Alexandru Paraschiv CC

​

                            ​Alexandru Paraschiv CC



​
Elegy for Deb
 
We shuffle off this mortal coil, Shakespeare wrote.
Hers included a left leg sliced in her twenties,
 
Left with nerve damage and heroin habit.
She overcame, made hard choices like giving up
 
her son, reconnecting with her sisters who were
never easy. Helping to care for her mother
 
who was even harder. Her father, the rock slipped 
out from under her. She never found another. 

She laughed loudly, had no indoor voice. 
Had no patience for methadone clinic life or men. 

Moved South to escape New England winters
Moved back when she realized it was the South. 

At fifty-eight, a severe foot infection took 
six months, two hospitals, daily nursing visits 

to recover, but she did.  At last she went home. 
Then she died.  Leaving us to wonder why and how. 

What torment our bodies meet in this world.  One can 
hope for in that sleep of death what dreams may come, 

the numbing peace of heroin 
without damage, must give us pause.





One Quarter of American Women Take Antidepressants 

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy 
Be mindful, regulate emotions, behave right 

You must radically accept the world is fucked. 
Use active words and share your feelings even though

everyone else is still behaving badly. 
Remember to breathe, breathe out the terrible fears

your mother put into your head, and your father
he really couldn’t do any better, could he? 

It’s your job to keep it together after all. 
Men can’t help it.  Men have insatiable urges. 

The dialectic between you and this mean world 
If these things break down, maybe you’re a borderline. 





Detach from the Outcome

“DETACH FROM THE OUTCOME,”
my supervisor said 
which obviously 
is impossible to do.
But it is too easy to apply capitalistic standards 
to that which is beyond simple economics, 
simple logic,
and is anything but linear. 
Success in this field is not measured 
by things that can be graphed on a pie chart:
               50% of all past clients have relapsed
               4 % have died
               20 % went on to have committed 
               long term relationships
               but in 7% of those, 
               there were hints of dysfunction. 
It’s absurd to think 
I can measure my work in these terms, 
yet I find myself doing it
because it would be so much easier
if I had some proof
I was doing some good. 
The proof 
is in the laughter 
that you might occasionally hear 
drifting out of my office. 
Even amid it all: 
Death of a mother, loss
of a partner, tremendous 
physical pain. No less significant: 
Being made fun of in school, 
brutal probation requirements, 
having to watch your back all the time. 
Amid all this, on the good days,
we laugh and find solace 
in each other’s company.



​*Detach from the Outcome first appeared in; Tikkun Olam: Repairing the World.

​

Eve Lyons is a poet and fiction writer living in the Boston area.  Her work has appeared in Lilith, Literary Mama, Hip Mama, Mutha Magazine, Word Riot,  Dead Mule of Southern Literature, as well as other magazines and several anthologies.  Her first book of poetry was published in May of 2020 by WordTech Communications. She works as an expressive arts therapist at an outpatient mental health clinic and teaches at Lesley University.  

                          Alexandru Paraschiv CC



​
​A Portrait of Erin Lindsey

I.

I remember that time
you stole mom’s scarf and wore it to school
with your Avenged Sevenfold ball cap
cocked diagonally across your head,

and you smashed Kyle Greenwood into a locker
for calling me a faggot (I think he pissed himself),
laughing as he limped away,
laughing as you got detention.

Or that time you walked through traffic
despite my protest (or maybe in spite of it),
smiling as car horns blared,
smiling at my cowardice.

You, already the heavyweight champion
of making little boys cry
and having a strange, Herculean irregard
for your own safety;

and I, demented,
receiving all the encouragement
and all the endless little lies
about “my bravery”.

II.

The baby who would punch you in the face
turned into the girl who would punch you in the face,
turned into the woman who would punch you in the face,

turned into someone capable of very careful love.
Someone who once made me bleed (profusely),
who wears a studded leather jacket

and a bright wide anger. She has enough to stop
a train and each one of it’s passengers--
this similar smile (I don’t escape) 

that presses her lips into the cat-head
on principle of summers without a stop to the sky 
or else a reckoning, and yet, still,

I am back here on the trail
in the woods behind Gram’s house,
beneath those red and white cones hanging

from the powerline, thinking about swimming
by that public beach with the big mother turtle
who ate fingers and toes,

thinking about that first ochre-tinged taste of Crown
from mom’s old china cabinet. I turn around to leave,
the sun behind me,

still wearing clothes two sizes too big
still with a memory of your baby fingers,
those indecipherable pink digits

too often balled into a fist.

III.

When I hear the word “junkie”
I think about what it really means
to be waiting for a phone call--
one where (I imagine) I am told

you are in need of my organs
or my blood, or the right words
or my collection of tackle
or my sweaters that are too big for you.

Or the recipe for mom’s butter tarts,
or maybe a book about love
or the marrow from my bones
or something I can give you--

that it will fall to me to bear you witness
to watch the door for imposters and thieves
and press my thumb against your eyes
and watch your body being put in a furnace

and please forgive me for this
because sometimes I am furious,
sometimes I just want to grab your shoulders
and shake the poison out of you

I want you to remember what it was like
before things fell apart. 

IV.

I saw you crossing the intersection
at Bank and Wellington, trailing the sun
in your hair

drinking Timmie’s and smiling at the old man from Arnprior
who sells lilacs and roses out of his pickup truck,
who always smells like soil

and calls you Bella. I watch you
watch the world reflected in your eye,
magnificent. You work around the corner,

three minutes from Parliament,
taking notes in a faceless skyrise and living
in a shitty little apartment near Britannia

where you are content buying succulents
and kitty litter, end tables, a string of lights
to hang over your balcony--

you arrive home in the evening, water
your plants, pet your orange cat. There is a note
pushed under your door

from your landlady. Maintenance is coming
tomorrow at three, on the nose
to inspect your life and report any damages.


​

                         ​Alexandru Paraschiv CC


​
​
Tenet3

I stay between get and grief. Radiance 
is a dream I had of light. Even now 
the days are shaving themselves down, thinner 
and thinner, a prepubescent autumn. 
On some road to language I swerved off of 
Lolita dawdles, remade, remorninged.  
Dewiness does not become a woman 
of a certain age. Forty-eight puts me 
in mind of spiders, of Maman, Louise. 
I know of worse cells within which to spend 
September. Spread before me horizons 
of ever more intricate darkness—let 
me let them. I’ll at each vanishing point  
plant a leech. That’s what a moon is: bleeding. 
  




Tenet4
 
Plant leeches under the new moon. Bleeding 
the earth is advised by this almanac. 
Other remedies include: coast torchings 
hurricanes, floods, and virus. Winter will 
bring the desserts and they will be just per- 
fection. This is a poisoned state. Expect 
wild strawberries and whuppings. The best switch 
you cut for yourself: ours is ferocious. 
On ‘flix, the inside moon, a film extols  
the wonder of mushrooms—their synaptic 
undergrounds. To bloom from shit is to know 
listening. Once, while high, I climbed a tree 
and kissed a boy and read the leaves: the most   
knotty longing is but a minor love. 
 




Tenet5 
 
My nerves are knots. I long for love. To be
spectral, I just watch. Picture a life lived 
on the skin of things alone, blanched as if 
by lion’s tongue. Appalled. When I am out 
in the world my trick is to see, remain 
unseen. No industrial spill required 
to initiate powers I wield always 
from the shallows, subconsciously. This is 
how to be villain: feign innocence, face 
no consequences, flee each chance to root.  
A deep nomad lacks no home. All lands, sites  
of her haunting, streets—teeming with her need 
—to blow through others’ lives. Greedy gust, un-  
invited. When I am, I’m wrongly there. 
​

​

                             spablab CC



Clear Cutting


There’s time to finish razing the trees
some mornings—a kettle’s stainless whistle,
the call from that women you know

with a cane, who is familiar
in the way people are when you both
start a job on the same day. 

You orientate together at a location
designated to make sense. The path
widens to freeway. You cruise,

stare though open doors, tuck, 
and roll together. Then spread kindling
and set everything on fire.

Heat pushes in all directions,
fuzzy like middle puzzle jigsaw pieces. 
Responses come together to make water,

others rescue animals hide,
storm eyes, the legs of beast
gathered to form a herd. 

​

                            ​M I T C H Ǝ L L CC



Genesis

In the beginning was the girl.
Born of no man’s bone or flesh--
The girl was faultless.
 
Blonde, or red.
Her hair can be straight, curly--
Her hips have curves, or none.
 
She can play sports, like science.
She can love girls, or men, or both.
She can color her lips blood red,
The walls of her bedroom shell pink--
Watch the afternoon sun kiss the lace curtains,
And see that it is all good.
 
The girl can write poetry.
She can write code.
She can write legislation.
 
Our daughters paint tiny colored stones,
Leave them by the roadside,
Talismans for their sisters--
 
Yeah, we’re still here.
Pass it on.
 
In the beginning was the girl.
Physicist, poet, hooker,
Charlatan, housekeeper,
Kept woman, president, CEO.
Whatever.
 
Alpha and omega,
Pleasing to the goddess.
Naked, but not ashamed.
​
​

                           ​Eric Sonstroem CC



Lightning at Night


Nearly blue daylight.  We met, as always,
in the park where everything else was taller;

walked barefoot, me in nothing but bra
and shorts, drenched through, not quite

dancing, not quite touching.  When lightning
struck the dumpsters we felt the concussion,

them jumping and us, stunned, too close and
deafened.  We understood tenpins then,

how force can knock you sideways, into
each other, shift you—feet skittering--

only to be righted again, reckless, laughing.
When it was only rain and darkness we sat unseeing

in the picnic shelter, talking smack about Shakespeare and
anyone else too dead to fight back.  Stumbled

to the cars.  I touched your shoulder.  The storm
paused.

​

                         Eric Sonstroem CC



It’s Over


Nobody to talk to, but that’s ok. I’ve got these walls.
And this watered-down glass of something. I’m good
at this, I think. As long as I don’t get thinking about this, 
that, & the other. And if I do—well, my policy is to have 
the thought, acknowledge it, & move on. Whether or not
that’s a healthy way to deal with it, I can’t say for certain.
But it’s just how I am. I’m just trying to live—to survive.

​



Where Do You Live Again?


I met Patty at the cemetery at 8 o’clock in the evening.
I didn’t know exactly where I was going. But I found
Patty at the gates on Dallas, I parked, and we set out
for a walk. Patty told me that the fireflies should be
putting on a good show but that it wouldn’t start for
an hour or two yet, so we’d have time to catch up.

We were in the city, but near the big park, so nature
was on display for us there in the cemetery—we saw
deer and turkey and even a fox, who crossed our path
in a loping fashion. We found a mausoleum tucked
back in a corner of the cemetery and set up shop on
the steps, breaking out beers and a little chocolate bar
Patty brought to share. There was some news to discuss, 
but we started talking about our old friend, Tony, and 
the stories about him started taking over. I told some
funny old stories about Tony and I was laughing and
before I knew it, I was crying and I didn’t know if they
were tears of joy or grief but I guess it didn’t matter.

The fireflies started up, just as Patty had promised 
and so did the mosquitoes—I could feel them sucking 
my blood out of me. Because it was June in Pittsburgh,
you could hear fireworks being shot off all around us.

And we talked about photographers for a while and I
told Patty about how my dad, a man of many hobbies,
had said that if he had pursued an artistic calling, it 
would have been portrait photography. And we talked
about Teenie Harris and Patty said she once had a series
of Teenie Harris dreams and I thought about how once
I had a series of Richard Brautigan dreams for a while.

And I told Patty about my road trip to see the path of 
The Johnstown Flood, from the manmade lake down 
to the city of Johnstown and then up to the cemetery 
high on the hillside with its massive monument 
to the unknown dead. And then we talked about 
David McCullough and about his great books.

And Patty asked me, “Where do you live again?”
and I laughed. It shouldn’t have been a difficult
question to answer, but it was at that moment.

And when we left the cemetery, I got in my van
and rolled the window down so Patty could hear
the Ellington song on my stereo and I turned it up
and Patty started dancing there on Aylesboro Street,
dancing in the moonlight across from the cemetery.

​

                        Ron Gilbert CC




X outside the apportioned field

back during webelo days 
before merit loops & emblems
on sixty-four opposing squares of faith
we never learned to use a knife
             too busy being cut by the closed game
by lions & tigers & bears & wolves 
being loyal to not letting us in

placed by a scheme of uniform as delivery
for kerchiefs & slides
for earning badges to imply rank & file
              official blue with button-flap pockets
we wore in secret         revealing more knee to none 
when ankle & crew were fixed by families of the den

tracking the chair of shaping eccentric plots
accused of chemical sway we knew the cost
of attacking quick in a battleground of self          as vizier
              taking the antipositional path
by bending notes to not a note
ever known before in making note of sound
             where we were the utmost but not the tallest
             where the church was rich & marked as chattel
conscript or serf depending on the ground

touch-move ruling was the game of seeking
yet another gay as fuck space the                stuff of
actually being named to become further
              unsex us & license our roving hands
to tie the knots for slipping or razing
in more moves than the sum of all grain 
             fleeing the heaves of sly attending
to the interwoven pack inside our form
             & internegative thrum of our forked pain

sweet angel pie set before our lowered eyes
be our procurator standing before a lower court

to scumble the verges of our song with coats
of care                           making it easier to hear
while we tweak the twig at our nose & sniff 
perfume or fumigation to see if we’ve been seized 

not undone but done with undoing
not afraid of taking flight past tests of dear
compression to reach light
                            to scout good splashdown weather
                            to look up & say shah met

                            Nicolas Henderson CC

​

Black Rain

I
September first floods. I drive ten miles an hour to the Piggly Wiggly for Dr. Pepper and Doritos. Water so thick my Honda hydroplanes. I am ten again—Mother squeezes the steering wheel, wipers scratch back and forth: Forgive us our sins, Lord, so we can die in peace.

II
At Smideo Video the cashier drums his fingers on the counter: Wet enough for you? Outside, water spears the ground.  Inside, drops from my forehead smudge the Visa slip. Too soaked for small talk, I take The Last Wave and leave him drumming.

III
Hail bounces on the roof. Under the quilt Mother pieced together for my college graduation, I hear her: Never put this in the dryer. It will shrink. I always wash it on gentle then drape over four kitchen chairs like the tents I used to make. 

IV
The Last Wave: black rain in Australia. Deep beneath Sydney Richard Chamberlain strangles the shaman and can’t hold back the surge. At midnight Ted calls from Motel Six in Biloxi: Highway 10 is closed. I’ll be home when the road opens.

V
Dream: Ted and I kneel for communion in the Beulah Baptist Church. Lilies droop from a single stalk.  In a red robe the pastor offers us the blood of Christ. I look up—he wears my mother’s face.




​
Light
 
Sight dims after twenty years
sewing cotton under fluorescence. 

In fingerless gloves, she threads the eye, 
prays for easy passage.
 
Glint from the silver thimble reminds
her of glow worms in a Texas summer.

Specks of light on pinewood,
brown iris rimmed in white. 

She longs to be above the factory glare
where sunlight rolls through mist.
 
Rising from her bone, warmth spreads
like manna’s sweet, clear juice.
 
Tamarisk petals fall, barely touch her body,
blinking like fireflies.
​
​