8/4/2021 1 Comment Poetry by Alex C. Eisenberg m66roepers CC Trespass CW: suggestion of sexual assault “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I learned the art of trespass on the grounds of the church. They kept the gate to the playground locked which is more than they can say for their habits or their hands. We’d ride our rusted bikes after hours past the chapel. When we were small we’d wedge our way under the wooden gate. When we were older we’d stand on each other’s shoulders. It must have left some marks keeping these secrets but I don’t remember worrying. We just thought this was worship: learning how to get away with things when witness eyes averted but once we were inside I don’t remember playing. The fun part was the sneaking in and the surreptitious escape. Alex C. Eisenberg (she/her) is a child of the western high desert and the pacific northwest rainforest. Her soul is rooted in these wonderful landscapes and she finds new tendrils of connection everywhere she goes. Currently, Alex lives by candlelight with her partner, their 5 cats, and an ever-changing number of chickens in the foothills of the Olympic Mountains. To see more of her work go to alexandriaceisenberg.wordpress.com and follow her on twitter @alexceisenberg.
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8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Conner Craig dustroad CC Truth Back to the fireplace, Like a saint, head tilted up To dam in salt water “What do you like to do, Red?” And he is backlight by the moon, Honest in his question. “I don’t- I-“ Blinking to meet his gaze. “I don’t know.” “I hope you get the chance.” Conner Craig is an undergrad at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts. He came out as transgender in 2019 and started seriously writing poetry and prose the same year. He currently lives in southern New Hampshire with his cat Charlie. 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Courtney LeBlanc ricky shore CC I Ask Amy Her Thoughts on My Marriage Baby, we both know I know nothing about making it work. I made it two years with my guy and he was in jail for part of them. Here’s what I do know: take what you can and use it – write your poems, you know I wrote my songs. Sure, he broke my fucking heart, but the music! Maybe that makes it worth it. I don’t know anymore, you just gotta love until you die. What else can you do? Courtney LeBlanc is the author of the full length collections Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart (Riot in Your Throat) and Beautiful & Full of Monsters (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press). She is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. Read her publications on her blog: www.wordperv.com. Follow her on twitter: @wordperv, and IG: @wordperv79. 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Liz DeGregorio ryangs CC Route 66 The first time she ever felt completely at peace was when she was walking down Route 66 – and realized that no one in the world knew where she was. She could disappear for hours (perhaps even days) and no one would be the wiser. That still desert air. Liz DeGregorio's writing has appeared in Ruminate Magazine, BUST Magazine, Ghouls Magazine, Gravitas, The Tulane Review, Scorpion Magazine, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Decomp Journal, Drunk Monkeys, *82 Review, The Ocotillo Review, From Whispers to Roars, Ponder Review, Crack the Spine's anthology "Neighbors," Riva Collective's Chunk Lit, Dark Moon Lilith Press, Two Sisters, Indie Blu(e) Publishing's anthologies "SMITTEN" and "As the World Burns," In Parentheses and "The Heartbreak Project" anthology. She's also performed at Providence's Dorry Award-winning storytelling series Stranger Stories. 8/4/2021 2 Comments Poetry by Richard Long i threw a guitar at him. CC At the Shoe Fence in Rice, California No one today on HWY 62 between the Colorado and Ash Hill is wearing shoes. Ghost bikers pass me, and twenty-four marines who passed in wrecks on this barren perform a silent drill. History is a broken axel of the southbound whistle, the train whirling through the air, crashing, and crushing passengers beneath it. Afterwards, torn articles of clothing appear on a lone tamarisk, bone bleached, until a fire burns it to a husk and a fence is raised to enclose the plot. Tongues, toes, heels, eyes, and arches—parts of shoes now hang from it. Who am I to say if the passing is a phantasm of a radiant Mojave mirage? or barefoot prophets of ragged sack cloth with nothing to say to me? and to question the elder woman in the rear who carries corals out of the paleozoic sea and when they die she says their ghosts walk barefoot to live toward the western sea and some after they die live like owls? But look at the chucking of all those shoes hanging from the fence, no longer needed, as if a schoolyard of children out on recess decided to skip barefoot and never returned. Memento Mori Now I am where I have forever wanted to be, and I bless the wrong turn, the detour, the mistake of excess weight I hauled, the breakdown and the wreck. How could I have known there would be such beatitude? Here in this dead bar with jukebox Freeman staring through me and saying to the keep ‘Anders is a ghost? I’d like to celebrate with him the haunting of the blind curve where my techy watch notified my loved ones of catastrophe - See the dying light morph into a ghost, my semblance—and give a thumb’s up? Now I am where I have forever wanted to be. Richard Long is Professor Emeritus of English at St. Louis Community College, now retired in Santa Rosa, California. For the last twenty-five years, he has edited and published 2River (www.2River.org), quarterly publishing The 2River View and occasionally publishing individual authors in the 2River Chapbook Series. Poems of his have appeared recently in Black Coffee Review, Red Wheelbarrow, TravelArtist Hub, and UCity Review. Sue Thompson CC Bird/Brain Welling up through chest and throat, four cardinals in a tree. Repeating thoughts about nothing. Singing I am here, I am here, I am singing this. I am here and I am hungry and my pain is that which is old in my mind and old in me, a seizing threat to chain up the breath, a seizing mind to size up the jaw. All is estranged, nothing belongs. To me, every step is a step away from death and a step towards another dying. All day. Every day. Repeating thoughts about nothing I am here, I am here, I am here thinking and cardinals are singing, a mind repeating songs for the sake of repeating because singing is letting go of a body and letting go of a body is the last lesson in a series of lessons about what it is to be flesh at a time when old pain is still enough to withdraw into cardinal points as birds might in the middle of the afternoon, singing about themselves to whoever listens, we are here, you are here too, will you share the mind of a bird and sing along for the sake of singing along, all day, all day? Stephen Scott Whitaker (@SScottWhitaker) is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the co-editor of The Broadkill Review. A teaching artist with the Virginia Commission for the Arts, an educator, and a grant writer, Whitaker’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in The Rumpus, The Maine Review, Great River Review, Oxford Poetry, The Best of Helios Quarterly & The Southern Poetry Review Series: Virginia. Mulch, a novel of weird fiction is forthcoming from Montag Press in 2021. 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Kristen Reid i threw a guitar at him. CC Snuff Out the Gaslight She had no flashlight to guide her steps in those monstrous depths but she had a gaslight to teach her to morph her to make her accept the horrors. She had a gaslight fog to burn smog and smoke to cloak her and change her and drug her and she let that gaslight shine like green sludge into her soul without blowing out its flame. But it flickered and it faltered and that girl started to smell the satisfaction of a flame trying to finally snuff out and she prayed that her lungs would be strong enough to kill it herself. The Final Girls Horror stories do not begin with hope. Horror stories do not end without blood being spilled. But we wait patiently with horror stories, because we hold onto the anticipation that there is either a satisfying end or an end that will allow us to finally tear our hands away from our eyes. This horror story will end with a final girl. and it will be satisfying. The final girl battles monsters. She is the one who overcomes them. She is the one who ends the story in her own words on her own terms with her own mind. The monsters are gone when she speaks her story. The monsters are destroyed at the final mark. The final girl walks out of the house, the forest, the cave, the clutches of death, dripping with blood and guts and scars and fatigue and a soul that has been buried, but yet... she walks. She keeps walking. She keeps going, because she is now ALIVE. From death she has risen, clawing up from the 6-foot deep grave of an end. SHE IS THE FINAL GIRL. I AM THE FINAL GIRL. WE ARE ALL THE FINAL GIRL. AND WE WILL CARRY OUR MONSTERS’ HEADS BY THE SCALP AS WE GRIN WITH WHITE PEARLS IN OUR MOUTHS AND WITH THE TASTE OF OUR STRENGTH ON OUR TONGUES. AND WE WILL NOT BE SILENT. AND WE WILL NOT BE DESTROYED. AND WE WILL NOT LET THE MONSTERS TAKE OUR VICTORY FROM US. To My Fellow Cockroaches A bed. A wall. A mirror. And a grave to hold the teenage dream I was promised. But perhaps that grave was meant for me instead. Yes, a grave to keep that which crawls, decaying, amongst life... something that just keeps ticking along like a cockroach surviving the blast of finality from devastating bombs. People hate cockroaches. They are quite hideous on the outside, but I find solace in their filth and endurance. For I, myself, am a cockroach crawling through muck to only persist through the nuclear war inside my mind and on my body. Because who am I to this world but a cockroach? I am a Mary Shelley creation of ripped flesh and borrowed existences to endure in this world as a horror in and of itself. But this world does not realize just how much of a horror I can be. I am working on that. We, women, are all working on that. Kristen Reid lives in East Tennessee and is a graduate student at Tennessee Tech University. When she isn’t studying, she spends most of her time writing folk horror and weird western short stories and working on her fantasy novel. She has fiction stories published with Broadswords and Blasters, Scare Street Publishing, The Horror Tree, The Sirens Call, and upcoming with Springer Mountain Press. Follow her on Instagram @writerkristenreid and on Twitter @Kris10BelleReid. 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by M.T. Coombe ricky shore CC WRECKAGE You smell like addiction and heartbreak Loss as your friend and constant companion Knowledge will never bring peace Dying with grass stains on your summer clothes Children build spirit cages out of twigs There is so much left unsaid Heavy linen, dark woods and thick shadows These are the waiting areas The Lychgate is the border In the collapse of daylight You seek the horizon Learn to hold your breath in the drowning That discomfort you are feeling is grief But seeds are used to the darkness Life is growing in the wreckage of my heart Fall in love with this warmth for me Strip me apart in layers Until the emptiness passes CLEAN I want to be clean again Bones carved from cherry wood Blushing as he looks right through me I am angry at feeling so much love I wish you wouldn’t find me in my darker places Maybe this time I will get it right There is something wild and untamed inside Uncontaminated by knowledge Burning with purity and rage They call him numb and dreamy An endless battle of contrasting memories The beginning of all possibilities Sad things make me feel warm Little prince of a forest kingdom He flickers when you turn your head I want to be clean again Pale white skin stretched over innocence A house becoming a home M.T. Coombe is a queer multidisciplinary artist living in the UK. He is fascinated by the idea of modern fairy-tales. His writings are based on youth / obsession / loss / addiction / dreams / mental health / folklore and apocalyptic landscapes. He has been published in XRAY Lit, Misery Tourism, Expat Press, Bear Creek Gazette, SCAB Magazine and more. He is currently writing his debut novel. Find him at; www.trashprincemusic.com/writing and https://twitter.com/trashprincemuse 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Leanne Beattie ricky shore CC You Didn’t Think Happiness Would Hurt This Much You believe the deep aching itch in your crotch is sexual desire and when you finally realize it’s a yeast infection, it’s too late to go back. So you let him rub you raw in the front seat of his Crown Victoria in the park overlooking the Grand River in the moonlight while your mother is home with the kids. You tell yourself you’re not cheating because you didn’t have sex with the new guy until after you moved out. This guy is a rip off the bandage and get it done way to leave your husband. This guy is just a means to an end. You have exactly two thousand dollars in the bank that your sister lent you but most of it will be gone when the cheque clears for your first and last month’s rent. You’ve moved to a red brick Victorian row house, which sounds enchanting, but the wall going up the stairs has peeling orange floral wallpaper dotted with black mould. You scrub the wall with full strength bleach so your daughters won’t breathe in spores. Your five-year old and your seven-year old share a bedroom and your toddler sleeps in a crib slipped under the eaves in the small open space at the top of the stairs. You sleep on the couch until your mother buys you a double bed for the other bedroom. It’s good enough for now. Christmas is coming but you’re only working part-time at Food Basics, so you sell your original painting of the beaver by George McLean to your brother for $500. You use this money to buy the girls gifts from Santa, plastic shit that will break in a week but will make them happy for a little while. You take them for supper at Burger King on Christmas Eve because the owner is a friend of your husband and gives you free food. You are the only customers in the place at 6 pm and holiday music echoes through the dining room from the small TV on the corner shelf near the ceiling. A teenaged girl with an elf ears headband stretched under her uniform visor listlessly wipes your table when your oldest daughter spills her carton of 2% milk across half-chewed chicken tenders smothered in ketchup. But you don’t even watch your girls rip open their gifts on Christmas morning because you’re upstairs having sex. You do it to keep the guy happy. Because he says that you were born to fuck him, and you should be happy that someone wants you. You stay with him even though he grabbed you so hard a few weeks ago that a black handprint inked your arm. After pancakes with fake maple syrup, you pack a change of clothes for each of the girls in their new Toy Story backpacks and smile and wave as they drive away with their father to spend the rest of Christmas with his family. And you feel an ache again. Higher this time, in the middle of your chest. You didn’t think happiness would hurt this much. Leanne Beattie is a writer and artist who lives in the beach town of Port Stanley, Ontario. For Leanne, poetry is life distilled down to its deepest emotions. Her career began as a freelance journalist and she later became a marketing specialist for several high-tech companies. She is the author of the YA novel Cage of Bone (2011) and is currently working on a mystery novel. You can find her on Twitter @JoyMagnet and on Instagram @leannebeattie_creative. 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Tate Thunderchild7 CC Track Marks to Me The bug bites Her peeling tattoo are track marks to me Sunlit pupils The lack of them are - The casual itching Fast talking is pipe smoke again Long sweaters in summer, Air conditioning, hiding what may be The bug bites Her peeling tattoo Unrequited Love I love her. I do. I promise I do. Say it out loud to convince them it’s true. Because it is true, we love each other. But before I knew love, she’d love another. In the beginning, dream sequences began. Perfection, black spots, smiling, I ran. They said I ran fast, scoffed on their way out. Faster that the lies escaped from her mouth. The same mouth I kissed nights before closed eyes. The same mouth I kept, held on to in time for my heart to break. Then, more after that. Before holding on, was no going back. Sometimes that mouth will smell like the day of white sheets, plastic tubes, blue, stick, rubber gloves. She didn’t wake up. Shouting what to do. EMT phone calls. Feet of snow dug through. “I love you.” Come to. The hospital bed. Debate on giving that kiss on her head. I never forgave her asking to go, asking for water, no saying “hello I love you, I do. I do, I promise.” “When can I leave? When can I?” so chronic. Her mouth was so cold, so different now. My mouth didn’t speak. It didn’t know how. Time passed, we got home through the feet of snow. Pretend it’s okay. Pretend we’re alone. Then was when I met - She introduced me, “This is my true love. Come here,” Let me see. I saw it. I did. I promise, I did. Tried to love it too but couldn’t, didn’t. No, love it, I mean. Still feel it in me. I wanted so much to see what she sees. White powders in nose, sharp needles in veins, to understand her, her heart and her brain. My way to her soul, others way to hell, others way to run. Path I now know well. So, I did try, I pried her from her love. Even with distance I wasn’t enough. Not Olivia, Opal, Olive Vine. Her love’s name is Opiate. Opiates. Not mine. The drug, my girl, the unrequited love, addiction, addicts stone cold in their gloves. We ran out, we ran out of money, time, out of food, people. Not ever of lies. Time passed, we left home but we’ve been there since, holding tightly each other, still on the fence. I love her. I stood. I promised I would. Don’t think I could give all that “her love” could. I can still hear it, her saying the name. I can still feel it. The pleasure, the game. Curled beneath covers, tangled up in hair, inseparable. We’ll always be there. I love her. I do. I promise I do. She loves another. I wish I could too. Tate’s writing reflects the voices of the unheard. She uses her privileges, experiences, and witnessing to write for only the oppressed communities that she can ethically call her own. Tate’s work includes topics such as heroin addiction, self-harm, eating disorders, sex work, queer love/life, womanhood, etc. Her aim is to bring a more true reflection of these lives that are often stereotyped, generalized, misconceived, misunderstood, and even hurt. The hope is that this art will promote connection, education, understanding, and social change. You can find excerpts of Tate’s work, music, and modeling on her instagram/twitter (@rosewetcave). |
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