5/26/2021 2 Comments Poetry by Carrie Elizabeth Penrod Dane CC Snow She’s sleeping, my mother, laid out like clean laundry waiting to be folded. She always sleeps, or gazes blankly at a reality tv show she hates, yet will fill me in on if I ask. I ask. ‘You don’t have to come,’ she tells me, ‘all I do is lay here.’ But, this is the only time I am able to watch her. When she catches you, she scolds. Watching reminds her too much of dying I think. Years of working a nursing home–– ‘Mrs. Lintz died today. Her daughter crawled into bed with her one last time and held her.’ I want to crawl into bed with her, hold her, have her hold me. Instead, I watch the snow out the window, respond to my lover’s texts as if nothing is wrong, words like fuck and fingers, mouth and lips–– while my mother lays dying–– a chance at normal while her tumor grows like snow. Carve The night of her first surgery, I drove twenty songs, across the state line to David’s farm, crossed, the half-frozen grounds to knock on his blue door, unannounced, shaking, starlight dancing across my pale face–– He answered, confused at the late hour, smiled when he saw me. I kissed him before he could ask questions–– pressed myself against every inch I could. He pushed the darkness from my mouth, shoved it down so deep I thought he had murdered it. I tried to kill the image of my mother, her sallow skin. I pulled at his hair, tried to force out the sounds of her cries. His hand tightened on my hip, his nails dug into the back of my neck––I wanted him to fill every dark corner in me with himself, cut the dark spots from my apple flesh, if only for a moment, cut again and again until there was nothing left of me. Tinsel or January 5th, 2019 10:30 pm The decorations were up in the motel lobby, the Christmas tree adorned with seashells and starfish, coral, silver tinsel draped over every branch. Happy New Years strung across the check-in desk. The woman behind eyed me like she knew what I was there for. Like she knew I came from my mother’s funeral, black dress and blistered feet, cold skin, like she knew I was having an affair with a man I had no feelings for, like she knew I should have been finding myself in a bed with David. Who only wanted to save me, but I wouldn’t let him, not a thing to be saved. Couldn’t bear his tender heart and merciful hands. Yesterday’s fight still ringing in my ears, words slung like a morphine drip until I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stand my own limits so I made new with thoughts of a fresh heart to be broken, with old desires and fragmented promises. Needed anything other than men who called me sweetheart– I was all teeth and no heart, a grief made wild creature. I kept the lights off in the room, let the dim sign outside the window illuminate the sea foam walls, sand-colored wainscoting, paintings of ships and waves, blue quilt top and white sheets. Seascape in the middle of Ohio. Henry held me too gently for the brute force thumping of my grief, I wanted teeth, bruises, anything but the black twinge of shock. We lay in the bed, faces to ceiling, the distance between us wider than it had been in months. “My mom died,” I said, looking at the white popcorn ceiling. The words hung in the small space between us like tinsel catching light and throwing the words back into my mouth. He rolled as I did, to face my body, his wide chest pressed to my back, his hips against the curve of me, I wanted to move away, to escape the tenderness I neither needed or craved from anyone but my mother. I wanted flesh ripped open, heart carved out to make room for something new, something less gentle and tame. It was one am when I slid my body from under his arm, heavy like knowledge, like broken glass. The lobby tinsel caught my reflection and twisted it to something recognizable again, I wanted to carve her out, take her home with me, let her live out her days with me, though I could never give her peace. The woman smiled to my face as I walked away from the pieces behind me. The frozen parking lot felt good against my blistered feet. The night air hugged my skin like it knew I belonged there, like there are only some things that can be done in the fond embrace of the stars, like it knew that shame feels better than numbing grief. I feel her again, taking a breath in and then out and out and out and out until I am forced to take my own breath in, this is me trying to breathe again. This is my breaking a heart so I can feel mine again. “I’m worried about you,” she said. “I’ll be okay, Momma. Don’t worry about me. I’ll figure it out. I’ll be okay.” Lies like tinsel, strung from every branch. Carrie Elizabeth Penrod is a current graduate student at Mississippi University for Women. She currently lives in Indiana with her hoard of cats. Her work can be found on Prometheus Dreaming, Button Poetry's Instagram, Sad Girls Club, and corn stalks.
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5/26/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Lia Nizen Dane CC How to be an underage alcoholic First of all, know you don’t have an alcohol problem, you have an existence problem. It’s not that you don’t want to be alive, it’s just that you don’t want to live in your life. Secondly, be smart about it. When stealing liquor, don’t take a lot all at once. Make sure you add enough water to the bottle to make it look balanced, but don’t dilute it. Never take the beer. Not because you’d get caught (it would actually be easier to steal), but because you need more of it for the desired effect and it tastes like recycled toilet water. Liquor is straight to the point, it doesn’t need a chaser. Decide at twelve years old that you’ll always be a hard liquor kinda girl. Keep that promise. Not because you want to be the girl with expensive taste, but because you owe yourself enough to keep a fucking promise. At fifteen start sharing drinks with your dad. Understand that he is most definitely an alcoholic, but he isn’t high functioning like you. Just know that when he brings you a drink he wants to talk. Always be prepared for the heavy conversation. Always be ready to play devil’s advocate. You have to tiptoe around the point before it gets to him. Make sure you watch your step, you’re walking on eggshells. Know that you’ll always overthink everything, and I mean everything. Every word. Every action. Every thought. Don’t worry, drinking will help. Make sure you’re really good at pretending to be okay. You will need to be okay. Learn how to sober up quickly, and I mean quickly. Like on the flip of a dime. You’ll need to get out of your blurry mind’s eye every now and then. Start babysitting and making money. Get the older girl up the street to buy it for you. Never drink on the job. Don’t be stupid about it. Understand that your life will always condition you to be the caretaker. You can drink as much as you want but as soon as someone needs help, you’ll be at their side. This isn’t a bad thing. It’s just that you help everyone else before yourself. It’s just that you don’t help yourself. It’s not that you can’t, you just don’t want to. What’s the point of fixing something that keeps breaking in all the same ways? Understand that you don’t have an alcohol problem. You just don’t have any other solution to your life problem. Free Fall Sometimes, I dissociate. My mind and body go numb and I don't always remember what was said or done. My doctor calls this ‘dissociative amnesia’. I call it autopilot. I call it autopilot because I’m still calling the shots, I just don't know I'm calling the shots. I still know where I’m going, still know what I’m doing, I just don’t remember any of it happening. I like to think that is what planes are like. When they are on autopilot, they are calling the shots. They know when to turn, when to move, when to alarm, what not to do, but once the pilot takes control, the plane wakes up and realizes its potential for disaster. Sometimes I feel like a plane because I, too, realize my potential for disaster. When I dissociate, my mind goes where it pleases. There is no filter, nothing is off-limits. My mind says what it likes and does what it likes, and I don’t have any say in the matter. Sometimes, I am the only one who suffers in the wake of my destruction. Other times, my friends and family don’t stick around to see the aftermath. Having dissociative amnesia is like living in third person with no long-term memory. It’s learning of your actions after the fact and coming to terms with what happened and realizing you will never understand how or why. Sometimes, I wish I were a plane, just to have the peace of going to sleep in one place and waking up in another without any question. I wish I had the ability to operate as instructed without a question or care in the world. But I am not a plane, I am a person. A person learning to live a life that isn’t always my own. Lia Nizen is a spoken word poet out of Wilmington, North Carolina. As a disabled woman, Lia has always found a sense of safety and peace in writing, and she is a passionate activist for the disability and chronic illness communities. She teaches an online writing workshop called Metanoia, which has curated a community of writers from all walks of life. Lia’s work appears in several literary journals, including For Women Who Roar, The Monarch, and Storm of Blue Press. She also has work published in the 2018 anthology Upon Arrival: Interlude and the forthcoming anthology Best Poets of 2020: Quarantine Edition by Eber and Wein Publishing, and the Spring 2021 Edition of Capsule Stories. 5/26/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Cameron Chiovitti barbara w CC Instincts after Sarah Kay The body has this instinct to live even when the mind has the instinct to die & It was June 15th & a friend told me you might take it personally if I killed myself, so that night I texted you that if I ever died it wouldn’t be your fault, because it wasn’t & still I tried to strangle myself & I didn’t know yet that it never would have worked because the neural pathways will direct the hands to stop, even though I didn’t want to stop & you didn’t know either & it was exam season & we both should have been studying, but how could we study in the face of all of this pain & fear & you never answered my text & you didn’t look me in the eye the next day when I showed up for the exam & I mean, you hadn’t looked me in the eye in months & that didn’t make it hurt any less & I only know you told your parents what I’d sent you & they told the school because, after the exam, I got called to the guidance counsellor’s office & she called my family & she sent us to the hospital & I texted you to thank you, even though I didn’t really mean it, because the body has this instinct to live even when the mind has the instinct to die & I got sent home from the hospital that night because I told the psychiatrist I didn’t want to kill myself anymore & I didn’t mean it & I still don’t & we never spoke of it again. This Is What Life Feels Like When You’re Not Depressed I’m not saying I’m the ocean, But the way this body Can sway without a care for its surroundings Makes me feel like the ocean. The waves keep coming And coming, And my legs keep moving, Back and forth, Back and forth, And I let them. I have always loved standing Just deep enough in the ocean That I am submerged from the shoulders down, Letting the waves rock me gently. This, though, is not gentle. This is a vigorous need To submerge this earth In as much positive energy as possible. I am not a ball, But a current. This energy will course through your veins So fast they may burst- An explosion of arteries. Once, I wore an aorta as a ring While one crush was across the room And the other was dissecting the cow heart with me, And it was the closest I have ever been to polyamory. Not even polyamory feels As invigorating As the moment before your veins expand. The moment before the waves crash against the shoreline, When the waves are so tall They can walk off the beach and into the workforce without even applying for the job, That is the moment I am most vulnerable. That is the moment the surfers may fall into my depths. While they may mean well, Their bones will break my spirits- Make me crumple into myself- Fall to the shores Before I am ready to return home. I tell my therapist I am seeing everything In high definition, As though I am wearing a new pair of glasses And have not adjusted to the world yet. The world is a vivid place, Full of cars speeding down the highway, And highways, And people who are hustling to get their lives in order. I want to work alongside them. I write out a list of tasks to do, And I complete every item on the list. I even have enough left in me to do something That brings me even more positivity than I already possess. My therapist tells me This is what life is like when you’re not depressed. Cameron Chiovitti is a twenty two year old nonbinary Canadian. They grew up in Montreal, Quebec, but moved to Toronto, Ontario, almost three years ago. They have been writing since the age of eight, but found their true passion, poetry, at the age of sixteen. They attend OCAD University for Creative Writing. Since moving to Toronto, Cameron started slamming with the Toronto Poetry Slam, Hamilton Youth Slam, and ranked sixth at the 2020 Voices Of Today Festival. In April 2018 they self-published a poetry book called “Your Mountain’s Crown,” and in January 2020 published a chapbook called “When People Ask About The Breakup” on She’s Got Wonder. Their poem “Drunken Ramblings of a Broken Heart” has been exhibited in mcsway poetry collective’s third edition of the Heartbreak Museum as of February 12th, 2021, and their poem “LaSalle Boulevard” has been published in LSTW’s fifth issue. 5/26/2021 1 Comment Poetry by Glennys Egan Alexandra Frolova CC cw // allusions to sexual coercion of a minor and self harm A Story in Three Parts your daughter dyes her hair black and you can’t hide that you hate it. she spends more time on the internet than you wish she would. your daughter keeps to herself these days, avoids friends who were once like brothers. she throws your bouquet to the ground and storms off when you ask why, fresh blooms of anger scattered on the kitchen floor. / your daughter gives a handjob to a boy who swears he’ll tell everyone she’s a slut if she doesn’t. your daughter sees the irony that he can only really ruin her now that it’s true. she spends months learning how bodies work, one whisper away from humiliation. your daughter is only liberated once he makes good on his threat; nothing left for her to lose. / your daughter’s friend’s mother calls and tells you that your daughter cuts her wrists. your daughter cries when you confront her, agrees to talk to someone. she listens to a lady explain that every girl feels insecure at the age of thirteen. your daughter thanks the psychologist when she assures her that she’s pretty. your daughter waits to be asked the right question. it never comes. / Raised in the Canadian prairies, Glennys Egan writes poetry in Ottawa, Canada, where she works for the government like everyone else. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Taco Bell Quarterly, Funicular Magazine, The Aurora Journal and several other lovely places. You can find her and her dog, Boris, online at @gleegz. 5/26/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Stephanie Saywell Kaysse CC Pianists Should Practice Between 30 Minutes to 4 Hours Per Day G block, free block, my boyfriend of two weeks has something to show me, so we are in Practice Room #3 and I think he is going to play me a song on the wooden upright, but instead he unzips his pants and asks me if he should keep going. He hasn’t even put his tongue in my mouth. We don’t last, but it’s not long until another boy has something to share, and again I am standing in Room #3, its eggshell, soundproof walls crusted with the off-white remnants of other students’ training. Don’t bring a blacklight in here he jokes as he reaches into his pants and pulls out a packet of Pop Rocks. He pours them into his mouth and pushes my back up against the wall. I wonder how many girls have stood exactly where I am now, the ass of my embroidered bell-bottoms pressed into the shadow of theirs, like we are all sitting in each others’ laps, but then I am sticking my tongue into a firework. It bursts, before fizzling out in a sticky, neon-blue cave of spit. Couples, all hands and mouths and careful backwards glances, gambol down the music wing hallway towards the promise of a closed door. Mr. Peisch bursts in between blocks to make sure we are not doing what we are doing. I learn the right hand melody of The Music of the Night so that we can sound busy, hips sinking together on the tiny stool. We warm up, change partners, play duets, trios, improve our technique, learn to moan in pianissimo - because we are here to get an education. At our five year reunion, I drag my college boyfriend down the oddly empty hallway towards #3 to show him something new, and find a window in the center of each warped door and a lone girl practicing her scales on a state-of-the-art, electric Yamaha with plastic keys and infinite effects, its cord snaking to the outlet where we used to make music. Each Summer the Last Summer, Each Minute the Last Minute A found poem The summer pushes her tongue into the winter’s throat. She is scooped out and bow-like, ruined, perfected, an empty arch against the sky. Her harpist’s wild red hair like fire, like fountains leaping, alive, moving among the anti-touch people like a tongue passing over a bloody knife. She dotes on what the wild birds say, the angle of light that burns water, the splash of words in passing worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty where no sea leaps upon itself. This is how you live when you have a cold heart. You will ache for slow beauty to save you from your quick, quick life and your shoulder blades will ache for want of wing. They’re trying to wash the river in her blood, in your lifetime of touch. You do not have to be good. Until the blunting of time, waking up in the same skin isn’t enough to keep the wound wide open. Stephanie Saywell (she/her/hers) is a queer, NYC-based choreographer, performer, and published poet. She holds two BAs (Dance & Written Arts) from Bard College, plus a Certificate of Completion from the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre's Professional Training Program. She has studied poetry under the tutelage of Megan Falley, Ann Lauterbach, and Michael Ives, and short fiction under Paul LaFarge. Her work has been published in Ink & Letters and Muzzle Magazine. www.stephaniesaywell.com 5/26/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Kate McNicholas Janice Waltzer CC I grew up in a house that did not rest This is to say the home too was restless The bathroom door spit splinters Into brother's knuckles And the bedside table could not stand still Would pound its corners into the dreaming head of a little girl Every time the staircase yelled in father's footsteps So the girl would awaken And the mattress would tense For this home held no rooms For a full night's sleep Kate McNicholas is a Jersey-based slam poet with a love for trees and metaphors. Kate previously served as an editor for Clark University’s creative forum and has had short works published and performed throughout the U.S and Italy. Her poetry has made an appearance in multiple stage productions and she loves the opportunity to combine multiple mediums of art to create new experiences for all. 5/26/2021 0 Comments Artwork by mArie mArie is a French painter and documentary filmmaker living and practicing in Paris. Her work is committed to various social causes and these paintings are taken from the series Honneur aux femmes, which takes stock of the condition of women in our world today. It includes portraits of such inspirational women as Pia Klemp, Oksana Chatchko, Waris Dirie and others. mArie has recently decided to leave her artistic comfort zone and each of these paintings is now paired with music. Honneur aux femmes will be on display at Galerie DETCHI, Paris, from June 3 through 6. For more of mArie's art, see her website, laptite.fr or follow her on Instagram: @ridoux.marie. 5/26/2021 0 Comments Artwork by MOFUTA MOFUTA (AKA: Hannah Berestizhevsky) is a painter and performance artist born in Ukraine, whose work explores the human condition through "non-human living beings". These pieces are taken from the project, Reverse Camouflage, a study into the beauty and "strength in fragility" shared by flowers and butterflies. Camouflage is about blurring the "edges" between the object (subject) and the background (context). It's an unavoidable survival mechanism that relies on invisibility, practiced in all levels of life. In cultural camouflage, one has to identify the "sharp edges" that are not accepted as normal, and obscure them by adapting characteristics to the environment. It can be a conscious or unconscious process. Camouflage can be dangerous, not only to potential victims but to the subject itself, because when camouflage progresses for a long period of time, there can be harmful side effects: inconsistent personality, inability to be alone, forgetting who you really are... The aim of this project was to achieve the result of camouflage (necessary for survival) but without having to obscure who one really is. Instead of being a passive subject (by adapting to the features of the surroundings), the artist becomes an active subject, forcing their features on the context. Subject and Context become one. stanze CC
Black Hole for B. You say when your father walked away, he took some part of your belief. This makes me want to unwrap for you the black cellophane of the sky you saw at four, spill the stars across a dark bed, unfurl the worlds within worlds, whirling nebulas and galaxies, and make you take and take it in your hands until Sorrow—that bitch taskmistress—is paid. Please let there be relief in this: you looked up and gathered the twinkling while he sealed it in a box, closed it up, loaded it into the Ford, and escaped. But if he had paid attention he would have seen the stardust sprinkle out, lining the baseboards and the floorboards and the walkway and the road and the sky. Even then you knew every molecule is reused, everything is vast and mysterious, doomed but glorious. You knew that all along—so who saw what more clearly? You’ve just forgotten that even when limited by time and space everything is possible. All you have to do is toss the light back up and fill the universe. Christine Butterworth-McDermott is the author of the poetry chapbooks, Tales on Tales: Sestinas (2010) and All Breathing Heartbreak (2019) as well as the full-length collections, Woods & Water, Wolves & Women (2012) and Evelyn As (2019). She is the founder and co-editor of Gingerbread House Literary Magazine. Her poetry and fiction has been published in such journals as Alaska Quarterly Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, The Massachusetts Review, and River Styx, among others. 5/26/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Sydni Trameri half alive - soo zzzz CC CENTER OF CRISIS A week and a half’s worth of adrenaline. Every muscle aching. The resistance. The white flag. The What more do you want from me? Tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. You never tell me anything. Use your words. The walk right through the gates of Hell in fluffy lilac slippers. The way it makes you feel small, the way you always feel small. The signing away of the soul. The cavalier nature of it. The rise and set of a sun you do not believe in, marking the passage of time, which you also do not believe in. The neat row of books and small Styrofoam cups. The Do what we say, or you’ll never leave. The screams of the damned. The relentless sirens. The resistance, again. The white flag, again. The Thank you for making this so easy. The way it makes you feel small, the way everything makes you feel small. What’s the difference between compliance and kindness? Where did you learn this obedience? When? The catch and release your stillness earns you. One of many endings, most of which you have yet to meet. ON LIVING AS AN APPARITION This entire Earth is a haunted house. I know I am not the only ghost, but it is hard to find the others. Before we go out, we hide our pallor with a fresh coat of paint and just a hint of blush. We know how to fake just the right pace to fit in with the living: the never-ending, needless hurry. If we really try, we can remember what it was like to breathe, remind the chest to rise and fall. But you can’t put the light back into an eye. They give us away every time. Once, a man - a stranger, a fellow phantom - looked me dead in my dimming eyes and said, “I can tell you’ve seen some shit.” I looked away. I could not bear the sight of my own reflection. Sydni Trameri is a poet from Decatur, Georgia. |
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