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.​

              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.​
​

               ​ 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.​
​
​
​

              ​ ​​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.

             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.

              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


​

​

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.

​

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.

                 ​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.​