7/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Heather LoudermilkMike Maguire CC
walking at night i stepped through these trees before i knew to be scared of bugs, of snakes with a rattled edge. of men in the park, building lean-tos that catch my eye. i was hurt once in a place nothing like this. some nights i’m still the girl climbing trees. i’m yelling at drunkards. i’m punching your sons in the backyard, mud in my mouth. retaliation is no better than the original crime. tell that to the basement girl, grown, past groveling. i hope every man that hurt me is dead. Heather Loudermilk currently lives in Knoxville, Tn. with her partner and 2 cats. She has a BA from Hollins University. Her work has been published in Still: The Journal, Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review, and Artemis Journal. You can reach her at https://heatherlloudermilk.carrd.co/.
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7/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Celina NaheedThomas Wensing CC
Broken Mint: I. never One day the mint will dry, breaking over this soil from which the softest flowers bloom, but only if they are given enough. The bees have never known what to make of it, but their wings hold on nonetheless. This is where their wings break into silver flakes becoming stars sewed to the ground. I can drink the pollen to heal my silver scars but I never have, I never wanted to. iii. still I can stick my tongue in the soft moss when my throat has swallowed briars and I wish to sing again. Craving sugar to sweeten my touch I could stain my lips with lost mulberries. I could stop the river from drifting in the wrong direction turning from broken shards of azure to lost clumps of sticky oil by simply letting my foot birth ripples. When water is impure, I can be the rain, my skin a fragment of the sky. But I still don’t want to. iii. someday It is simple to carry yourself to the mint every day, almost as simple as it is to stare at the splintering stems breathing buds of fresh oil, clear. I could watch the softest flowers bloom. I could let my hair weave into the roots of dying briars snapping the thorns, the scars lifting from my skin, as I hold them in their last day of violence. I could chew the leaves letting them settle in my stomach vines dripping from my lips my words leaving with them. My tears could be plump and dripping, letting the water touch our lips again. I haven't done any of it yet, but someday I will want to. only here only here does the sun loves to cook our streets while we sit in cars with the ac exhaling and a radio tweaked to 985 summer hits murmuring under its breath jealous it cannot speak while we lay in reclining car seats our backs parallel to the ground i turn my head and look at a stain on the arm rest were a strawberry starburst was left out naked to drip were all ignoring it heads in each others laps on days filled with golden light and a rusty ice cream truck that still takes quarters i drape my sticky arms with a layer of sweat that rests on top of freckling skin across my eyes while i pretend that my lips dont want sugar on lemons sugar on the tart blackberries that are bursting in our yard breaking on the vine only here does the sun cook for us even though it shouldnt we pretend that the heat is a secret that we dont sleep in our underwear our watermelon isnt becoming ice the freezer isnt melting and our hair isnt changing from an oil spill to the roots of trees drying in the sun only here do leaves die early burning on their branches but i know were gonna run across roads in hazy heat waves to sit in speckled sun-spotted shade anyway chewing grass with brothers spitting in the streets on broken asphalt to watch it sizzle in the same place he split his knee right where i can see him just so i can yell in the name of spreading saliva and wasting water then i can feel the comfort `that it is only here in this heat we have a purpose Celina Naheed is an Iranian American poet who has lived in Georgia for the majority of her life. She is the founding editor of her school’s literary magazine, has received awards for her poetry, and participated in the University of Iowa’s Between the Lines writing program. 7/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Ron RiekkiJerry CC
My mother can’t walk anymore and I can’t run anymore. Of course, it’s worse for her. I take her to the river, have her crouch down, put her feet in the water. She doesn’t want to put her feet in the water. I insist. She puts her feet in the water. It feels good, she says. I know, I say. I walk out into the middle of the river. The current is strong. She says that if I drown, she can’t help me. I tell her I won’t drown. We had two family members drown. She looks down at the water. I wonder if she’s thinking of them. Ron Riekki’s books include My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press). He has edited or coedited eight books, including Here (Michigan State University Press, Independent Publisher Book Award), and The Way North (Wayne State University Press, Michigan Notable Book). Right now, he's listening to Hildur Guðnadóttir's "Bridge of Death" from the Chernobyl score. 7/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Cassandra BristowJoe Lodge CC
can you make me feel ugly in a good way? baby baby baby. listen and hear me out. it’s no hard feelings baby. even if each time i shiver the city shivers with me just because i’m thinking about you again baby you again but really mostly your hair. baby i miss your hair but i don’t mind as long as i’m thinking you miss me too yeah you miss me and our summer together don’t you baby. don’t stop that. don’t stop seeing me as your freckled little slut yeah baby that’s right baby you can’t forget that i’m the bitch you begged for baby asked me to spit in your mouth baby and i wonder if you left me because my tongue was too dry. baby is that why you left if it is i’m sorry but what a stupid fucking reason to leave me baby to kill me like that on a wednesday but really every day baby you twist that knife everyday. i’m scratching at the scars now baby opening my own skin so it bleeds sacred baby and baby just one more question baby will you forgive me baby? baby will you forgive me for loving you wrong? lament. sometimes i like to scratch the skin on my back with scissors, feeling the blade bleed backwards like i’m meant to live with an itch. or is that just the way it is these days, everyone holding the shovel from a six feet under mentality while I’m trying to point fingers any direction but toward the mirror where i can see the heartache on my face and suddenly this great big feeling sweeps through me like an undertow and i’m craving someone who might force me to confess that i am still a child because i think if i just uttered it right this very second in some dramatic outburst no one would let me see myself that way, as such a lost little thing for if they did it might mean they too wish to be someone other than themselves. Cassandra Bristow (she/her) is a Brooklyn, NY-based writer and artist. Her work can be found in online publications such as Quail Bell Magazine and Lithium Magazine. Cassandra also curates and distributes a self-published, DIY zine called Oral Rinse and curates a monthly artist expo in New York called Zinefest, which recently hosted a workshop on behalf of the Printed Matter x 8ball Zine Fair. 7/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Scott FerryThomas Wensing CC
4/10 my son helps me weed the plot with the salmonberries and raspberries which has overgrown with grass and dandelions once i start killing it is difficult to stop it is satisfying to yank out tufts by the hairmatted roots and the dirt showers us into a different kind of clean it feels right to have soil on our bodies he stomps clayfooted and throws weeds into the wheelbarrow he even helps me throw them into the compost bin even though he can’t reach the rim i take each sod clump from his uplifted arms and lift it in the last few inches then we go inside and wash and eat meat i realize that life consists of growing killing and eating in some arrangement and that each blends into one another and sometimes i die when i kill and sometimes i eat my own flesh in the growing and that soil is the death and the life in one thick bed and one day i will fall into it and not get up and my son will lift my skull to the heavens and lick it clean 4/17 a friend of mine recently lost his father abruptly without being able to say goodbye he called me knowing my father died when i was 24 and asked how long does this take the grieving i ask which was obvious i say oh man years sometimes something comes up and reminds me of him and it pulls at me like when i hear a joke he would like or my son gives me a look right off my dad’s face i’m sorry man i don’t have an easy answer it fucking sucks it does get easier but it has stayed with me and i told him i loved him at the end of the call and thought about my father a good while until i could feel him in the room all the air proud and molecules spinning like an ultraviolet turbine his eyes looking at me from all sides yes father i know you are there but i wish you were really here you bastard and i feel the air crack and smooth into a lake i like making him laugh from down here where not much is really funny and the humor breaks through the pain at just the right times Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN in the Seattle area. His seventh book of poetry, The Long Blade of Days Ahead, is forthcoming from Impspired Press in August 2022. 7/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Sage RavenwoodThomas Wensing CC
Conversations With My Mother We have the same exact smile. Except, my upper lip has a slight curl. My come at me scowl. Fist earned from speaking out of turn. Her smile drips fake sincerity. Limpid disappointment in her eyes. I don’t think she knows how to speak; Without an influx of god backing every word, Bless the child mom, dip your prayers in holy water for the accursed. I used to think her beautiful. We can’t even look at each other. A love like ours smells like betrayal. Honeysuckle drowning in heavy musk. My addiction drip line with no rehab. I couldn’t get enough of her fix. ‘I’ll get it right this time’ life dosage. Take one bottle down, pass it around, there’s a kid out here who wants your love; she’s an offshoot of every mistake. My redemption. Her savior complex. The yearly birthday call, ’Are we saved yet?’ My doppelgänger choosing her daughter’s fate, lining up the stakes. There’s so much I want to tell you. I believed varicose veins were lightning; Thunder scars etched like tattoos on your legs. I’m sorry, isn’t an apology. My life wasn’t yours to bargain. Sacrilege is born in a mother’s image. I want to miss you. We talk all the time in the mirror. It’s etched with a lifetime of conversations we’ll never have. I don’t love you the way you love me. Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate NY with her two rescue dogs, Bjarki and Yazhi, and her one-eyed cat Max. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in Glass Poetry - Poets Resist, The Temz Review, Contrary, trampset, Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Pioneertown Literary, Grain, Sundress Press anthology - The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry, The Rumpus, Lit Quarterly, PØST, Massachusetts Review, Savant-Garde, ANMLY (Anomaly), River Mouth Review, Native Skin Lit, Santa Clara Review, The Normal School, Pinhole Poetry, UCity Review, Punk Noir, and more forthcoming. 7/30/2022 1 Comment Poetry by Tobi AlfierKimmo Räisänen CC
Letter to Mr. Wizard Dear Mr. Wizard, please tell me a story. How can some people be so smart yet so skittery—as if they were a hummingbird kite let loose on a beach of wave and dunes, flying through the clouds, all thoughts flying with them. How can knowledge apply to some, while others merely look at themselves in mirrors and dissect their unattractive qualities—things that would never be said in private but always at family functions—when humiliating baggage rolls out like a carousel at the nightmare airport and all your ugly, fading print dresses spin around piece by piece to be further dismembered, laid open from memories ancient and modern. Explain the dichotomy of the term thoughtless innocence, and how that provides an excuse to be as hurtful as sound—when a fox grabs a chicken. When a deep bite of Absinthe sticks in the throat. When wind carves floating shapes through old signs creaking in an ancient town. When you wake in an unfamiliar bed, in an unexplored room, in an unknown apartment, tasting mouthwash and whiskey as you gulp for air and remember your failings. Please Mr. Wizard, explain how the rain, as it stretches across a quiet morning, can make everything healed. Scientifically. Emotionally. Intrinsically. Healed. The way a thief feels healed touching silver in an unlit house. Tobi Alfier is published nationally and internationally. Credits include War, Literature and the Arts, The American Journal of Poetry, KGB Bar Lit Mag, Washington Square Review, Cholla Needles, The Ogham Stone, Permafrost, Gargoyle, Arkansas Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com). 7/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Tricia Marcella CimeraDr. Matthias Ripp CC
Brute So—he hits the girl. He makes the dog howl. He takes the prayer bowl From the holy man, Spits a little into it. No—he shits in the bowl. He kills the girl, the dog, The holy man dead. Why do we always lie For a goddamn brute? Mother Turtle (Boxboro 1974) In Guggins Brook I meet A mute box turtle Who lets me ride On top of her shell Through the green water Makes no promises I cling to her hardness Hanging on with fingers Touching the unreadable Pattern of her shell I call Her mother before she Shakes me loose Tricia Marcella Cimera is a Midwestern Poet with a worldview. Her poems have appeared in various diverse journals online and in print. She lives, writes, despairs, and tries to hope in America. A cedar Poetry Box called The Fox Poetry Box is mounted on a post in her front yard. 7/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Maryann Hurttvan Ort CC
Oh, Darling Stand By Me his fingers are stubs now and you remember the cancer sign is a crab and how we all lose pieces of ourselves but for now you light a smoke and your fingers become his he inhales and exhales waits for another breath maybe his last and we will (try so hard) not be afraid Last Chance Melody two days before he gets up and leaves after eighty plus earth bound years my grandpa tells me Get out my ol’ mouth harp it sits in a nest of worn Kodaks recording a now too long life I crank the sick bed prop pillows as his at one time wife mother of seven kin leans close then sings old woman cracked notes to his wheezy harp tune breaths a harmony of sorts dances the air hymns and tunes played back in Depression time before lead and zinc chewed lungs and booze held sway listen now you might find yourself believing for this little while anyway in torn and tattered stick around love two doors down Death waits patiently hums along to a few hymns knows not to disturb Maryann Hurtt is retired after thirty years working as a hospice RN with before and after cook, bus girl, museum guide, teacher aide, and library assistant gigs. She is drawn to stories of resiliency in hard times. Once Upon a Tar Creek Mining for Voices (Turning Plow Press) came out in 2021. Tar Creek has been called “the worst environmental disaster no one has heard of.” She is passionate its stories are remembered and heeded. 7/30/2022 0 Comments Poetry by Rachel Lauren MyersDr. Matthias Ripp CC Force, Ruinous you say there is poison in you but not like me child not like me you say I am enthralling you fixate on all the wrong cues I am a crashing force the ocean ruinous raw power output and calamity hurricane to storm wall wet chaos unrelentless in you I find gentle eddies, creeks, trickled water over smooth rocks hushed tides on sparser shores a lake, a pond so solemn and still I want destruction. I cut my teeth on it, on forces beyond your reach and damn your tender fingers your eyes filled like china bowls with clarity for all who can see I’ll wear you down faster than you can grow only the strong survive the hard salt-spray the jagged rock of my lonely fortressed shores only the brave endure the isolation the sapping of vitality through interlocked fingers sieve of souls, of sorts for me This Is Not My Home this is not my home yellow curtains yawning woe listless hours march past as ants kids square up like their fathers in domino rows bruised lips to match their mothers in the ravine we squat only place to be alone in the piss-wet smell of sagebrush and dust this is not your home it was a farm of little orphan boys put your bodies to work let you out of school knock the hard knocks right out of you so a set of steady hands would do if not a father if not a mother perhaps a callous or two maybe a trade skill will do maybe a woman like me to touch you the kids our kids we screw them up square up like our fathers our mothers the ravine or the farm all the orphans your brothers Bastard Days I love you more than the world can contain in its lonely and ramshackle head there’s only a shadow of me, in a manner of speaking I’m dead Sufjan Stevens, “John My Beloved” I. passacaglia repeat such songs inside of me you see I wanted to tell you dead to right one of those bastard days fugue of rage not self-pity no it’s just that I’m not sold I can’t see can’t see I can’t see it- the point, considering the toll II. repeat, repeat father in hosp--may die---so sorry baby bastard day fugue of rage his uncle hunched, helpless O Danny as death’s entourage glides so mechanical Daniel, Daniel, Daniel i sink knees to cool linoleum pop fistful bitter white calm unblinking chew mouth coated chemical my bastard days bent to worry to mourn early often fugue of rage you should call they said you have to come, i tell my brother dully you have to come III. no one warned me when this happened I’d play the part of carnival barker, calling my father’s death IV. the nurse tells me his liver is huge the nurse tells me she’s not meant to save the lives of his kind they wind up right back here the nurse tells me his ammonia levels were so high so high the liver no longer filtered just sat fat and sick she tells me my father has no DNR she tells me it’s my choice she tells me if he wakes to tell him to get a DNR i said i’d let him know if he ever i’d let him know as in fuck you back fuck you right back V. repeat repeat repeat those songs inside of me he responds fluttering eyelids when I sing my breath beautiful chemical I am here dad I trill his nurse stops to listen the ICU still I love you more than the world can contain in its lonely and ramshackle head VI. daddy I’m so tired of all of this this dread VII. and you could die from this I said to my hazy reflection eyes red maybe I know and yet my father that bastard unkillable maybe, I know, and yet- sometimes I wish I were not so durable Rachel Lauren Myers is a poet and writer from Reno, Nevada. Her poems and prose appears or is forthcoming in The Moving Force Journal, Wild Roof Journal, and Drunk Monkeys. She recently showcased her poems as visual pieces for the collaborative show “Pictures and Poems” with Dale Slingland at The Depot Gallery in Sparks, Nevada. Rachel participated in the 2020 Community of Writers Poetry Program and is currently working on a chapbook. |
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