Silence Converses Silence converses in the empty room in the dream of the bare cupboard, gifting cups, plates, drinking glasses. It reminds the empty drawers of the day they harbored forks, knives, and spoons. It puzzles over the broken light switch, the hole under the kitchen sink, and the darkest corners of the empty room. Through the open window by the kitchen table silence finds its voice in the barking dogs, the singing birds, the sounds of lawnmowers. It retreats into the bedroom without a bed; the dusty floor coughs up a lung; the darkness sleeps there, trying to mimic the former inhabitants who have found their own silence. Silence makes no more offerings. It broods and sighs. Its voice returns to the open window by the kitchen table, enamored with the blackbirds’ song and converses with its own mad self. Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal, born in Mexico, lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His first book of poems, Raw Materials, was published by Pygmy Forest Press. His poetry has been published by Alternating Current Press, Deadbeat Press, New Polish Beat, Poet's Democracy, and Ten Pages Press. His latest chapbook, Make the Light Mine, was published by Kendra Steiner Editions.
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11/1/2018 0 Comments Everyday By Sarah BattisonEveryday I escape the blackness that Threatens to engulf me. Everyday I outrun the Demons that Threaten to devour me. Everyday I survive the lightning That threatens to electrify me Today Is no different I am reminded That I have managed to outrun All the days before me This one will be no different I will outrun you. Sarah is a 28 year old Mum of 3 from the West Midlands. She has been writing since being a young child but recently poetry has saved her from the grasps of mental health problems. Sarah hopes that through her writing she can help, motivate and inspire others to survive . Sarah can be found on twitter : @BattisonSarah , contacted at [email protected] or found on facebook. 11/1/2018 0 Comments Poetry by Siham KaramiOne Night Stand It started so matter-of-fact in the kitchen. We drank tea in a 2D conversation, how he ate leftovers for breakfast, preferred oolong to jasmine. Our eyes a whirl of atoms, breaking symmetry, primordial strings reformulating. I'm sure he never figured out why his body filled itself with she-ness, or why he suddenly turned, man incarnate namelessly emptying he-ness into the aura, beings morphed into one energy, no thoughts but fucking thoughts, no feelings but a halo of emptied selves, nothing to hold but this turgid tide washing over, disembodied, being nothing, saying nothing, knowing nothing but the heave and crash on a shoreline strewn with imagined moonlight, our two silences parked as we lost the whole night to a standstill. Salvaging Our Beached Wonderland The sands stretch on like an endless bed for someone else. We argue about everything, even breathing. Always doing things the wrong way. Ripples in the tides, Our eyes search for something other than each other. Being presences for one another, it is enough, we look beyond. The tides flow in and out. We only concur on the moon, the need to watch it. Another presence. Nothing was ever easy. We both asked for harder roads, and got them: Each other. Who could be more difficult? My constant talking. Your going on and on. We accuse each other of lectures. Days pass and the time refuses to let up, give us a booster shot. Yet small kindnesses, barely noticed-- running into each other in our ornery way, my turning you over in the bed as you complain, you enduring frequent wakings alone and uncomfortable to let me sleep-- take the wind out of old storms, their rage exposed as a random dust devil spinning out excess. We almost turned into moderates, except those piercing words, deadly and on-target, breaking our hearts all over again. And that strange waking, waves pulling us back -- believing these familiar eyes, their hope and terror an ocean. Siham Karami’s full-length poetry collection is To Love the River (Kelsay Books 2018). Her work can also be found in various journals , including Able Muse, Literary Mama, The Rumpus, Off the Coast, Tupelo Quarterly, Pleiades, Otoliths, Mohave He(art), Peacock Journal, and many others. Nominated multiple times for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, she blogs at sihamkarami.wordpress.com a poem about damnation to tell truth, this poem -- this poem about damnation, about gifting the pericarps of my soul to fire, about loving water the way birds lose navigation to winds — is about me. // tell me, there must have been something surreal about water, or why would i dream of a flood in my body --- why would god give us a universe halved by water & the other half, a compendium of grief. // i wake to a bird falling inside my body — by this i mean i am a field of dying baby birds for the wind is blessed with nameless feathers // how do you pray for the damned / how do you tell god about healing without telling him how broken & each time you mention my name in prayer, a bone cracks within me --- // sometimes, i say amen to the winds hoping somewhere, someone sent a prayer for me // sometimes, i cut myself with the memories of my father’s exit. // you don’t know how it feels to wear a shadow the size of god. // i dream of a certain exile —where happiness is a little boy beating water. where i sit by the shore, watching the pebbles go & never return. Adedayo Agarau is a student and poet hoping to make the world a little better with his words and photography. He has works up at Barren Magazine, Geometry and 8poems. His first manuscript "Asylum Chapel," is coming to light for publication and looking for a good home. Please connect with him on twitter @adedayoagarau and on Instagram @wallsofibadan, where he documents the beauty and pain of his Nigerian city home. 11/1/2018 0 Comments Our postmortem by Nikkin RaderOur postmortem There is less felt than is known in the grimacing slippings between us, post encounter where body met body in the musk of whiskey lips and open chests, armed and bearing semblance to that of shattered glass, cascaded past palms into the makings of our experience, each the other’s patron of arts or confidant of dark smoke sinning our skins to shade. Maybe then we’d think of setting someone on fire or sputter -ing a quick hold me after you or I let hand bolt to the other’s cheek. What, then, in that darkness, makes us lure toward the light? That bright orb waiting to suck in all that which keeps me going, and all of that which keeps you gone. Partial to wavering I keep this wickedness a muster internal, shedding skins in place of cigarette butts on pavement. Painted on the bark like that taut titillation, these oscillating fantastical premises between us, drear and mob. Red-worn and tarnished as the achings of morrow, left undone. Nikkin Rader has a MFA in Poetry and grad minor in Gender & Sexuality Studies. Her works can be found in lipstickparty mag, leopardskin and limes, the Cauldron Anthology, Pussy Magic, Occulum, and elsewhere. 11/1/2018 0 Comments Poetry by Bola OpalekeELECTION NIGHT The music of freedom makes my lips move slowly to its silent song – an incantation switched in my head as ordinary poem. Each time a doctor says tumor I hear "tuber", & immediately think of a knife & a naked fire, since that’s how the rich get fed in my country, cutting me in halves, probing. The idea here is to find what part of me is hurtful? What part is hurting? But do I even know myself well enough to know what door or window on my body never closes to pain? A shadow is as present as the object that owns it. But, of all the recycled truths about my body I believe the one that calls me a doll; because I cannot tell the taste of my own name or the smell of my old grief. So tonight, I am just a tuber of yam under the surgeon’s flashlight, wondering about many other things unclothed – a naked incantation interpreted as a poem. SEE MISSISSIPPI WITH FOLDED ARMS because he says slavery was a choice After we have renamed every river in the land after the farmer that made his dog his god we proceeded to burning the boats that brought a people we called slaves – sea trucks become bodies becomes ashes become dust. Wailing voices violently vanished, become air droplets. Disappearance makes its tiny appearance. But we know fire can only polish metals, polish shackles. When we heard the songs of the lonely paloverdes, because they too have known the brutal betrayal of the sea, we vomited sunsets through our ears. & here, we got confused – we got uploaded to the newer version of slavery that ensures our signatures appear across our faces. Are we not the ones tending to the ships? Are we not the ones charged with renaming things? Are we not the proud collectors of a people with no names? We, the renamed – the ashes, the dust, the wailing voices. SOME PEOPLE THINK DEATH IS ONLY FOR THE POOR but what hell would it be called when the church turn away sinners? each side of grief I bit was softer than my bones softer than the flower that grows inside the loneliness that would not let me leave, or die. death comes in different colors, strangely I chose the one that strikes only unbaptized eyes. isn't this how modernization romances immigration & no one remembers? no one also remembers how civilization built so many roads on the roaring sea without which the entire mankind would vanish into a thick smoke; her toned, greasy body evanescenced. we know the dead sing better than the living though we're too deaf to hear it. I pluck every sadness in my head, make sure its darkness is well lit in the name of a country that pulls travelers from the sea and burns off their boats, each of their pockets emptied of silver and gold. the side of grief I bit is softer than the cries of babies forcefully orphaned. no name rises for the horror of death that looms. they say no such death exists when, in fact, death comes in different shapes and soon, they too, would choose the one that broke loose from hell. one man unable to hold the hand of another would ask "what unkindness brought us here?" it rained inside my body and my country dissolves in its flood. Bola is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. His poems have appeared or forthcoming in a few Journals like Frontier Poetry, Rising Phoenix Review, Writers Resist, Rattle, Cleaver, One, The Nottingham Review, The Puritan, The Literary Review of Canada, Sierra Nevada Review, Dissident Voice, Poetry Quarterly, The Indianapolis Review, Canadian Literature, Empty Mirror, Poetry Pacific, Drunk Monkeys, Temz Review, St. Peters College(University of Saskatchewan) Anthology (Society 2013 Vol. 10), Pastiche Magazine, and others. He holds a degree in City Planning and lives in Winnipeg MB. www.bolaopaleke.com 10: Tracy Grammer – Low Tide “i’m afraid i don’t know what i’m made of anymore can’t make sense of all these shatterlings upon the bedroom floor there’ll be no sleeping here, just blurs of sorrow through the open door shoulda warned those boys about me, shoulda warned those boys” And so begins Low Tide, the powerful new album by veteran singer-songwriter Tracy Grammer, whose opening track, Hole, is sprinkled with the sound of laughter. Not incidental, as Grammer’s journey has been far from an easy one. Having lost her songwriting partner Dave Carter back in 2002, the road to such laughter, let alone accompanying an album, bears much of the unseen work of daily grieving, creating, forging ahead, unknowns, dark midnight battles, prayed for mornings and life anew. The first record to feature much of Grammer’s own songwriting, Low Tide is living proof of Tracy’s ability to find the words and the sounds that push hope through and to make a life sing after the storm waters have receded. In full command of every rise and fall of the valleys of this season in her life, Low Tide pivots between world weary words to the wise and tender spots of mercy; “everybody’s in their places with plastic buckets and hopeful faces padded stools and a couple glasses one for liquor, one for ashes” -Forty-Niner And speaking to the dark and hard internal fight to take the stage after the loss of her fellow companion of song and truth, she sings in Mercy; “can’t start, too scared out of time and unprepared coulda jumped but you didn’t dare afraid to get it wrong tongue-tied, tripped again nobody’s gonna tell you when or if it’s right, or what you win or how to sing your song no chicken child, all but broke sway or worry, swallow smoke swinging from a scarlet oak it’s ashes out to sea” But the mercy bit, much like life itself, comes toward the end. On Free, Grammer sings; “once upon a heartbreak, i was hot and sore punching at the darkness in my private war i could not find the light i was so desperate for or any open door i wore my tattered shoes out on the grieving road fell into the arms of folks i didn’t know finally got so weary of this heavy load i learned to let it go” And to find voice for sorrows and joys, the way a light you didn’t know was on in a house you lost sight of in the thick fog of the woods suddenly reveals itself to you; come on in, your beds all made, soup is on, this is the place you belong. And you must sing your song. 9: Lucy Wainwright Roche – little beast “One smile is a lot to ask” opens Little Beast. Here where “bad luck is a rule of thumb,” Roche drives the listener through what could be an apocalypse of one’s own making. Deep sorrow out of our control or the lit match in our own hand all long, “we’re on an island worse than small,” an island on the inside of our body, “you are a burning bleeding part of me.” “Quit with me, there is no closer we will grow to be.” The sad inner linings of Little Beast are the darkest hours we’ve ever known and if we’re lucky have also outgrown. But this isn’t an album for the lucky. It is for the lost, the damaged, the overcrowding dark. “If everyday’s a warning, well we never heed it right.” Little Beast is not at all an easy listen. Musically it is mournful, lyrically it is devastating. The light here is hardly on. And that’s just as valid a part of life as anything else is. We need the songs that refuse to reassure us just as much as we need those that do. “Everybody’s troubled, that’s a bet that you won’t lose, the trouble that you’re born with and the trouble that you choose.” Storm from out of nowhere or lit match in hand, we will all be laid low nonetheless. 8: Malcolm Holcombe – Come Hell or High Water Malcolm is one of the best kept secrets on the Americana scene. His gravelly voice like the back roads of North Carolina, well worn and hard traveled. It often sounds like Halcombe is singing to an old friend, bar mate, war buddy, down and outer. “Now you don’t know better, you’re strung out in the cold, and you don’t know better when you got no home, now you don’t know better when you’re left alone to die.” Accompanied on many of the songs by Iris DeMent, Come Hell or High Water is a mournful, resilient, uniquely American sound. It’s the America not of milk and honey, but of canned beans and church pantry Thanksgiving baskets. It’s making do and getting by. It’s gratitude for whatever the hell is left at the end of the year, not much, but just enough. “Merry Christmas, fried chicken, leftovers in the morning, I never got what I wanted, I never cared for what I got, Merry Christmas.” Gruff is the lay of Malcolm’s land. The place where politicians rarely visit, where hard living is second nature; “forgive me when I turn away, and I mumble to the floor, and the perfect words are gone for sure, and the mirror’s torn and wrinkled, it’s hard to measure up inside.” Holcombe is for the weary, the worn out, the passed by, small town hurt, huge hearted nonetheless, getting by on very little, getting by on whatever’s left. Come Hell or High Water. Sink or swim. Shit or get off the pot. Malcolm is a straight shooter, calls it like he sees it, he sees a lot of hurt and a lot of lack in this land. He’s what Woody Guthrie would be singing if Woody were still with us now. 7) Lucy Kaplansky – Everyday Street “I remember us sitting on the floor Singing every song we knew Richard and Linda Thompson Gram and Emmylou We could tell each other everything And we still do Keeping our shared secrets That’s what good friends do” Lucy’s Everyday Street is a drive down familiar roads, the songs sung, the joys and sorrows held in hand alike, a recollection, a scrap book of growing older, oneself and ones children. “Your first birthday, just your dad and me Little face covered in ice cream We made a wish for you, blew your candle out Thought that baby you’d always be Oh was ten years ago We’ll turn around and you’ll be grown Oh one day you’ll be on your own You’re gonna let us go” Kaplansky’s voice has reached a deeper register in recent years, not only an effect of time but of experience too. Every loss gives something that cannot be tallied or known outright, but it shows up in unexpected moments years later. We carry all that we’ve been through with us and it does not always weigh the same as it did when we started out on our travels. “Old things end with something new” and so it is fitting that Everyday Street ends with The Tide, one of Lucy’s earliest songs. "I was made to be a good girl Carried buckets made of stone Full of envy, full of sorrow On a tightrope all alone And all the time I was on fire I burned with every stride And now I see this anger Is the horse I choose to ride" Something new comes from the other end of life, an older girl singing to a younger one. A deeper register. Joni Mitchell once remarked that Both Sides Now was never really meant to be sung by a young ingenue but by an older, wiser self. We know the difference immediately when we hear Joni sing it now and when he hear her recording then. Likewise, on The Tide, Lucy enters the song from the other side of life, and when she sings “I have nothing for you tonight” it is truly spoken to that doubting place. “I think that the feeling of isolation I was writing about in The Tide is somewhat universal,” Lucy once said. “A hell of a lot of people feel overwhelmed and stuck with whatever it is they carry with them from childhood. I’d like to think that whenever you come up with something that is emotionally true, it is universal by definition. Somewhere someone else has experienced that emotion. We’re not so different from one another.” Everyday Street is quite simply the place of recognition. Of time, growing older, love, loss, singing and laughter. Kaplansky continues to weave one of the best musical tapestries around. 6) Gretchen Peters – Dancing with The Beast “Sometimes the days go by like years,” that line alone will lay you flat. On Dancing with The Beast, veteran songwriter Gretchen Peters has made one of her finest records to date. “I get lost in my home town Since they tore the drive-in down I find myself all turned around I get lost in my home town” The aching details of our everyday struggle, getting through, staring down old ghosts in the mirror, reckoning with our place in the world, the kitchen tables where we hate the shapes sat in them, the shapes of ourselves. In Disappearing Act a woman reflects on the rotten short straws that have been dealt and drawn; “lost two babies, kept two more,” and a husband back from the war; “He came home but he never came back And that’s somethin’ that I’ll never understand Good things come, good things go If it lifts you up, it’ll lay you low People leave and they don’t come back Life is a disappearing act” Peters goes for the throat, where words get stuck she pushes them clean through. In "Lowlands" Gretchen sketches the political divide in Raymond Carver like fine detail; “i come straight home from work and fix my supper Don’t burn one with my neighbor anymore Ever since he put that sticker on his bumper I just turn out the lights and lock the doors” “I don’t know nobody feeling hopeful I don’t know a soul who’s sleeping well… I don’t think anybody knows just what the cost is I don’t think anybody knows just what to do Me I’m thankful for this work that keeps me honest My hands get dirty but my soul stays clean ‘Cause the grinding of the wheel will make you crazy I don’t want no part of that machine” “the tv it just lies to keep you watching,” and a man who sells you kerosene and calls it hope, pits hate against the world and calls it good. Dancing With The Beast means; take a good long look in the mirror, do you like who you see staring back out at you? Can we ever get back to normal? "Truckstop Angel" is a poem and a back alley prayer. And some of the finest lyrics Peters’ has ever penned: “I meet them in the truckstops I meet them in the bars I meet them in the parking lots And I slip into their cars They come and put their money down They come and place their bets I swallow their indifference But I choke on my regrets Sometimes they ask me questions Sometimes they treat me nice You don’t know what you’ll get Until you roll the dice You’re a loser or a winner here Predator or prey I’m still not sure which one I am Or how I got this way And it’s hard to hear the angels Over the diesels’ hum But I know they’re out there singing And I’ll know them when they come And I’ll rise above the neon Above this trailer park And fly like a truckstop angel With an arrow through my heart.” Buy this record for a glimpse into the broken heart of America, of being down and out and running ragged after the ever receding tail lights of hope on a rain torn strip of road. Dance with the beast in the mirror, that one, true, unadorned glimpse of yourself. 5) Eliza Gilkyson – Secularia “Dark comes down like a bird in flight/Most good people have gone to rest/But us poor folk who wake at night/When we’re lonely we sing our best . . . “ Gilkyson opens her new album with the words of her father and grandmother. Carrying the lyrical hope of her forebears into the deep darkness of our sad age. Secularia isn’t some trite new age hope, it is a fierce battle with an evil with a real name and a real face, it is a battle with ourselves, our country, our soul or lack of. A few older song are revived here, Sanctuary, which originally appeared on Hard Times in Babylon, and these may be much harder times, and so the reminder, “through desolation’s fire and fears dark thunder, thou art with me.” “The center cannot hold This is somebody else’s dream Out of the nighttime Lifelines glow in the dark Order falls apart Nothing is as it seems And all of the like-minds Who reel from this blow to the heart Turn to each other On the night of the Supermoon” Election of the dark heart, Conrad’s jungle soul of America. Mad Kurtz as President. In The Name of The Lord, Gilkyson has penned yet another killer protest song, as chilling as Man Of God; “We’re prisoners in a fairytale A ship of fools all set to sail We watch the Empire’s epic fail On shiny hand-held screens The rapture of the buy and sell The faithful at the wishing well They rage against the infidel Lurking in their dreams And it’s all in the name of the lord Pull the oil up through the sands Desecrate the holy lands The blood will never touch our hands In lands so far away The lies we tell to fill the hole Like coins dropped in a beggar’s bowl They can’t redeem us when we go Into the dimming day” “When people say keep politics out of art, I say sure, if you can keep politics out of life.” -Robyn Hitchcock Bravery demands we sing those sacred songs, give our blood for the truth, “A servant, a snake, a soldier, a storm A poet, a mother, a child stillborn A rock, a star, a drunk in a bar How many more times dancing the skin dance Serving the systems of violence and romance Sobbing the sorrow, walking the wheel Hiding the horror, fighting the feel Pushing the will like a rock up a hill Until, until, until I’m drawn so slowly step by step out of this darkened place So unaccustomed to the light, so wary of its grace Oh how I long to hear the pipes I held before I fell And sing the ancient songs of love, Emmanuelle” Secularia is the broken holy place where we are all called to do or die, in goodness or dark, what will be our story in a hundred years? A land completely plundered for the almighty dollar, will the bottom line be our bottom? Or will we rise to something better, kinder? Will we be the light or the dark, yesterday or tomorrow? There is far too much at stake to be undecided. 4: Sarah Sample – Redwing Redwing is Sample’s best record to date. A family album of love, loss, death, father-daughter dances, the traits of one’s mother, of tender hearts that fall apart. “When you’re bound to the old you, you’re waging a war… I tried to tell but I lost all the words.” Lovers tied to the tracks of old patterns and sour communication. Family bonds broken into a million little pieces are also put back together in self affirmation and love, in “The Walk of Moving On” that is our lives even after all of the damage and fall out. “You come to town a few times a year, I marked a heart on my calendar for the day you’re getting here, I had it planned, a big surprise, Mom said you’d pick me up at six, I’m still waiting here at nine, but I can see it all in my mind, I’d be twirling in your arms, I’d be flying, and I would feel your love with every glance, that’s how it’s supposed to go, for the daddy/daughter dance… we never got our song, we never learned the moves, we never got to dance around with me standing on your shoes, I thought I was to blame, till I finally figured out I could choose a different partner, I could fill my dance card out.” In ‘A Day Without You’ Sample tugs at the deepest heart strings, grappling with the death of a loved one on Christmas Eve; “we gathered around your cold body on that colder night… for how could the sun rise on a day without you?… I’m angry in the night when you’re not here for me to lean into” “Don’t ask me if I’m ok, please ask me if I’m ok.” A stunning line if ever there was one. That push and pull that we all have to be simultaneously asked after and left alone. Redwing is like that “family album no one’s mother keeps, the one of absolute truth telling” -Joyce Carol Oates. Much of Sample’s new album reminds me of We Were The Mulvaneys. A record of loss and hope, dysfunction and survival, of forgiveness and of grace. 3) John Hiatt – The Eclipse Sessions With The Eclipse Sessions Hiatt has recorded one of his strongest and wisest albums to date. “Nobody wants to talk about all that pain,” John sings on Cry to Me. “I’m probably gonna let you down, but I swear I won’t keep you down.” “Not one damn thing in the yard that starts, I wonder why love is always looking for its own ghost, or is that just what hurt people do, find the one’s who injured them the utmost, practically beg them to make their dreams come true.” Ouch, truth cut down right to the bone. “Trying every last trouble on for size,” “dirty Nashville, that’s our home.” On Robbers Highway, it is time itself, that thief in the night. “Can’t feel the fingers of one hand, last night felt like a three night stand, mouth full of cotton, feet of clay, I didn’t plan on waking up today,” “I lost my brothers, I lost my friends, only one way this thing ends, cheap and dirty in a bad motel, wondering what it was you used to do so well.” Not a happy ending for an album, but an honest one. Songwriters who dwell in the dark might get swallowed whole, but although Hiatt has lived there, he has also survived and moved on. When he revisits the dark places it rings truer than anything written in the light, truer because you know what it’s like to break completely down on the side of life’s highway, you are grateful as hell to see those headlights approaching on down the road. This album is like a lift to the next town. 2) Lori McKenna – The Tree The Tree is a feat of time itself, time passing, time frozen over, young rage, older perspective. The apple not far from the tree; “The tree grows where it’s planted And that’s the fate of a fallin’ seed” From throwing bottles at high school chain link fences to saying the things your parents used to say, McKenna weaves in and out of the past in order to open up the present as two sides of the same coin. “I could use a little of who I was in that way back when, to be young and angry again.” And in the painful and beautiful passing of time, where; “Houses need paint, winters bring snow Kids, come on in before your supper gets cold Collection plates and daddy’s billfold And that’s how it goes You live long enough, people get old…” And even though we know; “Time is a thief, pain is a gift The past is the past, it is what it is Every line on your face tells a story somebody knows That’s just how it goes” It is what a life adds up to, the people we were become the people we are now. Our voices change into the ones that once guided us along the way, and we pass our hard won wisdom along while pining for the younger, wilder parts of ourselves as well. It’s all in the soup, who we are, who we were. ‘The Lot Behind St Mary’s’ captures perfectly the awkward, painful-as-hell flux of the many seasons of our lives and longings, to get back what has been lost, to hold tight to what hasn’t; Cigarette smoke in an August sky Drinkin’ the beers you convinced your older brother to buy We hadn’t make any of our mistakes Our world was in the cradle but innocence wasn’t in the grave And I know we can’t go back in time But every now and then you look at me and I know you wonder why We can’t get back to when September was our only adversary In the lot behind St. Mary’s Well I thought I’d be all you’d need But your heart was in the dark and mine was in the weeds I’m sure the dreamer who built the first trapeze Fell in love with someone who grew to resent the goddamn thing And I know we can’t go back in time But every now and then you look at me as if to wonder why We can’t get back to the love we made before our teenage dreams were buried In the lot behind St. Mary’s” The Tree is as good as a record can get. McKenna has never not hit them right out of the park, but this one is right off the map. 1) Chip Taylor – Fix Your Words Chip Taylor is a light in these dark times. Fix Your Words is one of the most beautiful things in human existence right now. It’ll pull all of the tears you have inside of you right out. For those who could use a little “mercy now”, this is the record, this is the voice meant to deliver hope. “Whatever devil is in me come on out whatever evil is lurking show your face I know you I have seen you many times over these years whatever kindness is in me draw your sword whatever goodness has been held back speak your word I’ve heard you but not enough times until this time and it’s about time you were heard can you scream it out do I have your word are you ready” Here Taylor hones empathy to a fine art and reminds us that we are all in this thing together. “We have not to say we have just to do talk is just a waste of time for the likes of me and you look in my eyes feel the pain” Perhaps; “none of us can win this war but we had best keep trying to” Of unrequited love he sings; “You know that kind of guy when he goes, he goes” The lie of self sufficiency is that it must be pronounced to others and not just to oneself. A voice is meant to be heard and such hearing is meant for a voice. We are not isolated creatures, there is a debt we owe each other, a debt of caring and of mercy. "I know that we are in this together we are definitely in this together I can feel it, and it is a good place to be I know we are in this whole thing together and that is one thing they didn’t count on the power of you and me now it is up to each and every one of us, of course up to ourselves but the power of kindness, friendship, that is pretty strong stuff and as we are in this together together we will rise above it and whatever weakness we have we will see it clearer than we ever have before we will change it, fix it, heal it, and we will bleed it, till we don’t need it anymore the weakness, we don’t need it anymore” We each have to decide not to feed that dark beast within, first and foremost, before we ever decide to feed the beast in power, there is that lion and lamb of our own hearts, an account that needs settling. If on past records Taylor framed it as “fuck all the perfect people” here we are instead asked to pity those perfect ones; “I am thinking about all the perfect people out there it’s actually a sad place to be we should pray for grace for them” And what makes us if not others? “I am the sum of others, caring for each other… only then can I truly say; I am… I am the lamp for someone I don’t know.” In a time of mounting darkness, Fix Your Words is a gentle musical friend of truth, a roadside companion. Its ethics is of the heart, its mercy is for the fallen, and seemingly for the perfect ones as well, for the beasts who only know how to destroy whatever they touch; “it’s actually a sad place to be, we should pray for grace for them.” But we must, most of all, be that lamp for someone we don’t know. We will change it, fix it, heal it. Together. 11/1/2018 0 Comments Light by Amy L. BethkeLight There’s a story I’ve heard about you—family lore-- you weren’t old yet-- the way I remember you-- but young, talking, laughing, walking not looking and you slammed into that light pole and held your head and everyone, everyone laughed while you shook stars from your ears, your eyes, twinkling bits falling from your soft brown hair, your beautiful nose. The ending is always the same-- all of you walking away from the light, laughing still at your dumb blindness and your pain. Amy L. Bethke’s fiction has appeared in Literary Mama, MnLIT, Murphy Square and 100 Word Story. She lives in Maple Grove, Minnesota with her husband, children and a crazy dog named Cooper. For the little ones I'll never birth (Oprihory) Light, I've always joked how I wished to carry your name like a stretch mark, bear you children who will die one day from chain-smoking so this morning, when I didn't find myself pregnant I begged destiny to piss off and stop joking that my womb is a body bag. Note to the bag I always carry around my shoulder, I should've replaced you with a backpack 9 months ago, ditched this province while it's dead asleep and allowed Providence to book me a night or two with Serendipity. Note to serendipity, Excuse me, but you don't happen to be related with pregnancy, do you? Dear pregnancy, Awfully sorry I treated you harshly when I was in my early twenties. If only I'd been gentler, I wouldn't have lost you so many times, my life would have been fuller and perhaps I wouldn't be asking the world today to keep screwing me. To my dear screwed-up self, stop googling happy poems. Be the poem you want to read. Dear readers, do you know the bruises on my mother's skin inspired my spoken word? My mouth is well-formed by the most forceful poet in my lifetime - my father's fist. Dear fist, you may grow bigger but you will never beat louder than my heart. Dear heart, they could try to take you away pull at your strings until you hurt too much you break into a war-song. But what you know of walls is that they echo the symphony wanting to burst free from your veins. Dear veins, I confess I only turn to you when I'm helpless each cut is a journal entry I hide from the prying eyes of pretend-psychiatrists who, thinking that they can find the root of loneliness below my navel ring, write this prescription: 'quit trying to spread your wings and spread those legs wider please.' Dear legs, These days, I guess you feel too much and easily tire for your own good. But thanks for letting me know that you have to pull more muscles to stand up for lovers than to run from haters that there is more danger in standing still in the safe zone than in running across your greatest fear. Note to my greatest fear, you have yet to show me how to tremble call the saints by their proper names but you only taught me how to gamble curse every form of holy. Note to everything holy, you are stained as your glasses bearing scripture stories that look nothing more than self-inflicted cuts, bruises so fucking vulnerable you're unbelievable. Don't think even for a second that I'll buy your testimonies 'cause you can name your price but not your god. Dear god, I didn't like the last guy you sent to bring the news. He killed me with poetic justice said I am Pasig River personified, everything that shares with my water will be born dead as the night driftwoods abandoned the ocean. Geraldine Fernandez (Dray) is a graduate of Bachelor in Secondary Education Major in English and a second year law student mental health advocate from the Philippines. Her works have appeared in various papers and poetry journals namely The Hundred Islands, The Plebeians, The Birds We Piled Loosely, The Fem Literary Magazine, Spillwords Press, Isacoustic, etc. She posts about mental health issues at https://instagram.com/gdraylovesgritty and could be reached through https://www.facebook.com/gdray.fernandez 11/1/2018 0 Comments Still by JudeStill Be still. Be. still. Best to be still beast be still But it gnaws There’s a place behind my breastbone Tight and knobby Worn smooth like river rock It conspires against stillness Remember The calm it brought Not a fucking person has been there for me like those pills Prescription for stillness I don’t care if it’s wrong Script me still The sickness between is like the tide rushing out Burroughs thought cells regenerated Not a soul knows the truth My cells don’t know how to be still on their own Jude is a middle-aged woman in the Southeast. From the outside she looks moderately successful and mentally healthy but struggles with addiction, depression, and loneliness. Due to the stigma of these issues she has lived a duplicitous life in order to preserve her career and familial relationships. She is ambivalent about the Internet because it allows her to both feed and address her addictions. Like many, she must remain anonymous. |
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