9/30/2021 1 Comment Poetry by Michelle Reale Paulo César León Palacios CC
Bad Faith I tried to re-establish contact and lead with lament. But then someone whispered a sweet little chestnut of bygone days into my ear---it caused me great hesitation. But I had so much catching up to do and memory is nothing if not a curative force of nature. A slice of cold , exoctic fruit is akin to oblivion if placed directly on the tongue by a trusted hand, like a black star sending signals directly to your night terrors. It is in our nature to seek what spits us out, over and over. Without the taint of the frilly edge of betrayal , we might all get used to the stance of the longsuffering, how lovely we could become with a tilted glance considered inopportune, but preordained nevertheless. It is always the hope of better days that stops us dead in our tracks. Every single time. Domestic Violence, 1972 Some signs of an inability to defend oneself are obvious---the eyes ringed in black, revenge on the scalp in the form of jagged patches of hair left only to humiliate, the absence of the eyebrows, usually drawn with precision over the first cigarette and black coffee of the day. I discerned patterns early on, and could feel bad momentum gathering like a freight train through the shared wall, usually the kitchen , the scene of so many domestic dramas. The home becomes a symbol of malignant enlightenment , the opposite of magical moments cultivated in a thriving industry of dreams. The distance you can put between what you hear and what you will take with you, cradled in your stick-like arms and carried out the thick and heavy door , is a reptilian disturbance you will sublimate. It will take years for this harm to reveal itself. You will fight only for the pleasure you might be able to extend into your everyday life. When a boy shoves you for the first time , you will still think that equality is possible. Life goes on. You can hear it through the dividing wall. The clink of the forks against the plates, Frank Sinatra on the stereo, kids squealing with laughter. No one blinks an eye. Your mother slaps the glass you’ve carefully and quietly placed between your ear and the wall, trying to understand the incongruity of the peculiar domestic scene: unimaginably, garlands one moment and crossfire the next. Michelle Reale is the author of several poetry collections, including Season of Subtraction (Bordighera Press, 2019) and Blood Memory (Idea Press, 2021).
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9/30/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Wren Donovan Christian Collins CC Wondering What Dies Mama’s underground in red-dirt Mississippi where she’s been these fourteen years. My body ages toward hers Came from hers. Every seven years, I am new cells new skin a supple snake in jeans and hennaed hair. Am I of her body still Her womb her breasts her eyes her hands her dreams her fears All are underground Do they grow in me undead eternal or am I renewed Reborn twice over now. Mama’s ghost has beautiful green eyes So unlike mine. Creaky knees dry skin brittle Nails, these we share. I forgive her now so many things Has her mother’s heart absolved me, the only daughter of a daughter of a daughter whose smile was crooked like mine whose nose lives in the middle of my face whose bones slept before I was born. Southern Gothic #1 Searching for flowers in Morton, Mississippi, where my mother was born and now lies between her grandmother Mary Elizabeth and her big sister Babe whose real name was Ruby Odessa. Aunt Babe had the best summer garden, butter beans and tomatoes and sweet corn, greens that she cleaned in the Maytag, even slimy fuzzy okra pods for gumbo. Her husband grabbed my fifteen-year-old breasts and told me The Bible Says Love Everyone. But Aunt Babe never knew that, and neither did Mama. This half-dead little town has no florist or wildflowers so I buy plastic posies at a dingy Five and Dime. Morton Cemetery has all that one would expect. Giant live oaks with broad branches that touch the ground, their twisted arms full of hanging moss and wisteria. Rusted wrought iron. Cedar trees and honeysuckle. Cicada hum, mockingbirds. Grey squirrels and tombstones. Polished new tombstones with smiling photos. Giant double markers the size of queen-size headboards. Flat slabs of concrete where kids sit and drink at night. Rows of low headstones dropped in the grass like hardback books. Little flags for the war dead, stone angels for children lost to swamp fevers and car wrecks. In the back, the ancient stones with quaint names eroded, broken falling in on themselves, the forgotten ones whose last mourner passed long ago. This cemetery also has thick humid air, a dome of oppression and sweat. An old man on a faraway lawnmower, rattling like a marble in a tin can. And those fire ants that will haunt me. Red dirt mounds that swarm when you kick them, nasty and invasive and toxic. There’s a mound by Mama’s headstone, Mother Sister Musician. I’m angry and sad and I fear that they tunnel into the red clay where Mama lies in her blue dress, hands folded. She never liked to be alone, and I’ve left her here with these red ants in red dirt and this dying town and these blue plastic flowers. I saw Morton once on the national news, an ICE raid at the chicken processing plant. Confused crying children whose mothers had been taken. The chicken plant stands where my mother was born, in place of the house where she played and cried, where her mother told her stories. Mama cried there again when I was about seven when we searched to find it gone and replaced with such insult. I remember her sobbing in the front seat of the Chevrolet, smelling the chicken shit and feathers. Daddy sat there not reaching out, leaving her alone with her grief. I sat in the back. From where I sit now I see so much decay. Smell the stench from the chickens and the fetid brown creeks. Infer forsaken metal carcasses under kudzu. All that cliched Southern stuff. Old places old rules Old Guard old manners, rebel delusions violence and sweet tea and old men and old women and carved lines forming the name of my mother who moved away but whose body came back to this clay-dirt and soupy air that clings to my already-damp flesh. Things That Will Remain Unsaid The day you told us you were leaving we lined up on the couch and your Chevrolet was packed and Mama tried to give you dishes and I walked back down the short hall to my room and you followed me and held me and told me you were sorry and I stood there arms dead by my side while a tire gauge pressed into my eye from your shirt pocket (funny the things I remember) you were crying and I knew you loved me and I also knew you weren’t coming back despite what Mama said. Goodbye to pipe smoke and cold air in corduroy to kite flights and tinker toys goodbye to that one time you combed the tangles from my hair and the afternoon you ran in so fast to kill that red wasp and morning rides to school and swimming lessons and dividing by zero and To my only little girl in my autograph book. Here are some things I’ll never say to you: You hurt me when you did not defend me when you did not take my side let me take the blame see myself the slut When you hung up the phone and would not stay and fight When you had another daughter when you left my mother. I know this is not rational, or fair, two things you taught me. And I know you were young and you were trying to find your life but as your eldest child, a quiet one like you, reticent like you and good at hiding, I was young and trying to find my life and you were supposed to help me, a little more than you did. I told you some things once but not the worst things I spare you that because you’re not as strong as me. I wonder still at girls at ease with fathers. Wren Donovan’s writing appears or is upcoming in The Dillydoun Review, Cauldron Anthology, Hecate Magazine, Survivor Lit, Tattie Zine, Luna Luna Magazine, and elsewhere. She studied literature, Classics, folklore, and psychology. Wren reads Tarot, talks to cats, and lives in Tennessee. She lurks on twitter @WrenDonovan. she/her 9/30/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Olivia Paris Christian Collins CC Blueberry juice I don’t know what I was built for in this world / often I think it’s not much / but I know I’m happy when my fingers are stained with blueberry juice and my face is stained with a smile / when the day or night feels as if it belongs to me and I feel empowered to act as such / when I can’t stop the words and words and words and words / and when I’ve got my arms around someone who has their arms around me / and it doesn’t matter our time runs quick because there is so much more to come Front Row the combination of us inverts my world undoes the ribbons ‘round all i know old home in my heart / in all the music i borrow want your attention / your obsession i want us to sit front row to each other’s show and if i tell you to leave me / don’t you’re all the phases of the moon strengths of the sun in the lighting clouds distinctive and striking above the crowd / no similar connection anywhere to be found because i’m completely wrapped up not knowing a thing not knowing how to be except you belong with me Olivia Paris is a writer from Melbourne Australia. She is currently undergoing a degree in psychology in the heart of the city and loves riding the train with headphones on. When she isn't studying she writes on her beloved typewriter and struggles in pilates classes. Her Twitter handle is @Oliviapariis. 9/30/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Paige Frisone Paulo César León Palacios CC coping dumbass bricks are punch-proof–no give he gives her cold amounts of time–subzero spends it on anything–everything else valet coffee (grande red eye–double cup) cocaine (that good-good) shoe buffers (shoes–buffer–the buffer-ers) alcohol (cousin tito’s–no friend of mine) pasta (al dente, of course) waiters that homeless man (days of) sleep that dog that other dog cocaine (that bad-good) wonder if i got it from him loving wrong people–things–wrong times–ways diversions haul bricks upwards | upchuck | literal spit-fire shovel bricks–digging goddamn holes to re-route lives talks to himself hums–loud–unapologetic yells–(desperate) how he wakes up laughing about dreams he has the other world in which he lives where (dig dig dig) he’s the most loving man–happily married but HEAVE | heavy heavy | gravel to grave | puke as mortar | stick | wakes up to the same bricks–piles–over & over same holes–wells–welts–deeper–deeper – to know it is beyond over–over & over & you are the gravedigger still digging that’s the part i could never–ever do Projector: (n). a thing that projects, a project, a person, an object people work hard to be nothing empty, blank canvases “inspired” take marker stand on stool wait for people become sick up here here ugly here fat fat fat fat fat fat fat fat spinal fluid fat |make way for thigh gap| too this, too that inferior fe-fi-foe-faux-male fat backbone is straight up muscle idiots how dare they that is not a person, a wine cork maybe, in which case, cool words can make you anything an hourglass for suicides coming she's a pear-type, they figure, (ha) or an apple no longer safe foods so, why do they say don't cut yourself off at the knees if that's exactly what they wish for us? Paige is a Certified LifeLine® Practitioner, psychosomatic writing coach, and poet living in Colorado. Her work explores the visceral complexities of an eating disorder and the ever-present journey of inhabiting a body. Paige has been featured in Rebelle Society, Elephant Journal, Entropy's Enclave, Rogue Agent, streetcake magazine, Metapsychosis, indicia, The Health Journal, and elsewhere. She can be found at www.paigefrisone.com. 9/30/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Leslie Dianne Paulo César León Palacios CC The Fallen King of 42nd Street The woolly hair a crown The supermarket cart a fallen kingdom The torn overcoat a gold threaded cape The plastic redeemables a warrior’s treasure The shuffling gait a victory march The extended hand an ancient blessing you ask us to bestow Until you are king of yourself again Leslie Dianne is a poet, novelist, screenwriter, playwright and performer whose work has been acclaimed internationally in places such as the Harrogate Fringe Festival in Great Britain, The International Arts Festival in Tuscany, Italy and at La Mama in New York City. Her stage plays have been produced in NYC at The American Theater of Actors, The Raw Space, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and The Lamb's Theater. She holds a BA in French Literature from CUNY and her poems have appeared in The Lake, Ghost City Review, The Literary Yard, About Place Journal and Kairos and are forthcoming in Hawai’i Review. Her poetry was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. 9/30/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Mashaal Sajid Eric Konon CC
4th Hospital Emergency Unit Visit In A Week Water killed stonefruit You would think his mouth shrunk to a wound Windpipe narrower than a rat’s burrow How do you convince air to reach alveoli When you can’t even curb your body From crafting calcified seed stones It’s 3am on a monsoon night We’re on our way to CMH’s emergency unit I ask my father how his body became a quarry He says it’s the haunt of syllables Vengeance of a body married to fruitless labour Mashaal Sajid(She/Her) is a Poet from Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Her work has appeared in Visual Verse, Fahmidan, Maintenant 15, Rigorous Mag, The RIC Journals and others. She is a Poetry Editor for The Giving Room Mag and The Abject, a Reader for Walled City Journal, Book Reviewer for Fevers Of The Mind Blog and Resident Artist and Designer for Wrongdoing Magazine. 9/30/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Emily Moon David Prasad CC Emergence Two roads diverged – I took the wrong exit, landed far from home. I leaned into something I could not define or look in the eye. I spun my name from twigs, made a nest for to lay me down. On bright days, I couldn’t see. Darkness in me seeped from my eyes like fog blowing onshore, oozed from my fingers like a flood. Blew into corners and cracks. Into heat. I suffered the weather I created. What is the meaning of me? I don’t know the answer. I gather the shards of my shattered mirror, puzzle them together. Gaps from the missing pieces shine like the deeps of space. I am those holes, wholly complete. Holy me. Emily Moon is a transgender poet. Her publications include the poetry collection It’s Just You and Me, Miss Moon (First Matter Press); and under the name Peter Hamer, appearances in Take a Leap, Spank the Carp, Cæsura, 2020 Clackamas County Poets and Artists Calendar, and A Poet’s Agora Confinement Poetry Collection. 9/30/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Tara Isabel Zambrano Paulo César León Palacios CC Wings Those days back in my dorm, post meeting you, I paced in the corridors, like a horse cooling off after a race now your lips far from my ears I hear Om across the room. Vedas and vows to crush desire. Untouched– this dark between my legs, hot, frothing. Outside my window, the rose light of dawn rides a body of fog. Cardinals peck at the grass, then launch, maybe these birds know something I used to know− how they whip the indestructible air, how the sky lifts them wet and luscious in its mouth. And they feed. Tara Isabel Zambrano is the author of Death, Desire And Other Destinations, a full-length flash collection by OKAY Donkey Press. Her poems have been published in Hayden's Ferry Review, Rogue Agent, Moon City Review and other literary venues. She lives in Texas and is the Fiction Editor for Waxwing Literary Journal. 9/30/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Sophia Jones Eric Sonstroem CC "C” I swear I hadn’t lived a day in my life before I met you. You made me fall in love with the moment, introduced me to so many parts of myself I never thought would exist. Some part of me misses you. Hell, some part of me loves you still. Always has, always will. There wasn’t a single thing we did together that made me feel anything but for some reason I still wanted you there. I wanted every part of you to be happy. To thrive. To start to breathe life in the same way everyone else did. Maybe that’s what I liked about you, you felt pain the way I did. Seems so simple now but at the time I could've sworn you were an angel. Fast car, drugs, and temptation. Laying on your couch like there was no one else in the world. Two tattooed bodies wasting away in their own stoned oblivion, high off the sex and emotion of two perfect strangers. I still miss that “Journey” shirt even though you don't wear it anymore, and I miss Whitney and the diamond on your arm. Hugs that lasted too long and lingering ideas of a nuclear family, stallion races and cold calls in the night. I loved you like a brother and kissed you like a lover and it messed with my head. You don’t have to miss me like I miss you, hell, you might not even remember most of it. But I remember everything and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Grabbing my ass in the Home Depot, telling me you wanted to die, insecurity and a smile so crooked I fell apart. Cold glass and driving high, a driveway that looked like the highway at 2am. I’ll never forget walking with you to your room to lit candles and an unmade bed. Lying about having to work so so could see you again, only for a moment, lying with you in the house you shared with a family of strangers. I trusted you. Older and wiser and the safest risk I could take. I made a home of your heart and you hardly noticed me there. Despite it all I loved you. I love you. I still do. I would’ve given you my everything and you wanted none of it. “C, Part 2” I hate that you said “I love you” too soon. I hate myself for hating that about you, and most of all I hate how you tricked me into meeting your family. You were the perfect mistake, took a piece of my apathy and turned it into love. White jeeps and late night calls, sleepy eyed stares and calling me out on the cuts on my arms. I knew you’d change me as soon as you called me yours. Maybe that was why I left, cause you tried to own me. Make a fragile thing your own in the middle of the night. My friends wanted you more than I did and I think that made me proud, I had won and I didn’t want the prize. You chased me for years and I liked the attention, in a way I guess it was a sick game I played to keep myself busy on lonely nights. Driving daddy’s Mercedes in the middle of the day, hiding from the cops and talking about a life we’ll never live. You were so sweet, so naive, and I played with your heart. I guess the game was enough until he came along again. Sophia Jones is a girl chasing the moment, living too hard and loving even harder. From moments spent alone in the shower to hours in the spotlight, she tries to capture humanity as it is: beautiful, bright, and a little too big to take on alone. 9/30/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Jaimee Boake Jason Trbovich CC A Sestina of Lungs and Legs A guy at the gym asks me why I like to run and the real answer is I don’t but men have teeth and girls go missing and his breath uninvited on my neck is heavy as the way the asphalt holds the heat. I say it's an escape. Or, need to know exactly how fast I can escape when a stranger’s smile signals its time I should run not slowed by muscles burning, heat fueling fire in my belly, teeth gritted. Need legs ready when fear is heavy. Have to control my breath. I run because this morning I read the news, breath- less and aching. A life trapped in print. No escape. One less soul leaves the world heavy. A reality too fast to outrun. A violent chattering of teeth. His cheeks redden in heat. Not all men he sputters, swelters, in sweat-soaked heat but all women know that acid-fear on their breath when it's not enough to bare teeth or when soft pleading can’t buy an escape So ask me again why it is I run, chin lifted, though heavy. When I march away I feel his eyes still, heavy, but I’m trained for this, exit into July heat, mid-day, the hardest time to run. Deep inhale. Exhale. Get lungs full of breath and move and move and move and escape until I too, am teeth I will not be found, or identified by teeth. Will become the hammer of heart. A heavy hope will grow light. I will escape. So you’ll keep finding me here in this heat. I will not be scared when I take my last breath, I am ready to run. At home in this heat you won’t catch me out of breath. I can run. Summer Body There are things I want to say when they talk of summer bodies such as we are all finding our way home to ourselves; there is only the shape of truth. The rhythm of rabbits and robins plays hopscotch in your heart; you are the woods, ancient groves whose roots soak up the earth’s magic. And I hope one day you will know the way that you laugh in campfire crackle, belly birthing sunbursts; feel the flowers stretch from your fingertips. You are the pollen and the world grows in colour, sustained by your strawberry soul. Don’t you know your body is the season? Jaimee Boake (she/her) is a high school English Language Arts, Creative Writing, and Leadership Teacher in Sherwood Park, Alberta (Treaty 6 Territory). She loves reading, writing, spending time with her dogs, and is happiest, always, in the mountains. A recipient of the Martin Godfrey Award for Young Writers, more of her work can be found in various literary magazines and anthologies or on Instagram @jaimeeannethology. |
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