10/25/2019 0 Comments Grief's Good Manners by Hilary King hnt6581 CC Grief’s Good Manners My mother drowned our sorrow in monograms and gin, taught us to push grief down, down, down, a burial that would take a lifetime-- many lifetimes, one for each child left fatherless. So polite. So strong. We were stone We would spend the rest of our lives eroding. Originally from Virginia, Hilary King now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area of California. Her poems have appeared in Fourth River, Belletrist, PANK, Caesura, Gyroscope Review, Blue Fifth Review, Sky Island Journal, Mom Egg Poetry Review, Vinyl Poetry, The Cortland Review and other publications. She is the author of the book of poems, The Maid's Car.
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10/25/2019 1 Comment Dying king by Matthew M.C. Smith hnt6581 CC
Dying king I am with you. I am always with you. You pulse with the click of the drive. The dying king. I press your paper-thin shroud of skin, as thumbs curl over balsa bones, ridges royal. My eyes probe famine’s faultlines, scan this lucent husk, your twilight mask. Under your arm, now thin, translucent, I once slept, sheltered from terrors in the night. Now, I keep watch. How did it come to this? Morphine dulls your silent ward. It keeps you from fires in the fields, from the sibilant hiss of the underworld, the gaping maw of night. We are skin, my dark follows your dark. * Above tides, I feel winds of unconquerable spirit. I stand at the edge, choking with loss. Matthew M.C. Smith is a Welsh poet. He writes a lot of poems about his late father, Michael. Matthew's poetry is published in Fevers of the Mind, Seventh Quarry and Re-side. He is at Twitter @MatthewMCSmith facebook: @MattMCSmith and is the editor of micropoetry press @BlackBoughpoems 10/25/2019 0 Comments Grief Ritual by Helen MooreGrief Ritual Nature Sanctuary, Findhorn Foundation, Scotland Within the turfed snug of stone, a dozen women & a hushed expectancy of midwives for all that longs to be birthed from within. Opening up to feel into the body, our grief takes different shapes & colours, like the curved ribbons painted between the slates in the floor. In this mandala of tears: fear, anger, emptiness, sorrow. At times, howls fill the space – we hear the unloved child; the broken heart; our ravaged world; the pain incising an ancestral line. Like Water Lilies rising from the mud, these emotions float, bathing in sun-warmed waters. Here it’s safe to touch the dark riverbed – this ritual contains the currents, all that needs to flow. On grief’s sacred ground, we stand together in our fullness. Helen Moore is an award-winning British ecopoet and socially engaged artist based in Sydney. She has published three poetry collections, Hedge Fund, And Other Living Margins (Shearsman Books, 2012), ECOZOA (Permanent Publications, 2015), acclaimed as “a milestone in the journey of ecopoetics” and her recently released third, The Mother Country (Awen Publications 2019), exploring British colonial history in Scotland and Australia and themes of personal, social and ecological dispossession. www.helenmoorepoet.com 10/25/2019 0 Comments Ruins by Neil CreightonRuins You see this ruined house, windows broken, tiles askew, now just a crumbling wall or two? A woman made it long ago. from distillations of her love and she filled it with her song. Then she grew old and frail. Her judgment passed. She gave the keys away. The music changed, the windows broke, the roof tiles slipped and cracked and wind and rain, sweeping through the house, blew all the notes away. If in dreams I listen close on the wind I still hear fragments of her song. Then I grieve for her and for every brick of her house. All that music gone to waste. Neil Creighton is an Australian poet whose work as a teacher of English and Drama brought him into close contact with thousands of young lives, most happy and triumphant but too many tragically filled with neglect. It made him intensely aware of how opportunity is so unequally proportioned and his work often reflects strong interest in social justice. He has been widely published, both online and in hard copy. Recent publications in hard copy include “The Second Genesis: An Anthology of Contemporary World Poetry”, “Prosopisia”, “Poetry Quarterly”, “The Poeming Pigeon”. Online he has been published in “Antiheroin Chic”, “Autumn Sky Daily”, “Praxis Mag Online”, “Peacock Journal”, “Rats Ass Review” and “Verse-Virtual”, where he is a Contributing Editor. His chapbook, “Earth Music”, has been selected by Praxis Magazine Online for publication in 2019-20.
10/25/2019 1 Comment Home by Tina CareyHome Take me to this place you say is breezeless, Where the shadows stand still and the brightness is only at the tips of our toes, and the darkness smells like rainbows. Take me to this place you say the waves crinkle and never splash where you become ageless never knowing how much time has passed. Take me to this place you say people fall in love without saying a word. where the sunshine is vibrantly heard. Take me to this place you and I will only know where mindfulness has no plateau. Take me Take me Forever there Tina is a Personal Chef and a long-time writer and love of poetry. She writes from personal knowledge of trauma, grief, mental health, and healing. She is hoping to inspire and create a unified experience of hope and understanding. 10/25/2019 0 Comments The Leg by Tara Campbell Tony Slade CC The Leg Mom was a knitter. Every Christmas her kids and her grandkids, her sisters and brothers and all of their children still hang up the stockings she made. We’ve all held on to the hats and the scarves and the baby blankets and dishcloths and mittens and all of the warmth that knitted and purled from her hands. She sold her work too, at craft sales and bazaars, and had other bizarres in her room at my sister’s house: scuff-faced dolls sporting yellowing dresses and matted hair blinking one lazy eye and lurking in corners behind the mechanical monkey, banana-yellow hat in his hand, electronic stigmata awaiting a coin to set him rolling on creaky plastic skates. She wouldn’t get rid of the things we’d played with, wooden blocks with chipped letters, dusty puppets and Barbies with broken knees, said they just needed a little love a little TLC “You know those doll doctors?” she would say “They just need one of those.” We didn’t know any doll doctors. Church wasn’t Mom’s thing so after she died instead of a service we had a picnic (it was early September and unusually warm) and we pulled bales of yarn from her closets (her favorite, Red Heart) and hauled bins of knitting and pallets of patterns out of her room to take to the picnic-not-service. Everyone got to take something, all the kids and grandkids nieces and nephews and step-grandkids and cousins and first wives or second husbands and all their friends too, everyone chose a scarf or a hat or a baby blanket, we all held something soft to remind us of what it felt like when she called us “honey” and we all kept digging for more until we found the leg. A mannequin leg. It was her display. She used to knit legwarmers said they were making a comeback and maybe they were-- there weren’t any left in the bin, just a leg without its warmer. We propped it up, toes pointing skyward enjoying a yarn bath; we laughed at it sticking up out of the bin; we wore scarves in late summer and missed her like hell. Tara Campbell (www.taracampbell.com) is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction editor at Barrelhouse. Prior publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Monkeybicycle, Jellyfish Review, Booth, Strange Horizons, and Escape Pod/Artemis Rising. She's the author of a novel, TreeVolution, a hybrid fiction/poetry collection, Circe's Bicycle, and a short story collection, Midnight at the Organporium. She received her MFA from American University in 2019. 10/25/2019 0 Comments Poetry by Darrell Petska Misha Sokolnikov CC In the Treetops (1947-1956) Her curls she seldom brushed. Smudges often tarnished her farm-girl cheeks. She insisted on dresses (her knees always scuffed). She smelled like warm milk. Her voice is calling for me. And she will pass from living memory. Soiled fingernails stroking ivoried keys, her favorite song light on her tongue-- Tra-la-la, tweedlee dee dee/There's peace and goodwill/ You're welcome as the flowers on Mockin'bird Hill Paper doll parties. Bobbsey Twins books whispered beneath covers while I held the light, (the smell of our skin, the warmth of our breath) our heads pressing together-- Then my heart fills with gladness when I hear the trill Who shall remember us when we are gone? Why must we feel that it matters? Say it is love. Say love lasts. Love which is all, love singing in memory of birds in the treetops on Mockin'bird Hill. The Shoes Sis Wore Sixty years, the pane is still clear: white mary janes her young feet shaped forlorn on the floor-- Why would Sis leave? Where has she gone? Who'll tend them till she returns? Mother will. Pressing them to her heart. Unable to let go. Father won't. He must be strong. She refuses to let go. Sis in the fields? Sis down the lane? Sis skip-counting hopscotch? Sis, come through the door. Weep. Weep. Such longing for small feet. She'll not let go, as if they coo and sigh. Tears in memory do not blur nor flesh turn to shadow: upon Mother's breast Sis's shoes would stay. She could not let go, weeping on the floor. Blooms About her small stone we planted our grief: rose, hyacinth and lily. And watered and tended the slender young shoots adorning the bed where she lies. Their hues the blush of her cheeks. The suppleness of stems her grace. Her skin, sun-warmed, petal's scent. Crucial nectar vivid grief creates, fashioned of dust and tolls of tears. From afar are we drawn to taste our sorrow. Awhile we hover, then leave, appeased. Each spring they rise to soothe us: rose, hyacinth and lily. Brief bursts of color that bloom to the light. Darrell Petska's poetry has appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Star 82 Review, Verse-Virtual and widely elsewhere (see conservancies.wordpress.com). Darrell has tallied a third of a century as communications editor for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 40 years as a father (seven years as a grandfather), and almost a half century as a husband. 10/25/2019 0 Comments Night Windows by Sarah CR Clark Sarah CR Clark is a writer in St. Paul, MN. She is a winner of the St. Paul Sidewalk Poetry Contest and has published poetry in the St. Paul Almanac; newspaper articles in the Park Bugle; scripts with Arches & Bells; and theological writings with Augsburg Fortress Press. Currently, she is working on numerous books for children. Sarah lives with her husband, two young children, an orange cat named Homer, and four backyard hens. She is often adventuring outside, usually in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. 10/25/2019 1 Comment Poetry by Lauren Davis Sjoerd Los CC
What I Am Driving to the supermarket, I nearly hit a deer in the road. On the sidewalk stands a small girl wearing pink, twirling an umbrella. The deer turns and flees. The girl witnesses no violence. My relief is for her, and her alone. I know what this says about me. Little doe, I am not sure how I became this thing that I am. I could seek amends, but I will not change. Little girl, you will not think of me, if you ever thought of me at all. Years, and I have not worn color. Tomorrow, I will step into the red dress. Two Decades After the Flood the Doctors Still Don’t Know What is Wrong with My Brother’s Body A pinprick of black-- he tells me he will never get back that sliver of sight. The thing is slow erosion. Motor skills, it takes. Swells the tongue. What to call a ghost of the body. Do you name it, like a pet? Unspecified in water, in my brother wading. One day maybe I will forgive everything, but for now. Lauren Davis is the author of Each Wild Thing’s Consent (Poetry Wolf Press). She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and her poetry, essays, stories, and fairy tales can be found in publications such as Prairie Schooner, Automata Review, Hobart, and Ninth Letter. Davis teaches at The Writers’ Workshoppe in Port Townsend, Washington. Sjoerd Los CC Fragmented Memories I no longer remember your favorite color, whether you preferred the bright blue of the sky on a sunny day or the washed-out blue after a thunderstorm blew through. When I woke up and realized I had forgotten your middle name, I spent the rest of the day, repeating it under my breath until I was saying it in my sleep. I am learning to live with losing you; I refuse to accept forgetting you. Brittany Franclemont is originally from New York. She graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas with a BFA in creative writing. She has previously been published in Gravel and r.kv.r.y.
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