7/30/2022 Poetry by Bex HainsworthDr. Matthias Ripp CC
Apostasy The last year of my childhood was spent bargaining with God. On cold, dry days I would climb this hill behind the houses – getting higher, closer to the sky, seemed to mean something. I’d heckle, at first. Jeer and grumble, pull up clumps of grass and scatter it like ashes, like a reluctant sacrifice. Then the bartering would begin. My entrance exam, my sanity, years of my life – just let him say that he loves me, just once. I was willing to trade it all for someone who knew better, but pretended not to. The day I left for university, I prayed for him. One last bargain. Let him find the happiness he’s craving. Six months later, I was diagnosed with clinical depression. My third night on mirtazapine, fully dissociating, I was so aware of my own consciousness as I stared at myself in the mirror that I knew there was no afterlife. No begging this time, no covenant. Instead, I called my grandmother. She answered. Bex Hainsworth (she/her) is a bisexual poet and teacher based in Leicester, UK. She won the Collection HQ Prize as part of the East Riding Festival of Words and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Heavy Feather Review, Ethel Zine, Atrium, Okay Donkey, Acropolis Journal, and Brave Voices Magazine. Her debut pamphlet of ecopoetry will be published by Black Cat Poetry Press in 2023. Find her on Twitter @PoetBex. 7/30/2022 Poetry by Maria KornackiAdrien Millet CC
Poetry That Reminds Me Of being in my body to get out! of my own way. Roe v. Wade overturned rage can be transmuted into beautiful poetry that reminds me of being in my lines. A tiger tail twists, but doesn’t trip. This body of water is irreplaceable, traveling through me, so I create another world, scavenge it is grounding, unlike land I float & sink, rinse & repeat. Poetry that reminds me of being in my body, which is a constant death like poetry, a channel, today we have contemporary slam poetry & others promoting poetry shamelessly on their YouTube Channels. We need more of this without capitalization. Poetry that reminds me that the body is formeless, art theory. A lyric Writing is a constant line, but so is death Periodt. Cycles. To be the egg that binds & bakes the cake. Repetition reminds me of structure of poetry that reminds me to sigh. Sometimes it’s necessary to break friendships? I meant the silence with increased intention, a physical reminder to write the sigh. Beat the egg, yolk out! So the reader can catch up, so I can yank the narrative down to speed. Poetry that reminds me why I write on loose leaf wayyyy out of margins in the shower (best ideas) breath, returning an effortless life force. You don’t have to remind the body (think about that for a sec & get emo) to do that and yet some folks forget. Sing to the holy body like you would lay with a child in their dreamscape. Read them to that fluttering state, each palm line. Plant body on pillow, sing to the plant & it will grow, sing to the body & it will become the plant. Your garden is doing fine, so you may breathe. You are too. All cells can only go up from this acute awareness. The body, a green vessel. Maria lives in Michigan and holds a BA in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University. The only “M(F)A” she has is in the first two letters of her first name. Maria’s latest writing has recently been published or is forthcoming in SIAMB!, Feral: A Journal of Poetry And Art, Wingless Dreamer, Ethel Zine, & Strange Horizons, among others. Her first hybrid chapbook, Real Water Tiger will be published by Ethel Zone’s Micro Press in December ‘23. Maria’s first full-length, an epistolary poetry book, is looking for a home. She writes for Detroitisit.com 7/30/2022 Poetry by Steve HennKai Schreiber CC
Dad I was not the boy you’d’ve liked for me to be. That would be junior, the point guard. I recollect feeling singular and valued on a day you took me to the field adjacent to Sacred Heart to catch a football. I never did ask to join a football team. Once, watching my younger brother play and watching me watch him, you turned to me and said, “you know, it’s not too late.” You would have to have inhabited your body or mine in that moment, knowing what you saw in my face and what you meant for me to understand, as I do now, that it was a gesture of unfathomably gentle tenderness. Recovery Room Another guy had seen Dead & Co at a different venue than me and we talked about that afterwards. Somebody said something positive about seeing a psychiatrist for a long time “after I got sober, when it was useful” and thank God for once it wasn’t get off those pills, they’re useless. See, I take those pills, and I’ve taken those pills, and I’ll take those pills, in all likelihood, in perpetuity. As prescribed only so don’t blow me shit. Steve Henn wrote American Male, Guilty Prayer, Indiana Noble Sad Man of the Year, two previous books, and three previous chapbooks. He's in Indiana. Find out at therealstevehenn.com. 7/30/2022 Poetry by Jo GilbertJoe Lodge CC
Serenity She’s never known air like it filling her lungs with its potency she hoovers up the natural beauty contented, for the first time The green in leaves, sweet birdsong inner quiet, the blue of the sky billowing clouds white as new washing fresh from the line white washing white fresh from the line the line white line she could just have one line have one line go and score Her peace shatters flies off in fragments this is rehab and she has a long way to go. Set the Scene Let me set the scene: wee tyke, berry-red cheeks, peppered freckles, neglected, less respected, fettered. She grew deterred, pre-teen rebel rejects precepts. She felt pretend, never pretty, never perfect. Gents v femmes? She settles between them, hence defy the herd--get elsewhere, sheep! Cement-grey sky, tenements edge the scheme. We’re spry, keen mystery jets, perched fleets, fresh n’ zesty, replete energy, shyness recedes--c’mere! Get wrecked! Tennents, enmeshed exes, weed greener spew everywhere Creeps detect her, expect sex. She repels them, yet they embezzle her flesh, shelled by three never gentle men. We defend them shh never tell She regresses, keeps secrets twenty feet deep —delete scene. Next she enters messy demented eves, Men? Get! Bell-ends, leches, hedge every bet, yesss, weekend bender let’s get e’s, speed, sell few, spend plenty, then exceed every check. Hyped jesters revel, we rhyme, we reel, we yell HERE WE HERE WE HERE WE F BLEEP flex step flex feet veer left melded by tech sets reverb let’s see yer steel wheels DJ mm chh mm chh mm chh mm chh mm chh mm chh mm chh Nether the sheen, her etched pelt frets, stretched extremes emerge, they’re relentless. Entrenched endless excess, get sleep pellets, meds meze, these severe cycles stem her reverses. Self-esteem lessens, depressed spells lengthen. Then she belts Led Zep, The Verve, My Chem, screeches, vents her spleen, vehemence frenzy, she expels the event, kneejerk beer sesh, yesss these these them them, neck the dregs, feed her, render her legless speechless less less —delete her, she pled. Tense, terse, get the teenth, needle, meth melted every sec, delve the depths, welter, swelter, restless legs, neglect self, fester, ebb, extended sentence, she wept her eyes desert dry. Her peeps deem--get expert help. She flees the scene, perseveres, rests, reflects, benches her meds, defects the trenches, petty resentments, neggy effects, leeches, the serpent spectres. Feck dependence, she sets defences, centres, gets better, pens verse, lets secrets fly, she’ll never deny herself. She deserves respect, feels effervescent: she bested the system, hell ended, she’s redeemed, she’s free —scene ends. Woke up this mornin Woke up this mornin didn’t get myself a beer or a bottle of vodka or pills or a gun or any other destructive substance. Woke up this mornin and I had a cup of tea, the future’s uncertain and the end is always near but I don’t burst my head worrying about it anymore. Down at the Roadhouse, they’ve got some bungalows, but I no longer frequent roadhouses or suffer hangovers. I still love the Doors and their music, but don’t want to end up like Jim. Jo Gilbert is a spoken word artist and writer based in Aberdeen, Scotland who writes in Doric and English. Jo has won multiple slams, performed all over Scotland and has been widely published in magazines and anthologies - Northwords Now, Causeway Magazine, Dreich and Beyond the Swelkie. Jo’s work has featured on BBC Radio 4 show Tongue and Talk, Edinburgh International Book Festival 2022, and in several art exhibitions and short films. Past commissions and projects include Look Again Festival, StAnza Poetry Festival, Loud Poets, Ten Feet Tall Theatre Company, (un)mother project, Aberdeen Performing Arts and Across the Grain Festival. 7/30/2022 Poetry by Andrew R. Williams Adrien Millet CC
Rockfish Gap Here, the mountains are as blue as the drunk who lives behind the south river. The white-tailed deer outnumber the residents and hiking trails play the part of shopping malls. In November, the locals swarm schools, churches, and fire halls to mark their ballots in blood. From the parkway, local boys view faraway, distant places, some imagining a more prominent future. But when those boys leave to become poets, they soon wish they could return. Andrew R. Williams is a poet from Virginia, USA, and has been published in The BeZine Quarterly, Black Bough Poetry, Briefly Zine, Fevers of the Mind, Ink Sweat &Tears, Red Eft Review, Trouvaille Review, among others. He is also the editor of East Ridge Review and can be found on twitter @andrewraywill 7/30/2022 Poetry by Karen Paul HolmesAdrien Millet CC
Eight Months Beyond - For Chris (1956-2017) The sky kills me, its sunset blood-red, each minute smearing a deeper pigment above the mountains’ black tips. Solo on this dock, not a boat nor soul near-- a rare chance to wail, Are you there? Two mallards drift by, parting the sky reflected on the lake. They hush me, the drake’s teal head glinting. A lone female appears then moves into the place where last light has bruised the water purple-black. Bridge Arching the blue Hiwassee River, this structure over a depression, this means of transition takes me to the top of the dam where I can almost touch birds. They glide at my height, the lake’s islands and slow-motion boats below. Or a ship’s bridge, with its helm and wide-angle view cruising St. Lucia’s coast. I wrote in my journal, horizon of volcano peaks, jagged outline drawn by the low sun. In music, two bridges: A piece of wood supporting gut strings to transmit vibrations from Stradivarius into my body, nearly dropping me to knees. And also, the link between parts of a song like George Harrison shifting to “I don’t know how,” then back again to his guitar gently weeping. All those bridges, you were for me when you lived. And also verb: bridging me over the chasm of divorce from half-ness to wholeness, and then after death, lessening the gap from loss to certainty that love doesn’t stop. Only with your help have I arrived at this cove. My new husband and I stand hand-in hand in the last quarter of our lives. Silvergrass waves. Our harmonics hum. We watch fishers move their boats from favored shoal to favored shoal. for Chris, 1956-2017 and for Mark, 1951- Karen Paul Holmes is a freelance business writer but poetry is her passion. She hosts The Side Door Poets in Atlanta, GA and a monthly open mic in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her poetry books are No Such Thing as Distance (Terrapin, 2018) and Untying the Knot (Aldrich, 2014) and publications include Diode and Valparaiso Review. She’s the current “Poet Laura” for Tweetspeak Poetry. 7/30/2022 Poetry by Sandra FeesDr. Matthias Ripp CC
not / holding isn’t marriage / a corpus a body / to be warmed / by my own not a ribcage / riven in the valley not a felled tree / for someone / to straddle for something / to wash over isn’t tenderness / a libation / for skin’s / bedazzlement a river’s / flanks to be grazed / by my own not a bright / fish not a crucible impossible / to hold Self-Portrait as Seed, Plow, Prophecy Because I do not know how to be feral, sowing what can save the world because I do not know how to feather a nest or make a peace that will last. I try to break open my mouth like first light. Because I do not know how to honey the storms or thistle off grief because each day begins again without cloud, without reprieve. I let the throat be seed, plow, prophecy-- because I do not know how to unwind the spell whispered in my ear. Sandra Fees has been published in SWWIM and Nimrod and has work forthcoming in Witness and Border Crossing. She is a 2022 contest finalist in Sweet: A Literary Confection and semifinalist in Crab Creek Review. The author of The Temporary Vase of Hands (Finishing Line Press, 2017), she lives in southeastern Pennsylvania. 7/30/2022 Poetry by Michele SharpeAdrien Millet CC
Bargaining with a Dangerous Man’s Tattoo Your canvas, paroled last year, has a newborn daughter, one reason I keep taking his calls besides the fact he’s flesh and blood. She’s wriggling pink and darkly flushed like a worm On a hook. Unlike her, or her father, your book is written, sir. You’ll stay a death cult skull, no matter how much skin you cover. Her father, me and him don’t always get the why Of what each other says, but we always get the how – Politics, he says, is a cottonmouth with a hundred Skins, and I get it. But when I say Snakes outgrow Their skins, so why can’t you, he hoists one arm and points to you, Mr. Prison Gang Totenkopf tattoo, and says you’re for life. I’ll concede you’re a sentence he won’t cut short if you Don’t rub off on his daughter, his daughter, his daughter. Michele Sharpe, a poet and essayist, is also a high school dropout, hepatitis C survivor, adoptee, and former trial attorney. Her essays appear in venues including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Poets & Writers. Poems are recently published or forthcoming in Sweet, The Mom Egg Review, Rogue Agent, and Salamander. She lives in North Florida. 7/30/2022 Poetry by Guiseppe GettoAdrien Millet CC
Follow Repartee I. Sawgrass. And the broken irrigation valve. There is a reason my father’s hands shake, here. The clutch slips when we hit this bend, less a curve on the trip to the parts store than the first panel in a triptych—we’ll end up in a different ditch than where we start. My father says to the parts man that he gave us the wrong part. II. My father’s cussing is symphonic. It rises and descends in accordance with the work task. Work is good for a man to learn. For what? I ask. In answer, he grins, raises the hammer, a mini-sledge, brings it down again. And again. When the part breaks is the crescendo, involving several gods, fucks, and damns. The part is a bitch. III. A fucking bitch. The parts man knew this fucking bitch wouldn’t fit. My father’s knowledge of all things mechanical is perfect. If there was a reason it is extrasensory, something unknowable by conventional means. When he slams the second broken valve down on the parts store counter it becomes a mere variation on this theme. Guiseppe Getto is a Zen Buddhist, a poet, and an Associate Professor of Technical Communication at Mercer University. His first chapbook is Familiar History with Finishing Line Press. His individual poems can be found in journals such as Sugarhouse Review, Reed, Eclectica, and Harpur Palate, among many others. Visit him online at: http://guiseppegetto.com/poetry. 7/30/2022 Poetry by Lisa AllenRandall Wick CC
Bragging Rights I didn’t think to write you down. Now, when I look for clues, I return to the same old stories: your Marlboro Reds and Mountain Dew. You remember this one, don’t you, about when you volunteered as my Girl Scout leader? Instead of camping you took us to the Holiday Inn. Sprung for cable and tuned the screen to soft-core porn. You feigned surprise when another girl screamed from the bathroom, the sight of your spent tampon casually floating in the bowl too much for her to bear. You answered all their questions, those girls. Crawled under a blanket with everyone but me, giggles and flashlights and your voice, rising above theirs to shriek: Her jeans are bigger than mine! What would I send you for Mother’s Day now? Maybe the memory of how I sneaked away that night to the hotel pool, comfy in my sweats and t-shirt, alone until dawn when the manager found me asleep on my library book. He thought I’d jumped the fence. I had a better story for him. In that moment I was your daughter. I think you might have been proud though I don’t remember you ever saying those words-- --I’m proud of you--but before the day I didn’t say goodbye, I remember you saying At least you have pretty hair. Lisa Allen’s poetry and essays have appeared in several print and online journals as well as three anthologies. She holds MFAs in Creative Nonfiction and Poetry, both from The Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program, where she was a Michael Steinberg Fellow. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is a co-founder, with Rebecca Connors, of the virtual creative space The Notebooks Collective, as well as a founding co-editor of the anthology series Maximum Tilt. |
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