8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Jenn Koiter Marketa CC from The Survivor I push my foot into my boot, and you die. I put my toothbrush on its stand, and you die. I put on my headset, and you die. I fix myself tea, I order Thai food, I smudge the surface of my tablet, and you die. I find the plushie you gave me for Valentine’s Day, and you die a little harder. You die as I walk past the gas station on 51st, past Alex and Alix’s apartment, past the Chili’s at 45th and Lamar. I click the key into the ignition, the radio switches on, and you die. A pothole jars my right front wheel, and you die, you die, you insist on dying. You always were a stubborn ass, but I can be stubborn, too. I can hold out as long as it takes for you to listen. Listen: That’s enough dying, now. You can stop, now. That’s enough. How are you holding up? is the best way to ask, is the way we ask each other the question to which there is no good answer. But surely there is a word in another language, a phrase coined by Kierkegaard or the Buddha, meaning today I am at my most human, meaning I am not okay and I’m okay Jenn Koiter’s poems and essays have appeared in Smartish Pace, Bateau, Barrelhouse, Ruminate, Rock & Sling, and other journals. She lives in Washington, DC with three gerbils named Sputnik, Cosmo, and Unit.
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8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Christine Naprava Marketa CC Because You Are No Longer Here to Answer So, whenever setting fire to one’s self is mentioned as a form of self-harm and a cool-toned, collective voice declares, “I’ve heard of that, but I’ve never known anyone who’s actually done that,” I will be the anomaly who declares, “I knew somebody who did that,” and somebody will inevitably blurt out, “How exactly does that work?” and I will feign muteness for you, I will not give them the satisfaction of knowing how you took your harm, and they will press, paint an image of a teenage you, the steady flame of a Zippo lighter dancing with the skin of your wrist, because it always has to be the wrist, doesn’t it, and they will not know that I too am painting a similar image, one less cruel, one more you. You let me in in bits and pieces, never revealed to me if you were a Bic guy or a Zippo guy, if the initial sensation felt the best or if the burns, first- and second-degree, all the bubbled-up scars, were better. You gave me no choice but to assume your mother was a smoker. A toddler you getting into her pocketbook, her red plastic cigarette lighter burning an invisible hole in your tiny, flexing palm, an impulse planted, stowed away for later. I wonder, with the rest of them, if this image is you. Christine Naprava is a writer from South Jersey. Her work has appeared in Soundings East and Studio One. 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Kika Man Sue Thompson CC The milky way is up. I spent my childhood following the arrow of this broken compass, always pointing West and East at the same time. I pretended I could see the Northern star, safely tucked in the tail of the Bears. No one knew I couldn’t read the star signs. Never mind my kind and helpful disposition, when they call upon a “Chinese volunteer” don’t hesitate for a second, fingers pointing at me – East. And when I grew older, so did my callowness. My eyes, sticking to every screen set on far away. I was a mermaid wishing to become a human. Finding the company of the written word, the singing of those I passionately adored. The words of people I never met. And the fire roared, and I burned. I swim no longer. I know I was not born a dragon but an ox, carrying my life, dredging it over fields of mud. I used to think people would ask me and my friend if we were sisters, because we were so close. Yet no one could recognise that we were two very different people. I guess Chink meant the same to those who do not want to know what it means to have your classmates on the playground slide their fingers across their eyes, marking who you are supposed to be. It took me twenty-two years to realise I am more than half my mother, half my father. I say it again: I am not half. I am a whole, I am the daughter of two galaxies meeting. My own milky way. Kika Man 文詠玲 (26 May, 1997; she/they) is a writer and a student from Belgium, and also from Hong Kong. She has always been writing and playing and learning and reading. To them, all of these are one and the same. Kika writes about mental health, traveling and dreaming, about her mixed identity, about music and blueness. Alongside writing poetry, she is part of Slam-T (a spoken word & slam poetry platform). They have majored in Eastern Languages and Cultures: China at Ghent University and are currently chasing after a degree and PhD in Gender and Diversity and Cultural studies. Kika’s first poetry book will be published soon in 2021-2022. 8/4/2021 2 Comments Poetry by Vince Nuzzo Timo Newton-Syms CC Bottom of the Fourth Bottom of the Fourth: Or was it Top of the Fifth? I think I like top of the fifth better, it implies a full bottle. I might've lost my mind but at least I've found my voice again, I like where I'm at Fifty years and some odd months. One day recently I woke up and there it was, just in time for covid. The mid-life crisis. Never thought that shit was reaI, thought it was a joke. Maybe the near-fatal pulmonary blood clot a few years ago was an early catalyst? The estrangement? The busted family ties? I wanted to skate again, I wanted to write again, I'm reading books again, bought a guitar, got on the mountain bike and I started doing it all again! Best thing that ever happened to me. Really, the best thing is that I had put all that lovely stuff into the program all those younger years, kept it on lock, and now, how wonderfully rewarding. I'm older than ever and feel like a kid again, even better, a kid with less angst and the peace that experience, wisdom and confidence can bring. Maybe it's a sweeter, gentler childhood than before. I swear it's not the drugs. It all almost feels more pure to do these things than ever, well of course I can't remember perfectly how it was so that helps, it's all new again but it's not. I wanna write like how I wish I could play guitar. One thing I think I know about it is that life is too fuckin' short not to jump back into the daily bliss if it's working again, firing again, get it now but it's not a mid-life crisis, it's a living life again for real renaissance. And who gives a fuck what anyone else thinks about it, I'm not lettin' it pass me by. Don't miss that ride if it comes to your town, you might get another lap, longer, bigger and better than the last. It took a while to come but then again maybe it never left, maybe I'm just a big kid. Anyhow, the second half has barely begun. I'm warming up, pointing at the fences like Babe Ruth, might even find myself a fine cigar. All I've lost I shall regain, and some, yeah, it's not worth going back for The Poet and The Outsider The dust settled from the gang of four wheelers and I saw Haiku Ricky was back out in the desert with his camper as I drove by cow pie rock. Sometimes outsiders need to leave each other alone too. It's covid times after all. Got to gather themselves, get settled in. Plus, I was afraid he'd invite me to participate in a poetry reading. We're surrounded by poetry and sometimes poets The Poet's words can be a link to an alternative reality without ingesting a drug. And it's the same for the poet although they would call it constant word murmurings in the head If the poet curbs his reading habit, then he doesn't steal too much. The Outsider is not always a curmudgeon or miserable hermit. The outsider chooses to live apart from the confines of societal norms. This can be hugely liberating but can bring about a unique set of problems when those around him still adhere to the boundaries of homogeneity Ain't no life without tension, triumph and the struggle in between, it's a good song and a dazzling solo but I wanna turn jagged speed into some smooth blotter on the page and the catalyst can really be just a hot meal, refreshing shower, warm conversation or a relaxing sedative sunset The poet's words need not garner a wage or praise, the satisfaction comes from getting it on the page There's outsiders and poets and there's outsider poets. When I stand in the open by the sunwall of my little shed in the baking sonoran sun and purposely cast my shadow onto the lizard, he knows I'm there and finally moves. Time to write Cottonwood Reading Glasses To live and die has many crisp and blurry markers and milestones, metamorphosis measured in experiences and inevitable unstoppable shifts in the functioning and feeling of our brains and bodies Today, it was the recollection of a recent eve spent amongst old and new company--ahhhhhh, covid's over! Ha! Nah. But man, it feels so good to breathe in unfiltered life again and let it course through our being So, while soupy drunk, lanky urban northwestlander, underfed vegan marathon runner JL gets asked a question and does a does a stylish, near skull cracking layback to within a millimeter of the plastic razor sharp point on the big samsung bootube, saved by her last shred of grace under liquor pressure and my grab, it is Polish Jomashe, her dual citizen fifty or so boyfriend I hear muttering loudly over an epic Joe Bonomassa blues rock guitar journey across the little living room, "Yah Vinnie, it is that age, that time in our live now, it is normal, we need the reading glasses, mine are tri-focal!" What a gem. Earlier we'd been cackling without our readers on, blindly squinting at our phones looking for tunes, trying to find his fav Polish blues band, the Poles got some blues too, believe you me I stand now under the trees and floating, drifting Montana cottonwood puffy summer snow, some of it sticking to my back and the cat's at ninety-three breezy warm, loving degrees thinking about my need for reading specs and time during this lovely life that's slithering on majestically, careening toward the inevitable Raised in Madison, Wisconsin, Vince Nuzzo bolted west to Missoula, Montana for the promise of college and adventure at the age of seventeen. After spending a sporadically enrolled nine years reaching a B.A. in English/Creative Writing at the University of Montana, Vince has since bounced and bashed around the U.S. and Latin America with Missoula as basecamp, considering himself a citizen of the world more than of any one state. His work and adventures have taken him high upon mountaintops and giant skateboard ramps, down into the rivers and deserts, out onto the sea and through many relationships, some successful, many not. After a feverish run of writing creative non-fiction, the novel Thirst In Montana, and poetry in his younger years, Vince, now fifty, has of late succumbed to a burning, near constant urge to be getting it on the page again. In a fit of experiential in the NOWNESS and at the time heavily influenced by reading 27 clubber, the late poet and singer Jim Morrison, he threw an entire trunk of his writings, starting with his earliest, into a landfill during a move between homes. This is a decision Vince will forever regret but it is also a grand motivator now in his search for the story and the need to tell it, along with the benefit of gaining some healing from life's dreads and wounds. He's weathered two pulmonary blood clots and a DVT clot and now writes for himself first and foremost but considers anyone willing to take a look or two to be a brave, beautiful, encouraging soul. Vince feels thankful to be writing again. 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Ally Chua Jeff Ruane CC monument valley the miles of sundry road, frost front jarring against walls of red chalk, against tumbleweed sea. that night with three layers of thermal wear i sat in the dark watched the parallel universe in the stars. i saw everything. not shaman visions. not ephemeral wisps. but grand stands. celestial battles. light dying in a flare of bright. i was half dead then, lost in a space where i was eating myself apart. it is not within me to leave a fissure untouched. i will hold it, grasp it, until the mouth wakes, says my name in a gasp. i did not understand how to deal with a fissure i cannot touch. that night in monument valley, i saw everything. the natural order of entropy the inevitability of collapse. so i learnt then it was okay to hold an abyss. it was okay to be unfinished. Ally Chua is a Singaporean poet. She works for a botanical attraction, and writes when she's not replying to emails within seven working days. She is the 2019 Singapore Unbound Fellow for New York City, and a member of local writing collective /s@ber. Ally has been published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Cordite Poetry Review, and Lammergeier Magazine. An avid solo traveler and reader, Ally finds inspiration from a wide variety of sources, including her travels, Richard Siken's words, the lyrics of Brian Fallon, and zombie video games. 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Aoife Mannix Sue Thompson CC Living With There is a softness to the rain, after the rush of summer madness. A single blackbird singing hallelujah that this morning, though our bones ache with the fatigue of pointless questions, the tick boxes of those who have already decided the answers, we are rising up out of the wet grass. The pale pink roses glistening with grief. Their petals glass bottles rolling through the nights of black holes. Lost cosmonauts. There is a shade of darkness to saying I love you to someone you know will not remember your words come the pain of light. But it is gentler, when the sky is a bruise with pin prick stars hidden under the sleeves of dawn. You realise you have been holding your breath as the clouds exhale. Small hands pattering against the glass asking to be let in. An open window. Aoife Mannix has published four collections of poetry, four librettos, and a novel. Her work has featured in Abridged, the Honest Ulsterman, Gargoyle, Crannog, Citizen 32 and Magma amongst others. She has a PhD in creative writing from Goldsmiths, University of London. See www.aoifemannix.co.uk for more information. 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Laura Jayne Marketa CC Folkestone Harbour velvet body held in velvet body sewn to the same trembling back dimples of warmth shiver tentative a fragile gesture a glittered reach out beyond the harbour the lighthouse to the armful of cliffs scooped and spooned in silken mounds I could dip my fingers in pull back sticky sweet ribbons gritty on my tongue her tongue licks long – the sea, I mean, her tongue - on and on empty as the horizon just the lushness of our breath carrying the stretch of me empty and turning a lighthouse lantern shooting along the crests I wrap my body in this beaming back turned to back not in bitterness but a mutual touch a sharing of the weight whilst we grasp towards the warmer days and hope the salt will soothe from me a rounder shape. Laura Jayne's poetry navigates relationships between nature and the queer body. Her poems have most recently appeared in Cypress and Jaden (Small Leaf Press), and her photography has been featured by Floresta Mag and Bind Collective. In 2020, Laura was a guest on The Poetry Exchange podcast, discussing personal connections to the poetry of Anne Sexton. She is currently reading an MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck, University of London. 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Jeffrey Hermann Marketa CC Big Sky Walk behind your father in the snow as a child, placing your steps into his, and you’ll never want for daydreams. You’ll never want a home of your own. The sky is roughly the same size no matter what state you stand in, no matter what Montana says. I’ve come to believe that if you die in heaven, there is always second heaven. Don’t worry if you don’t see someone you love. It’s just a matter of time before you catch up in one afterlife or another. Here’s something else I miss: my father asking me to pour him a drink - this much Scotch and this much ice. A little sting of liquor on my lips. Soft blizzards watched from the window. It seems mountains actually displace more of the sky, if you think about it. Jeffrey Hermann's poetry and prose has appeared in Feral, Palette Poetry, Pank Magazine, trampset, The Shore, and other publications. Though less publicized, he finds his work as a father and husband to be rewarding beyond measure. 8/4/2021 0 Comments Poetry by T.J. Butler Thunderchild7 CC Dining With Junkies on the Nod It stinks in here like cat-piss-ammonia and summer camp latrines in this crappy apartment I used to like where the roaches feel elegant feeding off the buffet you’ve laid. I’ve picked up a magazine from the floor, maybe to build a nest to sit on like little girls are taught to do in public restrooms but I don’t want to sit on the glazed pages of Miss July so I lean into the median strip of the insect highway, alive on your kitchen wall. “No thank you, none for me,” I say to your girlfriend slouched near a plate of dry, crusted spaghetti. She ignores me. I guess I missed the first course. You’ve already started on dessert, sharing sweets with your tiny dinner guests and I realize maybe three’s a crowd so I leave and do not close the door behind me. (It was cracked open when I came in.) My mother asks me why I’m back so soon and I lie to her-- I say I only went over to get back that picture I gave you, the one with the huge seventies-style butterfly with love painted in swirls across its wings. But all I can think of is your ex-girlfriend in my seat. I guess it’s not my night for dining with junkies on the nod. T.J. Butler lives on a sailboat with her husband and dog. She writes fiction and essays that are not all fun and games. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Pembroke, Levee, New Plains Review, Flash Fiction Online, Tahoma Literary Review, New South, and others. Find her at @aGalWithNoName and TJButlerAuthor.com. 8/4/2021 1 Comment Poetry by Anne Walters Jeff Ruane CC Road Map We are snakes all over your body, the parts of yourself you created when your feelings caved in on themselves. We criss-cross constellations, mapping out the years of your family shrinking and your mood as dark as the bottom of an abyss. For most of us, you don't remember when or where we came from. It's a magician's trick; one day, your skin was smooth honey, and then presto! We appeared through blood-soaked tissues you flushed down the toilet to hide the evidence. A few of us stick out: a single line on your right wrist, part of a suicide attempt; a thick mark on your thigh from when you were so angry, you used a knife to scream. Sometimes people ask questions about us: "Oh, where did they come from?" Or "Is that part of a BDSM thing?" Your mouth is a desert and you feel pinpricks on the back of your neck until they cough and move on. But we're always here, pulsing with hurt. Anne Walters is a queer non-binary writer who lives in New Jersey. They have been published in East Coast Literary Review, The Avenue, Three Moon Magazine, among others. They enjoy drinking too much coffee and hanging out with their cats. |
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