Tzef Pine CC All of Our Recoveries My father is sweeping moss off the roof when I come home. There is a leak in our house: once every few years, one of us takes a shower and water pours through the ceiling of the room below. I suppose it could be the work of the moss, that which keeps low to ground and spreads its thousand hands across the shingles. Not unlikely a finger caught hold of our pipes. My mother no longer calls me when my brother relapses. I no longer leave the bar patrons unattended in front of the wall of Johnny Walker, Tito’s and Sapphire reflecting their faces, no longer listen to her voicemails in the bathroom, just in case it’s about him again. After a while, these moments stop feeling like something has happened: more, like we just pulled out our winter jackets from the basement so we can go out in the snow. Each time--still--I feel a sudden ocean between us. The bodies of my family become invisible behind moon- light fracturing over water. My face is wet. It became so without my knowledge or consent. And yet: even in the dark, where my feet don’t touch, and liquid presses its hunger against my skin, I feel him treading water. I see his neck encircled by pools of fluid silver, as if it wishes to caress the air from his throat. And so I push toward him, because I need to tell him that today I picked herbs from our Dad’s garden to dry and my hands still smell like sage. I need to tell him that our father is still too soft-hearted with the plants: he lets them grow wherever they would like. The more ambitious ones are leaving their wooden corpses out in the winter, scattered among the snow, like children too lazy to put their toys away. I don’t know when my brother will be home next. He needs to know. Clara is a Midwest poet who grew up on occupied Chippewa and Ottawa land. She is a graduate of Grinnell College's English department, and her work has been featured in The Normal School, Heavy Feather Review, The Shallow Ends, Rust + Moth, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and Paperbark Literary Magazine. Clara is a lover of queer theory and freshwater. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter at @mid_west_dad.
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8/8/2020 0 Comments Poetry by Adam Ai greg CC Baptism by Name Jill stood on the tracks alone, raising hours I left empty in darkness, engine-flame stroking rear the pitch-blue house we shared. Webs of paint – blue to red, red to black – flung slack in darkling rain. Corey overdosed alone, bluesy and mottled in bruises, pill-bottled and boozed. We used to make jokes about suicide. We laughed a lot and it helped, till it didn’t. When his sister came – I couldn’t face her. Billy was lightning jaked at a runaway pick-up that shucked-up onto the baked sidewalk – some drunk – of a no-place road in Palm Springs. Cruel heat I can’t believe. In love with me. I had laughed, ashamed. Michelle was murdered. It was on the news. Stabbed to death by her boyfriend. A spitting wolf-trail scats black from the door, staggers at the telephone, floods the floor. The reporter didn’t know I loved her. It was not long after her sister Melanie was shot and killed at a house party. They say it was accident. Meant for someone else. Nobody knows what happened to their dad after that. Rick – my best friend once. We stutter among our living and the dead not knowing much about the touch that catches us, what keeps. What the choice to live requires from kindness and what I owe each hour. My choice – love or fire. Halved and halved again, I sink to my knees Christmas Eve in Los Angeles, who surprises me – this cursive, loping scribble of voices I hear. I imagine angels listen, crouching the spaces in-between words. “But there are angels everywhere,” Stefanie says, “all around you. Why go on your knees?” And my sister stands and kicks this joyous, arm-out, shimmy-shimmy, winging wind and sea, ether to strange ways, blown open. The storm struggles all through me, garbles half-mouthed, and I moan as it sets wet into my eyes, the sky like the ocean, wily, froth - ocean like the sky. This drowning sensation – the flood. So much blood. Will I rise believing I’m worth this mystery? Dog-boy Dog-boy take me down the tracks, I’m shaking, can’t you feel the train? Give me something, I said. Where are you taking us? The end? Hollywood at sunrise, no hero, no heroine – this isn’t a fucking movie – the streets are broken glass we rush past Sunset. Today will be better, Dog-boy said. Dog-boy could never stop dealing. Let’s go get on. This time we’re going all the way. It’s coming down so fast. It’s coming through so hard. Let’s go get on. Adam Ai is a Puerto Rican and Basque poet and U.S. Army veteran from Los Angeles. His poems have been published in various print and online publications. He lives with a Ghost. Hobbies include time travel and teaching robots love. Connect with him on Twitter and Instagram @AdamAiPoems. 8/8/2020 0 Comments Poetry by Kaye Nash Marketa CC Mrs. Bentley is Still Here All these years later, all those kilometers laid out in ribbon behind, Shoulders squared half a million times, and an icy neck held stiff and proud, A thousand clouds that I screamed down from on high, Every skirmish I won, every deal I brokered. And yet, even now, I am in the prairie house, tacking carpets to the window-gaps To hold off the dust storm that swallows us alive. No other pair of hands to help. There is grit in my teeth. I know it is not the same house. I know it is not the same storm. But after all of it, after bringing a pan and a wooden spoon Together in the unforgiving night, You won’t get rid of me so easy! I’m not going anywhere! My words mean something true that I didn’t quite mean. That storm ended, but it might as well have kept on. I am still here, in my own house, preparing for siege. The invader doesn’t even care to come in. The house just happens to be in the way. I press my face to the carpet I am hanging and breathe in mould, In dirt, in footprints. That is the most of affection I am getting today. Behold your warrior now! She fought for the right to stand in her house and say, I belong here. I will insist upon my place. She didn’t know this is what belonging is, Reaching your hand out into the dark and touching nothing that responds, But plenty of dirt that needs cleaning. Tomorrow I will get vinegar, baking soda and rags made from old shirts. But tonight we may need to sleep in the cellar. Dreams of Summer Rain I plan for a month of sunrise swims; I never expect May Day to dawn with a frost, though it always does. I never thought what I would be homesick for would be mildew, would be clammy thighs, would be a typhoon rain, bringing the violence of the ocean to where we sit. What I wouldn’t give for a typhoon rain, the kind of summer that forbids dryness, that forbids clean skin, the kind that sees a body home, always caught. That puts us on sheets on the floor, in our underwear, panting, and stinking, and not ashamed to be so. That wilts the magazines in our melting red hands, heat that swells the tips of my fingers with blood, makes my cheeks rounder, half-closes my eyes with swelling. How later, a bucket full of sulphurous water, the rust smell of the old pipes, we will lift before us, and laugh, as if it were champagne, ready to be spilled, indulgent, over our nakedness and our floors. You bow to me, your bangs bright with droplets; All hail the tap-water heiress. The neighbor boy comes home, cicadas clinging to his shirt, just as his shirt is clinging to him. He closes his eyes and opens his mouth. His arms open, as a dozen pairs of wings close, as we lift the hose. Our laughter sliced through by the trains whistle, the red and grey engine cutting through the green, making us suddenly aware that here is the valley, here has long been the river, here once was a glacier, in the cradle of this heat. White cranes lift like steam from the treeline. They are not hurried. Anyone, from a time that isn’t now, stands behind me. Sweaty hands come around and bump at my thickening waistline, the linen slip sticks to us both, and I do not shy away. I lean into the touch, let my belly expand in gratefulness. A radio, half-static, announcing that the heat may break tomorrow. If only tomorrow would never come. Kaye Nash is a poet and teacher from Vancouver Island. She began her writing career while living and teaching just outside Taipei, but now lives with her family in Canada once again. She has had poetry published in Necro Magazine, The Literary Mark, Amethyst Review, Mookychick, Lunate, Nymphs, and Dear Reader Poet, as well as in anthology projects from The Bangor, Teen Belle and Castabout Lit. She is a regular contributor at Headline Poetry and Press. She can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @KStapletonNash. 8/8/2020 0 Comments Poetry by Bethany Goodwill Kaoru CC let the blood tell it Hammer to the anvil, hoof to the gut. The sound of life getting in the way of itself, of plans becoming irrelevant. In my dreams you bleed like a stuck pig as hopeless as roadkill. In my dreams, I call you by your first name. The bus drives past your house and I think of all the ways a person can hurt themselves. All the ways you can be poisoned. How do you mourn the loss of yourself? The cold house, the unhappy marriage, unremembering the smell of chocolate cake and blood. The body betrays you, parts of it turn to stone. You are a collection of everything that has happened to you, and guts and blood and bone. What will remain of you once you’re dead? What do you know how to do with your hands? Let the blood tell it. You load the gun You load the gun and I’ll fire it. You hold my head under the water, and I’ll like it. I’ll believe that I can breathe, and that way it won’t be your fault when I drown. It is never your fault. You won’t get what you want, because one day I’ll realise not everyone is keeping score. - Everything is essential, until it isn’t. I am glad you aren’t the sort of person who knows what accidental blood looks like blossoming in the bath. I like water so much more than fire. today I will restrain myself, pretend to be normal as rain - Your muscle memory of wrongness lets you down again. your body finds safety outside of itself - sets your house alight tells you to go home. Bethany Goodwill is a Medway-based poet, and one half of the Rochester poetry night Big Trouble. They completed the Contemporary MA at the University of Kent in 2017 and have been a regular in the Kent poetry scene since. They write about death and being in people’s cars, and they can be found at bethany-jay.tumblr.com. 8/8/2020 0 Comments Poetry by Rachel Small Marketa CC maternal language you first learned the word bitch from your mother. it is how you made your religion. practised it in the mirror until your teeth hardened. your mouth became just like a hard mark, almost as straight as the horizon from the window. razor sharp. a fine line. at night you say it like a prayer, seeking out the soft ridges that press into your tongue. if you looked past the curtain there would be a dead girl underwater in the old cow pond. maybe you’ll end up like her, eventually, with a mouthful of plastic. isn’t that where all the bitches end up? The Canadian Death Undercarriage (and True Crime) 1. seasonally our hair freezes when bones are lifted out of the dirt. papers once promised the bodice of the country as whale bone aesthetics, bordering white blanketed plains of space. 2. formal papers serve to remind effigies of Sex Offensive behaviours. over time we take hands to skeletons pulled from generational grief to examine the silhouettes of their bones. admiring the upright thumb. 3. our eyes skip over pigs farms and celestial bodies. a dozen stars could fall and not a chart would document it. Canada is lingering here; giving and receiving, shedding and accepting. we cannot pause long enough to feel a singular loss. Rachel Small (she/her) writes in Ottawa. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in magazines, including blood orange, many gendered mothers, The Hellebore, The Shore, and other places. She was the recipient of the honourable mention for the John Newlove Poetry Award for her poem "garbage moon and feminist day". 8/8/2020 0 Comments Poetry by Tessa Livingstone Ross Griff CC
HOW TO CLEAN YOUR HUNTING KNIFE It’s impossible To open When you need it The most So rinse it In water The stream’s Gleaming cold To wash off Breadcrumbs Built-up rust Feather fixed To blade Then dry it On sleeve And wrap it In rags Plain paper A picture of Elvis And bury it Under cedar Let the grass Grow over Go away When I go Away I leave footprints You can’t Track THE FOREST SPEAKS FOR ITSELF Can you admit: i. the wound {yes} ii. your limb, lost to the trap {yes} Did you believe that severing your own foot was: i. a necessary act {yes} ii. an absolute blessing {& yes} Did you consider: i. the hunter {yes} ii. his bloodhound {yes} iii. that whoever set the trap would come to set you free {no} Do you: i. feel pitied {no} ii. fancy yourself to suffering {no} They talk about you in town. They say: i. you wanted this {yes} ii. you willed this {yes} iii. no one forgives you {—} {Personally, when I read that, I got kind of scared.} Mostly what I’m trying to say is: i. it hurts to look. {yes.} ii. I look. {yes.} Do you want: i. to make whole again {yes & yes & yes} Then: i. choose your life {if I could just—} ii. crawl to it {if I could only just--} Can you afford: i. to be naïve {—} {How close am I to animal?} i. there’s a map to that place {yes--} ii. I can see its center {yes--} iii. close {—& getting closer} Tessa Livingstone is a young poet who holds an MFA from Portland State University. She enjoys engaging the transformative & macabre in her poetry, which has appeared in Moon City Review, Water~Stone Review, South Dakota Review, Geometry Literary Journal, Five:2:One Magazine, Whiskey Island Magazine, and Portland Review, among others. She currently lives and writes in Austin, TX. 8/8/2020 4 Comments Poetry by Michael Schmeltzer Lei Han CC Kindness as a Kind of Weapon So often my name has played on the lips of those who hate me I must be their magnum opus, a musical made by those who confuse the barrel of a rifle with the body of a flute. What music they create echoes in the emptiest halls and yet they bow as if vitriol needed a soundtrack. And if such animosity can be a kind of music, then I have crafted kindness into a kind of weapon you can swing with one hand like a foam sword from a state fair. Here, it's yours. Hit me again and again until you’re satisfied. To the Flawless Members of the Tribunal I have, of course, hurt others with the same hands I use to wipe my father’s lopsided face. The left half of his lips droop. His mouth hangs open as if about to speak. I listen for my name. ~ Age melts the handsome from him. He is wick and from him I was born wicked. He cannot walk. He cannot drink the liquor he wants so I give him water. I decorate him with a Nicotine patch. Flawless members of the tribunal, while you deliberate whether by match or torch to raze my house, my old life already burnt down. Michael Schmeltzer is the co-author of the nonfiction book "A Single Throat Opens," a lyric exploration of addiction and family. His debut "Blood Song" was a Washington State Book Award Finalist for Poetry and longlisted for the Julie Suk Award. He was recently a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize for his unpublished poetry manuscript "In the Great War I Become Cake." Schmeltzer was born in Japan and eventually moved to the US. He currently lives in Seattle with his family and is the President of Floating Bridge Press. 8/8/2020 1 Comment Poetry by Isabella Piacentino Marketa CC Outcast For anyone who has ever felt like they don’t belong... or who likes supernatural shows My grandmom Eileen Once set a spark crackling Through a TV screen, A cleansing spell that didn’t clean. Hands pretzeled in my lap, Spine paralyzed, foot tap, cycling through Octobers and full moon crap, Cat eyes open for my magic snap, The witch map. Hoping for a generation skip, My mom’s only magical trick: Remembering all the bad shit My father ever did. No broomstick, no magic In the walls, no attic traffic From ghosts, or spaghetti With eyeballs. And grandmom Eileen, all withdrawn, still whispering Spells down her New Jersey halls, Withholding my Sabrina moment. I’m still waiting for her to call. Or even my grandmom Roxene, A past-life mermaid singing, Had men packed like sardines, Crashing ships on shores at fourteen. Legs crossed, hoping they twist into A tail of blue scales shimmering, Shining like sun rays on rippling waves, oh to Sail, instead I inhale salty gulps like a whale, Swimming through summers then winter hail, Eyes open underwater ‘til I see in clear detail, The fairy tale. Maybe the gene missed me, my father’s Only sea in the drinks he’s downing, drowning, deep Diving into faraway streams, wrapped in another woman’s seaweed. No siren songs, only rising tides In my eyes, no sunsets seaside, Only sailors’ goodbyes. And grandmom Roxene dreaming, reminiscing About her mariner’s eyes and Her moonlight glow, never revealing If my own mermaid tail will grow. The misplaced daughter of Stevie Nicks Or Neptune, the sunburnt child of the moon, The princess stolen quick from the life She should’ve lived, from the palace, Atlantis, or a dismantled coven that humans undid And hid from her, raised a mortal convert. Can this outcast outlast an aching heart, the mystery, never knowing who you are? Shouldn’t feeling so alone mean you’re really a part of a world still unknown? Maybe I’m the werewolf girl With my hairy arms and wild curls, or The vampire chick with the sun allergy, With my pale skin and low social battery. Or the mermaid, or the witch, or the pixie, the psychic, I must feel so lost because something inside Of me has been dismissed and ditched, Taught to twist, switch, never pull on the loose stitch. I have to be something more than this. The Library Aisle on Women in Art I am the Pizza Guy’s Frankenstein girlfriend with beer for blood / President’s lady-carcass sprawled nude upon classified documents / Slackerboy’s science experiment hogtied with neon workout bands in his parents’ basement / I am the vision-she / blueprint / waist cut & rope sewn to scalp / statue for the Conquistador / meat-bride for the Beast / I have Man’s eyes / socket wire-threaded with syrup pus / mind transplant barbwired in skull / programmed other / beauty bot with an off-switch flesh ditch / I am the industry of bodies / discourse of whore and virgin / she-myth / prostitute butchered in the alleyway / watercolor princess plunged in Sharpie fumes / I am all undead women / Man clutches my skeleton / always watching / from behind my eyes. Isabella Piacentino is currently a rising senior at Temple University, studying to be a high school English teacher. Bella's poem "Tommy Girl" has been published in Temple's Literary Magazine, Hyphen. As well, Yikes Magazine published her poem "I'd rather be a bitch" on their online platform. When she's not writing poetry, Bella is arguing with her conservative family members about politics or reading sappy romance books with her friend in their quarantine book club. 8/8/2020 1 Comment Poetry by Koss Michael Spiller CC = Max, Carrie’s Mother, [No Wonder] Max / your death just got even worse / Carrie’s Mother arrived at your apartment / she’s talking about Jesus and telling everyone what to do / she says she’s got a direct line to God and apparently knows Max / Carrie’s Mother texts me Bible verses at 5:00 a.m. / I’ve hardly slept in days / don’t give a shit if the pillows are naughty, Max / I’m overwrought over you / something’s wrong with her, I believe Max / what Carrie’s Mother said about me when you talked on the phone / why did you leave your speaker on? / she never met me, but she’s got god tangled up in her head / her hair / her throat / and vagina / and you know mine’s a God-free zone / and she’s a homophobe / something’s wrong with Carrie’s Mother, Max / surely, you must have known Max / Carrie’s Mother called herself and Mr. Ed We / and I was something Other / not part of the straight girl club / even the horse belongs / she said you never ever loved a woman / I told her you loved seven / something is wrong with Carrie’s Mother, Max / whatever her heaven is, let’s not go there Max / you are three days dead with your body on lockdown by cops / your purse / your keys / your things / Carrie’s Mother accused me of stealing your allotment keys / this is shit I didn’t need / there’s something wrong with her Max / Carrie’s Mother’s eyes are wild / her hair, tangled ringlets / she gets excited, then angry / laughing and crying / then flinging her arms / no wonder the house burned down Max / Carrie’s Mother is interrogating me about your car / the tires I bought / I didn’t tell her why you didn’t talk about me / if she were smart, she would know / something’s wrong with her, Max / normal people don’t act like that / why is she even here? Max / Carrie’s Mother side-dissed our relationship while reenacting sex and passion with her make-believe husband / three times / literally kissing and groping the air / she flung her head back like a drama queen / it made me queasy, Max / something is wrong with her / meanwhile, Mr. Ed made up with King Henry VIII over the phone / as if your suicide were some private agreement between them / yesterday she was going to kill him Max / what does a 45-year-old virgin know about love? / never mind / you are dead Max / Carrie’s Mother’s a smug mother-fucker / like no other Jesus thumper I’ve met / something’s wrong with her Max / I’ve packed up my bags and am headed to Manchester / King Henry’s laid claim to your body / I wonder how his new wife will arrange you in their home / I didn’t tell Carrie’s Mother what you said about your sleepovers / or why you became estranged / but I did text her “homophobe” / when I got to the hotel / sorry Max / you had to have known / no wonder you burned down the school Final Journey: Leaving the Tenement filthy undershirt / bangs girlfriend’s head against wall next door rolling my suitcase through littered council lots a final time no small spaces to fit into / trucks parked on sidewalks from neighbor’s shacked-up boyfriends / times eleven no reason to say hello or so long no fucking / shitting pigeons / flapping night stalkers no grinning dogs full of ticks / tails tucked between haunches no pale pimply pushers / rusty green trash bins no stringy Norwegians / Brit widows / bulb noses no cigarette butts / singed brown grass / clotheslines / no Max Carrie’s mother said Max thought she was too good for this place Koss is a writer and artist with an MFA from SAIC. She has work in or Diode Poetry, Cincinnati Review, Hobart, Spillway, and others. She also has a hybrid book due out in 2020 by Negative Capability Press and work in Best Small Fictions 2020 anthology. Keep up with Koss on Twitter @Koss51209969 and Instagram @koss_singular. 8/8/2020 2 Comments Poetry by Shalini Rana Ross Griff CC Eighth Grade Affliction The first time you died was like every other time: the red-blaring machine paramedics towing the stretcher through the door Mumma following close behind her gait low, fast, and solemn My body in another room This time the kitchen and this time your day-nurse distraught-- with tears like black holes etched on her face This time two cops interrogate her upstairs until she comes down with no more tears left to spill Black-hole-face This time I think your last time This time: my fourteenth year your tenth just years piling like old sweaters a perpetual unbuttoning In the kitchen my body drifts to the ceiling the police still standing in my home. For A the boy in the red wine room is younger now is not screaming but loud in his hands the peaks of his knuckles dance across the screen of buttons that become words uttered by a machine whose voice is female his voice is balled fists banging with the human urge to speak I am not this lady machine! his ocean eyes darting his wordless mouth open grinning his body already speaking a sweeter sound Shalini Rana is a poet from Vienna, Virginia who writes about moments in the margins of sickness, death, and childhood trauma. She is pursuing her MFA in poetry at the University of Arkansas. In addition to reading and writing, she loves her family, pizza, and The Beatles. |
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