipped clean,
Until the scent of citrus was screaming in my nostrils
And the hemoglobin in the pith strained into my hands 
As rivulets, flooding the channels of my palm lines.
And the death god that loomed so large in my mind
Shrank so microscopic when looking at an orange unfurled, 
Asking me so kindly to eat. 
 
And vitamin c does a body good. 

​

Nathan Dennis is a Manhattan based playwright and poet of Floridian extraction. He holds a BFA from Tisch, NYU. He has been published in Punchdrunk Press, The Cabinet of Heed, Neologism Review, Crepe & Penn, and The Magnolia Review. His most recent play, Circle of Shit, was produced at Dixon Place in March, 2019.

                   lillie kate CC



from
​"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting"


Why is it
a simple shape
suggests

much more,
a part to make
the whole?

This line might
be a ridge
of mountains.

That curve a
woman's breast.
Is it in

the artist's
eye, or the
beholder's?

Is it in
what's put on
canvas? No.

Suggestion
is in the
thing itself.

Each thing is
everything
it can be.





​from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting"


The artist stood
back where the poet

would. Distance
lets you see more

closely. The heat
of attention

pushes hard at
its object, model

or bowl of fruit.
Truth has its say

from such a vantage,
far enough but

not too far. Here,
stand here and look

at her. You will
see what I mean.





from
"The Woman in an Imaginary Painting"


Imagination,
you say. This.

Somewhere a young
woman needs help,

trapped in the dark,
desperate. Not

our business,
you say. This.

It could be your
daughter. We could

be her last hope.
This. Listen. She is

trying to speak.



Tom Montag's books of poetry include: Making Hay & Other Poems; Middle Ground; The Big Book of Ben Zen; In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013; This Wrecked World; The Miles No One Wants; Imagination's Place; Love Poems; and Seventy at Seventy. His poem 'Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain' has been permanently incorporated into the design of the Milwaukee Convention Center. He blogs at The Middlewesterner. With David Graham he recently co-edited Local News: Poetry About Small Towns.

                   Elo Vazquez CC



Be

​
When is the age to put down childish things and become grown? To give up on fantastical notions and throw away dreams, to put youthful things away and become an adult?

Was this where I thought I’d be ten years ago? In tears every night, melancholy phrases, lyrics, poetry, buzzing through my head constantly, one hundred miles per hour, heart beating fast, too fast,

breath hitching in my chest, drinking cup after cup after cup of coffee until caffeine replaces the blood in my veins and I don’t know who I am anymore and now my heart hurts, please make the pain go away.

When will young girls stop having to grow up fast? Learning to develop a thick skin, too thick, not letting anyone in -– ever, pushing people away until no one cares because we don’t let them, not letting ourselves be loved because we were told we don’t deserve love, we were told we weren’t good enough.

Was growing up supposed to be this soul-crushing? Gut-wrenching? Somehow, we withstood the vicious fight because we were resilient (why?), we became unbreakable when we didn’t need to be. Childhood is a fight we survived only to find ourselves fighting more as adults.

When will we be able to stop fighting?

When will we be able

to simply

be?

​



Death Sentence

Gripping tight,
F
         A
                    L
                        L
                              I
                                       N
                                                G
fast, never alone – not anymore. Falling together, too fast, too deep, ever deeper.

Reckoning has come – our world is dying. A death sentence is slapped like a name-tag onto each fresh-birthed child, no longer safe in its mother’s womb.

Humans exist in a world purely and wholly designed for hands to touch. We cannot keep each other safe anymore. Bear hugs and kisses are threats, handshakes and high-fives risk destruction.

As barbed wire encloses on our lungs and our faces become pale, as our skin becomes a map of all the ways we hurt, the darkness suffocates, pulling the air from our lungs like a clown’s handkerchief, pulling out the life inside us – there’s so much of it! And we grasp for moments of the clean air of hope, the moment our mouths expel the aching despair that replaced the air in our lungs.

We search for that addictive drug: DIS-TRAC-TION. Something, anything that will keep our minds from worrying about the unknown.

It’s coming closer, the icy grip of dread creeps in, its bony fingers grasping your heart, squeezing the blood out of it, replacing it with emptiness. Bone marrow shifts to liquid terror and the cold, sharp, white bite of loneliness latches onto your skin like a vampire, sucking the life from you.

Lives are transient, we live on edge, waiting, wishing that the darkness won’t grasp our ankles and pull us back to purgatory.

Feeling is fatal.

The moment of eternal reckoning has come, our fate has broken the seal on the lips of life.
Death grips our shoulders, reverse-CPR takes hold of the life within us.
As we breathe our last, we wish,
for a moment,

that we had done things differently.

​

                     much0 CC



The Trip

“Think about your future, baby, forget about your used to be.” – “Confessin’ the Blues,” Jay McShann, Walter Brown

“I had a father complex,” Nena laughed –
more self-conscious than amused –
“so even though he was twenty years older
and my first impression of Tim
was he was
overweight, boring, full of himself,
we married, went to India together
for the enlightenment.
But it didn’t last even a year.”

Ever since the photographer Parkinson
discovered her in Stockholm
when she was just fourteen,
Nena’d never had time
to  think things through,
the big questions about life, purpose:
the whirlwind modeling career,
Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar,
the Village types, her movie
with Edie Sedgwick, Warhol’s superstar actress,
the disastrous marriage with Tim –
Pennebaker’s You’re Nobody Til Somebody Loves You. 

“I met Robert in the kitchen at Millbrook,
when I was begging Tim for a divorce.
He was trying to persuade Tim to stop
taking so many drugs.
Learning about Buddhism from Robert felt like déjà vu.
What serendipity, meeting my husband there!
It’s like a skateboard is hovering
just outside your door.
You can close the door,
or you can jump on and take a ride.”

​



Working on a Noble Cause

Looking for an alternative
to bullets and bombs, 
during the Cold War,
Lieutenant Colonel James Ketchum, MD,
experimented with psychedelics 
on hundreds of healthy soldiers –
drugs that caused delirium –
PCP, LSD, BZ.

Though volunteers weren’t told
what they were taking,
how they might react –
“not really informed at all,”
according to the chief medical officer –
Ketchum declared they’d
“performed a patriotic service,
not guinea pigs at all.”

Ketchum built padded cells
for test subjects taking drugs,
filmed stoned soldiers
in a makeshift “outpost,”
like a Hollywood movie set.

Another brainchild, Project Dork,
examined using BZ on the battlefield
to stupefy enemy soldiers.
No need to shoot them;
just get them wrecked!

But still, he said he struggled
with the duties of a doctor
and those of a soldier, convinced
“I am doing more the right thing
than the wrong thing.”





Attempting to Turn on Tillich

Leary and Alpert tried to recruit
people from Harvard Divinity School
to replace the psychotic model the psychologists used 
with a mystic model,
to explain the psychedelic experience.

Harvey Cox, author of the bestselling Secular City,
almost tempted but turned them down,
though they’d mentioned the religious imagery
Concord Prison inmates had used
to describe the experience.
“Some are seeing hell,” they said,
“Others are having beatific visions.’

One morning they encountered the great Christian existentialist,
Paul Tillich, having breakfast in a restaurant,
invited him to join the research.

The grand German theologian, who dropped wisdom
like a groundskeeper scattering seed –
Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone.
Solitude expresses the glory of being alone. 
The courage to be
is the courage to accept oneself, 
in spite of being unacceptable –
likewise declined the offer.

“Do you really think that this
is for someone like me?” he growled.
“Someone who grew up in a medieval German town
with all its culture?
Do you really think all that tradition
can be found in the form of a pill?”

“Yes!” Leary and Alpert exclaimed.  



​
Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore and Reviews Editor for The Adirondack Review. A chapbook of poems, Me and Sal Paradise, was published last year by FutureCycle Press. Two full-length collections are forthcoming in 2020, Catastroika, from Apprentice House, and Ugler Lee from Kelsay Books.