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8/5/2021 Poetry by Cecil Morris Kevin Doncaster CC
Persephone Comes Home When she returned, our pale Persephone squinted against the sun and tried to hide in her own hand's shade. She spent hours in the bath with the lights out, the shame caked in her creases dissolving in glacial time. Then followed the eon of silence, when Persephone avoided our eyes and would not utter any words at all, when she only sighed or whimpered—the dog that smells but cannot taste, the dog chained outside. At last she began to whisper and mumble her story, how she went down with oxy and company to a world beneath our world, to Acheronian hibernation, sedated in earthen cocoon, transfixed by stillness and roots twining through her hair and claiming her until, one day, she heard her name sung in canon perpetual by tireless distant voices, our voices singing our Persephone back to us. Persephone Falls and Falls We no longer speak her name, do not call her sorrow to us; our shrill parental voices will not resurrect her, will not lift her from the shadows, can not compete with the poppy’s swaddling enervation. We used to sing her name, to warble it like daybreak birds announcing the bright sun’s arrival. In the days before these days, we were her acolytes, attendants to her rise, to her blossoming, to her wilting, the first of many falls. We’d call and call until she’d come home, a shower of tears and excuses, tears and promises, a litany of laments. Then she’d retreat into her room, into her bed, and dig like gopher down, tunnel into sleep, a tuber we would water with our tears. When we’d pull her out, pull her up, she’d go and fall again to oxy’s sweet embrace. We Can't Even Tell Ourselves Here in the temple of dark and light, our eyes dialed wide to see the horrors man inflicts on man, the intended hurts, the cruelty casual and accidental, we wait for our turn to feel we matter enough for pain. We try to stay loose, relaxed, open, our arms and legs both slightly splayed, our lips parted, the storm drain ready for deluge. We take slow shallow breaths, almost imperceptible, quiet as snow falling, settling, waiting for first tracks, for crunch of first boots crashing through the surface, marring it's white exterior and slamming tremors echoing down dark hearts of rabbits, moles, timid souls. The underground, the inside, the blending in. The secret cisterns begin to seethe, an unexpected carbonation, cold clench in the throat when car misses us in the crosswalk and we feel the wind after it's gone and flinch too late to have saved ourselves. Enough of that, we say without speaking and draw our limbs back to our bodies, touching only ourselves, holding our ruby of fear close, a badge we won or found and will count as pain and keep as animal memory - furtive, feral, claw embedded as our unspeakable need. Cecil Morris retired after 37 years of teaching English, and now he tries writing himself what he spent so many years teaching others to understand and enjoy. He enjoys ice cream too much and cruciferous vegetables too little. He has poems appearing in 2River View, Cobalt Review, Ekphrastic Review, Midwest Quarterly, Poem, Talking River Review, and other literary magazines. 8/5/2021 Poetry by Guillermo Rebollo Gil spablab CC About having children That thing that Hass said, that so long as you make it through the day, it’s not like the boy has to be in every poem per se, it’s that poems cannot begin without, are not even imaginable until I bring to mind that thing he said this morning about me smelling of socks and squash, and isn’t it sad, yes, that I’ll never grow small enough to fit under anything anymore, always having to wait at one end or the other, holding up a clean shirt for him to put on, so we can please leave, and all the while I’m saying to myself, I should just write the poem in my head without him noticing I’ve escaped and so Hass comes up, the idea, for example, that the parent you are erases the luminous clarity of the poet you are too, are not, are too, or the notion that so long as I make it through the day without crushing his tiny fingers on the car door, I should be thankful for the true at first sight meaning of my life, which I am, as I stand here, a permanent escapee, from whatever other life the poet in me could have foreseen.  Guillermo Rebollo Gil (San Juan, 1979) is a poet, sociologist and attorney. His poems have appeared, or are forthcoming, in Fence, Feed, Mandorla, The Acentos Review , Pittsburgh Poetry Journal, Trampset, FreezeRay and Caribbean Writer. He belongs to/with Lucas Imar and Ariadna Michelle. Happily so.
8/5/2021 Poetry by Melissa Sussens Marketa CC The Museum of Lonely Girlhood Along this wall there is a collage of postcard invitations for all the sleepovers she was not invited to, all the birthday parties she chose not to attend alone. You may find their brash colours jarring, the display like a crowded room with music turned too loud. Through this door there is the tiptoe of her voice, unheard by most. It whispers across the hallway, a telephone unrung. These televisions play a revelation of reruns of two women falling in love in Seattle Grace’s on-call rooms. Each forty minutes is an unloneliness, a thin tether to this life. In front of you there is a locked closet door. The keys along the wall are rusted from disuse. Inside, a stack of her notebooks; their velvet pages an echo of girlhood crushes, unrequited. Witness them filling after the lights are extinguished. Here is the narrow bed in the hostel room, rented for a night to be closer to friends who did not show. The empty room pines with the row of unused beds. The only pillow to know a head that night whispers of her unsatisfied hunger for belonging. On your right is a balloon, drifting unwanted into the sky on repeat. Look how it is coloured wallflower, see how it almost disappears against the blue backdrop. If I didn’t point it out would you have noticed its ragged bloom? Behind this door there is a live reenactment of The Giving. Please ignore the mirror screaming out The Taking. This room holds the funeral for her innocence. It is poorly attended, of course. But the preacher is passionate. Up ahead I’d like to introduce you to the Patron Saint of Invisibility. This wall hanging was started by the artist at the tender age of thirteen. You will see how she has allowed the edges to blend into the wall. Ask yourself, what is really visible? Look again, now do you see anything at all?  Melissa Sussens (she/her) is a queer veterinarian and poet. Her work has appeared in Capsule Stories, Horse Egg Literary, Kissing Dynamite, SFWP Quarterly and Gnashing Teeth Publishing, among others. She has performed at the Poetry In McGregor festival and at Off The Wall and placed 2nd in the New Contrast National Poetry Prize. By day she works as a small animal veterinarian and whenever she’s not doctoring animals, she assists in teaching Megan Falley’s Poems That Don’t Suck international online writing course. Melissa lives in Cape Town with her partner and their two dogs. Find her on Instagram @melissasussens and on Twitter @girlstillwrites.
8/5/2021 Poetry by Steve Jensen Jeff Ruane CC Fresh and Unadorned One day I will fistfight zoo animals. The great tremor will come, and all the walls will fall. Like goldfish in a bowl, every being grows to the size of his environment. Billions of years ago, fat carp stalked the plains, wrapped in skins of others. Flaming gold coats and mascot heads with fangs. Winners and losers. Mixed and matched and worn. Toast Daddy told me our toaster could sense when a slice of bread should pop. I cradled this, my father’s imparted wisdom. Gauges within that $15, mirrored-metal cube measured the moisture inside every fiber of yeast and flour till the perfect dryness had been attained. Even as age dispelled my myth, I hovered and gazed at the glowing, fire-orange wires within the gaping wounds of that dead box with quiet unshaken faith. Likewise, I have faith in God’s presence even now.  Steve Jensen is an Iowan living in Seattle with his wife, kids, and dog. There were brief stops in Kansas City, St. Louis, and London along the way. He will always want to know the size of your town.
8/5/2021 Poetry by Jason Melvin ryangs CC I didn’t write this my brother may have my dad he could’ve of maybe Uncle Sonny did I know too many people who could’ve written this but it wasn’t me at least as of yet Fuck all you old people Yes that’s what we said FUCK all you old people and you’re bitching bitching about how this hurts and that hurts How you just aren’t what you used to be How young people are assholes they’ve always been assholes you were an asshole About how you’re going to die soon you only maybe have a few years left You’re probably right but don’t forget about all those years that you did have It’s not about the ones you have left It’s about the ones you’ve lived We would’ve been grateful for a few more I write my hurt My brother died just now. Literally, maybe an hour ago my God what selfish beings we are first thought Why? do his small children have to relive our childhood? a father dying too young leaving before they’ve grown second thought Why? does my poor mother bury those who die too young? a 38-year-old husband a 49-year-old son third thought I will mine this Poetry gold because that’s what I do I write my hurt I deal in loss so many words about my dead father many more upcoming for my dead brother my God what selfish …  Jason Melvin received a gimmicky T-shirt from his teenage daughter on Christmas with a picture of one large fist fist-bumping a much smaller fist. The caption read, “Behind every smart-ass daughter is a truly asshole Dad”. It fit. His work has recently appeared in The Beatnik Cowboy, Olney, Rat’s Ass Review, The Spring City, Spillover, The Electric Rail, Front Porch Review and Shambles, among others.
8/5/2021 Poetry by Lauren Thomas ricky shore CC Reflections Time sits with a book. The season Outside is rain. The roses are slept And we must all be dressed by noon Your blue collision and sun-blast sends me scattered into gull-flung air Time listens for the sound, when the hush of warm Air is cloying in the gut. On slow mind days The snap will come that opens your red voice. The gasp of you on a bluster day pulls at my hair, you roll me over I check for signs of damage in the shower. The breasts are wrong. I should have had Them taken off. I leave them in a drawer for the estate I climb inside you, wade into your uprush, brace for our attrition am left floating in you for days Voicing is a stretch - time needs a stitch. I can mitigate And clip it with soft breath. Am I too old to feed it Blood and birth it to the page? Or do I send it down in rain? I listen for the others caught in your teeth we are distanced. your tidal paths, desire lines My high arched pain, crouches low, time bathes an earnest Wound with rage. I am learnt in flagrant shadow. All at once it is the noon and I am fully clothed  Lauren Thomas’ most recent writing is in The Crank Literary Magazine, Briefly Zine, Re-side Magazine, Abridged and Green Ink Poetry. She has poetry forthcoming or in several anthologies including; Dreich’s Summer Anywhere anthology, Songs of Love and Strength by TheMumPoemPress, The Nine Pens Hair-Raising anthology and The Faces of Womanhood by Blood Moon Journal.
l[email protected] Twitter @laurenmywrites 8/5/2021 Poetry by Katie Kemple mark sebastian CC Nice girl “You look like such a nice girl,” my third-grade teacher said. “But you’re not!” she tacked on at the end. While I stood stunned outside her room. The teacher across the hall didn’t like me either, gave me a lecture so harsh I cried my eyes out before a field trip. I held my urine so long, I peed my pants in her class. Once, she called on me to spell “does” and I spelled “dose” instead. And I got a shot of her fury— (and my own embarrassment.) Her name, literally a cane with a K, I kept getting hit with again and again. And I’m sure I must have been a terrible pain. Rolled my eyes too distinctly, some said. The school therapist took me out of class. And I felt like a failure at last, pumping my legs on an empty swing-set, talking about feelings while my peers learned inside. I tried so hard, so hard to do as I was told. And I did for a while. But rage comes out eventually. It does, in doses, again and again. While the metal chains sang: restrain, restrain, restrain, retrain.  Katie Kemple (she/her) grew up in the Shawangunks of New York and currently lives in San Diego. Her poems have appeared in The Collidescope, The Racket, Lucky Jefferson, Olney, Dwelling, and Right Hand Pointing, among others.
8/5/2021 Poetry by Beth Mulcahy ricky shore CC
greyhound friends we were going the same direction from different places i want to be a writer she knows how to drive a rig i always get zits before i go home her nose is a little crooked because of him hitting her i am going home to see my love she left hers because of how he hit her i am the baby of my family she was her daddy’s favorite until he died i have clerical experience she modeled lingerie to save money to help him get better my dad got better hers died before she could get to him i carry mace i am too scared to use she could kick my ass if she wanted to i chose to sit by her because she was a woman going my direction Friendly Fire the way i see it there is a gap between what it should be and what it is between what we have and what we should have when someone sees you the way he sees me it should be enough but it never seemed to be enough to keep the hurt away over and over again i know that wasn’t really him and it wasn’t anything i did it was the war that reared itself that lashed out of him and onto me the war he kept fighting the war he never won i surveyed the landscape of his eyes every time to find the spaces through which the mortar might come flying i approached with caution my eyes and heart both wide open i only knew how to defend myself with stoic silence and apologetic tears for having done nothing to deserve the shrapnel friendly fire is still fire distance became safer and i learned to take cover when i went awol he retreated and couldn’t find a way to reach me anymore he may not have known who the enemy was but it isn’t me it never was i widened the gap between us to survive and as the years went on a buffer zone now demilitarized no access to any exposure i can’t risk anymore wounds now there’s only time for peace and healing someday, maybe soon he will be gone he wasn’t the only one here wounded by that war and i have to tell him now with my heart wide open that I love him anyway that it’s all ok I love him anyway over and out Beth Mulcahy is a Gen X-er from Michigan, living in Ohio where she works for a company that provides technology to people without natural speech. Beth loves to travel and write poetry, fiction, and memoir. She has work in Bombfire Literary Magazine, Trouvaille Review, The Fiery Scribe, and Potato Soup Journal. Check out her most recent publications at https://linktr.ee/mulcahea 8/4/2021 Poetry by Daniel Niv Timo Newton-Syms CC Around the Bell Jar "To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream" – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar. It was August and the sun was burning with light. It was August and my mother was hospitalized in a room with other women. I found no light there, nor the sun. Was this her life now? But she was laughing there, making jokes with her new friends about their mental illnesses. They were all laughing, she was laughing, and I should've been laughing but there were many things by then that should've been and never will be. It was August and, on my grandma's sunny porch, I read The Bell Jar to understand my mother. It was August, and some other Augusts afterwards – my mother is still in a bell jar, and I, sticked to the glass yet outside of it, still searching for the right words to read to understand people like me.  Daniel Niv is a 23 years old writer and a student of Tel Aviv University. Currently, she is double-majoring in Literature and Creative Writing in both Hebrew and English. She writes for Matok & Mar Magazine, got published in Caesura Literary Journal and in Bloom Magazine, and recently won the Bar Sagi Award 2021.
8/4/2021 Poetry by Mark Danowsky m66roepers CC
Take Two Aspirin & That's where this all began Sidestepping They call it a Band-Aid Call it medically-assisted Or call it scheduled Call it illicit Call it hands up Call it a bullet in the brain & yet, good people Know to turn here when most in need Thoughts & prayers Never solved severe acute pain Never once Always Take The Meeting I don't I delete the message I pretend I never saw what I saw Don't get here White knuckling one day at a time You can't keep on keeping on I began to dissociate "Shutdown Mode" before I realized You can't keep on keeping on Call half a lifetime sunk cost What's next might be temporary Invest in yourself They invest in you too often too late You can't keep on keeping on Be the brazen chameleon Change right in front of the crowd Mark Danowsky is Editor-in-Chief of ONE ART: a journal of poetry and Senior Editor for Schuylkill Valley Journal. He is author of the poetry collection As Falls Trees (NightBallet Press). His work has appeared in Bird Watcher’s Digest, Cleaver Magazine, Gargoyle, The Healing Muse, and elsewhere. |
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