4/4/2022 8 Comments Poetry by Betsy Mars Nathalie CC
Mom, will you sit still? I’m trying to conjure you from the near nothingness you've become. You flicker after more than twenty years absence, your voice slips away, or is stuck on repeat- always the same phrase, a record skipping. My fingers remember your cool skin, the small expanse of your back, your spine protruding. Your scent quickly evaporating, the clothes I kept, disintegrating, your handwriting on paper, silverfish baiting, remnants of nail polish fading. There is no one alive who can fix you for me- their memories failing in their own degenerating. So I ask you again: stop shifting as I sift through photos, scraps, your sheer Mom-ness drifting. Come to me so I can flesh you out. Beneath my graying temples, in my brain’s blanketing folds I hold you, still. Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, a photographer, and publishes an occasional anthology through Kingly Street Press. She is an assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Poetry publications include ONE ART, Anti-Heroin Chic, New Verse News, Sky Island, and Minyan. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. Betsy’s photos have been featured in RATTLE’s Ekphrastic Challenge, Spank the Carp, Praxis, and Redheaded Stepchild. She is the author of Alinea and co-author of In the Muddle of the Night with Alan Walowitz.
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4/4/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Chris Bottini Artwork: Sarah Bottini And Then Where Did I Go? A church basement Styrofoam coffee cups and love I didn’t want Or need I needed neurons and synapses equal to the world And being well short of that I wanted none at all Wanted numbness and a fast forward button The quickness of pleasure and its immediate present Save me from thought Drop me on a stool in the soft low light Of my last evening melting into madness But instead you brought me here You who I know now only by silence And by practice and never directly But when I see you reflected or refracted Against green moss or the idea of green Against my quietest need met by hands That could touch anything else but touch me Against coolness or warmth or the sharp edge Of turning from the easy to the simple Against unnecessary grace And the infinitely knowable, my dearest people When I see you there for a moment I stay In the basement of our quiet work The Karner Blues I’m taken by good things done quietly. On the ocean floor microbes eat methane, A silent consuming keeps the earth Cool, stable. Meanwhile on the surface, the Thunderous drain the pond of our own work for a new mall that sells progress and sneakers so clean there’s no trace of the humans who made them. A plaque on the wall of the Karner Blue Butterflies killed reassures all we are kind. Our Father Our CEO says We do good by doing well. Growth is also the lump on my breast. Two eternal women steady a man Fallen on the hot street. A band unnamed only plays shelters and no money gets you front row seats. We dangle together unsheltered On the hot street In the shelter In the front row Remembering the Karner blues Hoping the ocean below. Chris is a poet who lives in Albany, New York with his one-eyed cat named Leela Bubbles McFriendship and a guitar named Gretschen. His poems have previously appeared in the spam folders of his friends. 4/4/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Matthew King Andrew Kiss CC
Sestina on a Winter Night I’m running out of time and can’t remember a thing it was I thought I should be doing with all this time I’m running out of. Maybe I’ll see if I can try to write a poem. It doesn't seem, so far, as if it’s helping. But anyway I might as well keep going. I ought to try to work out where it’s going, but if I did, how long would I remember? I can’t imagine how this can be helping- there must be something else I should be doing instead of counting words to write this poem. I should have gone to bed already, maybe. But even though I think this isn’t maybe exactly how I thought this should be going, the more I keep on working at this poem the more I think I might somehow remember whatever I had thought I should be doing. I hope it works, since nothing else is helping. It could be someone else this poem’s helping and that’s why I should keep on writing, maybe; it could be that I don’t know what I'm doing and never will, but still I should keep going to help somebody somewhere to remember how anyone’s supposed to write a poem or how they’re not supposed to write a poem. I’m sure there’s no way else I could be helping and if there ever was I don’t remember and even though through all this time there may be no way for me to tell how well it’s going it’s still the thing I have to keep on doing. So this is what I’ve been up all night doing- I had to find a way to write this poem before I start forgetting that it’s going to be the only thing I’ve done that's helping-- it’s almost morning. I’m afraid that maybe I’m running out of time and won’t remember- Whatever I’ve been doing, whether helping whether not, I wrote this poem—now maybe there’s something someone’s going to remember. Matthew King used to teach philosophy at York University in Toronto; he now lives in what Al Purdy called "the country north of Belleville", where he tries to grow things, counts birds, takes pictures of flowers with bugs on them, and walks a rope bridge between the neighbouring mountaintops of philosophy and poetry. Big Ben in Japan CC
El Paso God, I can hear my dad Whistling El Paso by Marty Robbins – I believe the dead can whistle Through a dead canyon Summoning me back Like Feleena did And when I burst Into the dead cantina Dad suddenly stops – pebble poem if I slip unnoticed from your pocket a forgotten pebble it’s your pocket that’s empty not mine Tricia Marcella Cimera is a Midwestern poet with a worldview. She lives with her husband and family of animals in Illinois, in a town called St. Charles, by a river named Fox, with a Poetry Box in her front yard. 4/4/2022 1 Comment Poetry by Al Jordan fiction of reality CC
medieval 70's if i'm lucky i will catch it under early light & combine it after it splinters under the impact of my grasp (as crabs shells on shore through time) & i'll bring it together with cardamom syrup. mumbling with conviction for a construction that i'm wound taught to with twine enigmatics slain under a pigmented stroke of citrine with sincere hope only kissed lightly of naivety. lamp glow wanes into a silver crescent before preparing for bed yawns with a murmur & slips into silk-stockings & silver chain link (not even for the world) held in a jasmine mist, beneath a deep wool eve as if it's a faith & her name is Pereliese (a dream-vision siren) who sings in low caw of quartz cliffs, the sharp squawks of sea birds, & of waves that fray into foam where briney canopies rise into thunder. the jig we sweep our skirts round to, where the twirl perpetuates itself. & what on this good earth is without a spot? the whisper-bruise on the fruit. thread of woes strung through centuries. the abstract ache. it's even the ink underneath my fingernail. what i didn't mind & the elementary nature of cruelness once, my entirety leaked right out of my nostril & rested as a warm thick petaled rose on the bridge who sat next to the break & the bruise & after getting comfortable, they spoke amongst themselves of the elementary nature of cruelness. what's the good in holding sadness for ones' own sadness? (like a dog keeping a pet of its own). cold, & in a bloodless pale, with stitches as a fashion (too early for halloween but still worn as vogue) they decided on coffee & paid in coins. turns out it's cheaper than tea & because drip & cigarettes are so easy to join at the hands. the city tore the old bridge down a while back now but the chill of the haunt hasn't left. my mind isn't deleted into half-said nothings. & it all holds true through time. there is no game to play with sorrow. as there is no chase. the world will be ugly, wicked, deceiving even - as if it's childsplay. & i don't know if getting better is the point. i don't know the value in goodness. i know that the nature of ease, & absolute tender kindness is rich & a much more slippery silk to hold than any sorrow. i can invite the stubbornness of my fingers in the fight. as i ran, the sun was glaring in a shocking lightness along the ice but i didn't mind. & that seemed like a change, & really, that was all i wanted & it's more than what i've had isn't it? so maybe it's enough. Al Jordan lives in Missoula, MT & works in a clothing boutique downtown. They are currently working on a body of work in reflection of four years of compiled journals following a roller skating accident which resulted in a traumatic brain injury. Their poetry is a means to regain a lost sense of self, joy, & catharsis. 4/4/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Lea McNeil Nathalie CC
Room Because the pillow with my name in pink is the same shape when I get home, and sticker stars and paper planets glow bright above my bed. Because on the other side of the wall, my sister is playing I come from a place that hurts on repeat. Because holes in the door frame hang beads. Because against the closet door, a hoop, and the bright orange ball bounces. Because Sunny Delight explodes against the front of the house and a hair-spray bottle shatters my sister’s window. Because on the living room couch is a yellow-knit throw thrown over my brother’s head. Because my legs shiver on the bathroom tile and they hung loose in the oak outside my window before the branches I could climb were chopped down. Some branches take up too much space, my mother says. Lea McNeil is a bisexual American poet, mother, and mental health counselor living in Amsterdam. 4/4/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Christina M. Rau The Grim Atheist CC
Smoke The boys who smoked used Zippo lighters we bought them, engraved special, so they would know we loved them. That one dusk I bought a pack at the corner gas station, the cashier, a little woman still taller than me, said with a sigh that I was so pretty and too young, and I said they weren’t for me but for him at home, and we locked in a stare for a moment, trying to understand something. The boys put out fires. The boys prayed for fires. The boys put out the fires they prayed for. They prayed for heat and sparks so they could drop what they were doing, so they could drive fast, flash their lights, throw on heavy gear, and jump into flames. Our cars smelled like smoke stale and old, seats stained, indented, all grime. They had stains on their hands. We held them, exchanged them among us, shared secrets, compared what we’d found. That one late night the one who was unattainable who would never notice could never notice why would he ever notice stood in front of me on his basement stairs where he’d brought me to show me something, unexpected and raw, and then the next day, gone. Then the next year, they were all gone. Then a passing by occurred here and there at counters and from distances far enough to be unsure. Then two decades later when driving to pay a bill far from cigarettes, ash, and cigars, the street becomes familiar, the new car passes the old house. Off guard the smoke floods back, but not the love. That never was. Why Does Friday Seem So Long Ago I gave up on giving in- a day turned into a different night showed the bleaching of the world with one quick fist. A harrowed sky as synonym for memory, winter warmth, and dead notebooks. Paper layers peel back. Fingernails curl under. This time it all sticks together; it’s a good sticking the kind that clings from giving over and getting through. The erosion of memory heals all wounds. Christina M. Rau is the author of the 2021 collection What We Do To Make Us Whole, the Elgin Award-winning Liberating the Astronauts, and the chapbooks WakeBreatheMove and For The Girls, I. Her work has also appeared in publications including fillingStation, The Disappointed Housewife, and Reader's Digest. When she's not writing, she's teaching yoga or watching the Game Show Network. www.christinamrau.com 4/4/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Clem Flowers Gerry Dincher CC
Ollie Along the Frosted Night & I drank the stars & the fireflies got me a halo & the abandoned strip of spent cigarettes & gas station soda cups wished me well & wished me joy & it was life & it was pain & it was centered ecstatic shock running in my soul & the wind just swooned along the faded farmhouse & ancient millstone that they keep out for the tourists that I'm now watching the night sky from & now the only light on the main drag of this high holy built on the foundation of callouses and early mornings on the dairy farms that now has me by the nape of my neck, resonating like a meditation bell where the slender dream with black nail polish & three rings on the top of his right ear & a stud with a skull on his nose left a love bite that left me catching my breath and my head swimming with the falling moon I dreamed of the one I wished to be Clem Flowers (They/ Them) is a poet, soft-spoken southern transplant, low rent aesthete, & dramatic tenor living in a mountain's shadow in Home of Truth, Utah. Publication credits include: Olney Magazine, Blue River Review, The Madrigal, Pink Plastic House Journal, Bullshit Lit, Corporeal, Holyflea, Anti-Heroin Chic, & Warning Lines Magazine. Author of chapbooks Stoked & Thrashing (Alien Buddha Press) & Two Out of Three Falls (Bullshit Lit.) Nb, bi, and queer as the day is long, living in a cozy apartment with their wonderful wife & sweet calico kitty. Found on Twitter @clem_flowers keka marzagao CC
Last Harvest After Maurice Sendak’s interview with Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air “And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio, and I see my trees and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old, they’re beautiful. And you see, I can see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old.” —Maurice Sendak She reaches for the dial, turns the volume up, just enough, to escape from the restless stirrings of her two children who fussed from the backseat after a long day at daycare. The speaker’s words crackle in a dirge of ragged sobs and tremulous laughter. The thin voice breaks and splits like old wood, & she recognizes his name as the author of several books she’s read to her children on the nights when she had the strength to hold a book between her overworked hands. It was usually after bath time & before she retired to the back porch with a beer & sometimes a cigarette that she would predictably beat herself up for the next day. She steers the old Camry through a pocket of slow traffic, while he speaks in his gentle manner about love and grief- tenderly unfolding 83 years of memory & artistic vision, like thumbing through an old photo album. It’s just after dinnertime, and her thoughts are already scrabbling over refrigerator leftovers & the pell-mell collection of bills that have papered the kitchen counter since last week. Her eyes dip drowsily, nerves closely drawn, but the lush acres of his words gather within her like a late summer harvest. Live your life, live your life, live your life, he softly chants. From the review mirror she glances at her children. Their small, obstreperous bodies securely belted into the curve of the backseat. Their faces smooth and glowing in the lilac light. She takes a deep breath, holds it within her lungs, scowls as she searches for memories of her own mother- if she had read to her, read his books to her. There weren’t many books or keepsakes to keep back then. They’d traveled light and moved often. Live your life, live your life, live your life. The headlights are swallowed into the fading nebula of twilight, and she squints to see a bent, ghostly figure thrusting a white cane at the encroaching darkness. The cane pendulates in tight, searching arcs, raking and stabbing the sidewalk- hunting for hidden dangers. She is reminded of her grandmother, who she once believed was an angel in a kitchen apron. She died alone in her floral nightgown on the nursing home floor. The aquiline nose, that never looked down on anyone, was broken. Live your life, live your life, live your life, he softly chants like the fading outro of a song- the heart’s wild longings still being born, even as the body swings towards its final hours. She turns the sedan onto the street she and her children call home and feels the locked paddock within her chest punch open. & the tears she held in for so long, slip down her rouged cheeks now. Like mayflies in spring, she swats them away, but still they come with the author’s prophetic message suspended across a shifting horizon of telephone lines & billboard signs. She cries for him, and she cries with him until the car is parked in the familiar driveway. She turns to see her children, peaceful, fatherless, asleep in their car seats, then looks through the dusty windshield into the deepening ink of the numinous night. Her eyes fall on the craggy and mysterious trunk of a giant, old oak, & she can’t tell if it’s an oak or a maple or some other species, but the trees, she wonders— when did she last look at the trees? Beverly Hennessy Summa’s poems have appeared in Rust + Moth, Chiron Review, the New York Quarterly, Buddhist Poetry Review, Trailer Park Quarterly, Nerve Cowboy, Hobo Camp Review and others. She has a BA in English and is a Pushcart nominee. Beverly grew up in Yonkers, New York and New Hampshire and currently lives in South Salem, New York with her family. 4/4/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Arielle McManus Steven Pisano CC
Licking a Stamp in Charlottesville, VA I regret to inform you that love is exactly what they said it would be. I am no longer a brain, or, a raw nerve, processing these long strings of moments that will one day end. I have a heart, and I want to know how much it can feel. I have a body and I want to know how far I can push it. As I understand it, all things die. There's nothing like a little lurch of the organs to remind you that you're merely mortal. Is it really all that sacrilegious to think we could be the first? This would be giving, and, the taking. The listening, and, the telling. Are you paying attention? I'll only say it once and then I'll be gone. I Want a Brooklyn After Zoe Leonard’s “I Want a President” I want a Brooklyn for the artists, I want a Brooklyn for the pervs, I want a Brooklyn for the single parents, I want a Brooklyn for the immigrants, I want a Brooklyn for the birds, the birds, the birds. I want a Brooklyn for the people that Brooklyn originally belonged to, and for there to be a way to reconcile that version of Brooklyn with the Brooklyn full of people who have since started to call it home. I want a Brooklyn in which rent prices aren’t positively correlated with the number of trees on the block. I want a Brooklyn without Green Streets contests, simply because we wouldn’t have to rank the greenery if we hadn't turned it into a rarefied commodity in the first place. I want a Brooklyn where yelling at a cyclist that is doing nothing wrong is a crime, and no one is told they don’t deserve help by a white man in an ill-fitting suit. I want a Brooklyn where the word “future” contains the promise of greatness, of betterment, not the threat of doom. I want a Brooklyn where I can wear a see-through shirt and any man who dares speak a word in my direction gets exiled to garbage island. I want a Brooklyn without one of the highest Black mother and infant mortality rates in the country. I want a Brooklyn that doesn’t push out the poor in favor of basketball stadiums. I want a Brooklyn in which not having $2.75 isn’t punishable with a gun held to a temple. I want a Brooklyn that removes itself from the prison industrial complex, except when it comes to landlords that purposefully neglect their rent-stabilized properties with the goal of tearing them down just to charge triple the rent once they rebuild. I want a Brooklyn where we look at the blazing orange skies of California on our phone screens without the audacity to think we’re any better off. I want to know why Brooklyn got into the business of cutting the cherry blossoms down, and if the only response you have for me is capitalism, it’s my steel-toed boot up your ass. I want to know why we looked at other cities with all of these things and thought we couldn’t have the same. I want to know when and why we gave up on the infinite possibilities once available to us, and I want to know how we can look at ourselves in our mirrors and call ourselves anything other than ruinous. Arielle McManus is a dual Swedish-American citizen, learning as she goes and writing 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 Hobart, Passages North, Entropy Magazine, and Tiny Molecules, among others. Twitter: @ariellemcmanus |
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