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11/30/2021 Poetry by Joe Barca Groveland Media CC Blue Under I’m drowning in a sea of things that I do not understand. So I stop swimming, stop fighting, float on my back. I stay honest, face the sun, and let the swells lift me. I let surrender become the savior, and the waves become the way. Early Thorn be it such that we experience the pain before the grace (a prayer, a hymn, a psalm I touch god’s chest) that the shadows spin before the soft webbed glass (as frost recedes we shed our layers last) that wings hesitate before they stand erect (as the purple corpse of winter is reluctantly laid to rest) and the pale unveils the gloom before sun’s crest  Joe Barca is a poet from New England. He is a husband, a father, and the owner of a Wheaten Terrier. He is a fast talker and a slow runner.
11/30/2021 Poetry by Annick Yerem Robert Sarkozi CC
Notes on aphasia I used to climb hills with my husband, freckled and strong, binoculars at the ready. Look, I´d say: Mauerläufer. Schneefink. Tannenhäher. I used to take boats to small islands, my weary heart skipping a beat when seals swam beside us, cliffs came alive under my watchful eye. Look, I´d say to my daughter I´ll give you names to describe the world. Use them wisely, protect what you name: Puffin. Chiffchaff. Stonechat. I used to walk through woods always a rucksack, a bar of chocolate an apple to clean my teeth Look! I`d say to my friends: Rouge gorge. Mésange bleu. Pinson des arbres. There are pathways in my brain where I hear these birds. I know their names, the spell to make them real, but when I speak, they leave one by one, relics of words, whispers, no language strong enough to hold them. Look, I say. A bird. Beautiful. Annick Yerem is a Scottish/German poet who lives and works in Berlin. Annick tweets @missyerem and has been published, among other places, by RiverMouthReview, Anti-Heroin-Chic, Rejection Letters, 192, Eat The Storms podcast, Green Ink Poetry, Open Collab and Sledgehammer Lit. She is currently working on her first chapbook (Hedgehog Press, 2022), St.Eisenberg & The Sunshine Bus. 11/30/2021 Poetry by Cameron Chiovitti Groveland Media CC
Sorrow is Not My Name after Ross Gay, after Gwendolyn Brooks I wear Sorrow’s nametag to Walmart- It is, after all, a very sorrowful place to be. I dye my hair with Sorrow; I wash my clothes with Sorrow; I eat Sorrow every morning for breakfast. It’s hard to believe I am not Sorrow When her wings flutter in my digestive tract. It’s funny how a few letters can change Sorrow To Sparrow. Today, I celebrate Speckled Sparrow’s full belly in my belly. Celebrate my belly. My smooth Pressed sunflower stems blossoming. Sugar plum scars and all. Celebrate The music my organs play. My organs worship each other- Write prayers to each other every week, Whisper them like sacred constellations. They illuminate their midnight So I will never feel alone. Celebrate how the galaxy chose to keep me. I must matter if I am still here. I must matter if I am still here. I need not die today. Today, I pick up new laundry detergent. This one smells like freshly mowed grass. My colour is green. I picked my name once. I thought it was perfect, Just like my mother did when she picked one first. Now, I am no longer sure. Maybe names aren’t chosen but found. I keep looking in my Sorrow cereal, But the wheat is too soggy To make out any letters. What if my name isn’t composed of letters? What if it’s composed of chocolate bark? What if it’s composed of cherry blossoms People row boats and fly planes here Just to sit and marvel at? What if it’s composed of la tire- Snowy maple sap that sings Sticky sweet fortunes; Or re-emerging rapids; Or festival tulips; Or Lucky Charms chalk streets; Or Dairy Queen’s reopening; Or bike tire marks down the driveway; Or all the skateboards that get bought But never ridden Because the exhilaration of possibility Is already enough; Or pearl caps and gowns; Or ruby caps and gowns; Or the goddamn front lawn, Blooming weeds, But still blooming? Inhale. Exhale. My name is Spring. Cameron Chiovitti is a twenty-three-year-old nonbinary Canadian. They’ve been writing since they were a child, but truly delved into poetry at age sixteen. Currently studying creative writing at OCAD University in Toronto, Ontario, Cameron has already been published in She’s Got Wonder, LSTW, mcsway poetry collective’s Heartbreak Museum, and Anti Heroin Chic, among others. Their latest collection, Paint My Skin With Sweetness, is available for purchase on Amazon and Barnes & Nobles. 11/30/2021 Poetry by Rachel Small Wesley Carr CC
LOVER Bring me what is left of you after the rain has stopped. Do you remember that breakfast we shared in the old apartment? Bring me the remains of it. A spoon, an egg. I’d settle for the shell. I can’t stop thinking about the bike path along the water. We always said that we would walk it, one day. It has been two years and not once did we explore it. Goodness, we carry our wishes in our hands and walk across a field of dreams. Bring me the last good thought you ever had. I should have asked this before. When you talked about the cat, the old jar of spaghetti sauce. I wanted to grow a garden with you, someday. We would both bring soil and seed, turn a scrap of nothing into a season. How did we once begin without either of us knowing one another? The first time we slept side by side I couldn’t imagine stretching a hand out to touch the remains of a summer tan. Bring me that, a sad pillow and a happy morning. We made it past that. This is a rush of amber. September, cracked open. We each hold half, both precious. I think this moment was meant to be intentional. You brought yourself across a dance floor and last night the moon bowed to the bus stop, the old sign dividing provinces neatly. You’ve brought me just about everything, haven’t you? Rachel Small is a writer born and raised outside of Ottawa, Ontario. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in deathcap magazine, the winnow magazine, Ample Remains, Northern Otter Press, bywords magazine, and Handwritten & Co. You can find her on Twitter @rahel_taller. 11/30/2021 Poetry by Ruth Niemiec James Johnstone CC Sitting outside with you doing not much Morning Iced tea and justice while we listen to Justin Timberlake and reflect on last names Timber Lake “What’s in a name?” you ask Noon You know what would make summer hotter? I ask “A volcano at your feet” you say I watch the sweat beads on your top lip refrain from kissing you refrain from licking the sweat off your damn lip Buzzards gnaw somewhere in my belly Night Until night we sit I sit quietly and watch firefly’s in your eyes watching the way you kiss time like it’s only moving slow You have no fear of loss of heartache Of volcanos and human hearts you don’t know it yet but you are golden you are the sun Tomorrow you will rise  Ruth Niemiec (she/her) received her BA with a major in Professional Writing from Victoria University.
She is a writer of non-fiction, fiction and poetry in English and Polish. Her latest work is forthcoming or recently published in Dumbo Feather (aus), Mamamia (aus), Neon Literary Magazine (uk), Coffee People (us), Parliament (us) and Rhodora (in). Ruth is a love and relationships columnist for Perfumed Pages Magazine and a creative non-fiction reader for Catatonic Daughters. Growing up her time was divided between Daylesford, a spa town which lies in the foothills of Victoria's Great Dividing Range and Laverton, located in Victoria's Western Suburbs, bordering a blue collar industrial precinct. Her work draws upon the contrasting elements of both. Ruth offers readers contemporary works exploring social themes, coming of age, womanhood and modern romance set beneath petroleum clouds and electric sunsets. 11/30/2021 Poetry by Ritiksha Sharma stanze CC
Mindgraph Parchments of memory held in my hand, A photograph So, I looked at her, head down wide-eyed, A photograph of her Sitting beside herself; a subtle grin on her lips, something funny perhaps, A photograph of us. I knew her once I think A face of calm; like tea leaves soaked in water, circling away in a thoughtful daze; a body of struggle, eyes inquisitive, clear to the bone. She saw me once and there have been quagmires aplenty since; I think I know her still. “Mastermind” – they said and Man! She was! Because unlike scripts that others wrote for her she was the master of her own mind. A cerebral cortex of repute, honed in bouts of furious deliberation with others, with herself, with the world, with the word. You don’t see the lives she has lived in the fading shades of this memory. You won’t, you can’t, she won’t let you. She sat staking out a diary of your conventions; rewrote it all in a page, and lived it for you to see. Open her up, see how she bled under once, rippling tornado, fragile like a bomb. You won’t, because you can’t. I won’t let you. Ritiksha Sharma holds a Master of Arts in History from the University of Delhi, India. She is interested in the caliginous splinters of how the mind comprehends and engages with abstract experiences. Her work has appeared in the Indian Review and Indian Periodical. 11/30/2021 Poetry by Cynthia Atkins Simon CC
WHEN THE WELL RUNS DRY Did the owls in tree branches know before us---? That first they would come for touch, until we no longer needed our skin, until our bodies are tin cans, rattling the road in the amphitheater where our old selves dwell. We live in a box to avoid a virus; we live in a virus to avoid a box. I used to be a little girl in pigtails, practicing how to whistle in the March wind. It blew through me, and sound went inward, screeching as a train pulling into a station. I used to have neighbors, they used to throw stones. Now we send our love through living rooms. First, they came for the candlesticks, then our unmentionables. I want to look at someone who looks me back. I need to feel a face after rain. Let me wash my hands until I reach the source where loneliness hangs her hat. We are so bellicose and tribal—We are tight-lipped as telegrams. Riled by want, touching computer screens with our groomed fingers—As flies pass to and from. Like our last blown out birthday candles, we are huddled and hungry as a pack of wolves on the coldest night of the year—The subway rips through the city, opening its doors, my face pushing through water to breathe. Cynthia Atkins is the author of Psyche’s Weathers, In The Event of Full Disclosure (CW Books) and Still-Life With God (Saint Julian Press 2020), and a collaborative chapbook forthcoming from Harbor Editions, 2022. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The American Journal of Poetry, BOMB, Cleaver Magazine, Diode, Florida Review, Green Mountains Review, Indianapolis Review, Rust + Moth, North American Review, Seneca Review, SWWIM, Thrush, Tinderbox, and Verse Daily. Formerly, Atkins worked as the assistant director for the Poetry Society of America, and has taught English and Creative Writing, most recently at Blue Ridge Community College. She is an Interviews Editor for American Microreviews and Interviews. She earned her MFA from Columbia University and has earned fellowships and prizes from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Writer’s Voice, and Writers@Work. Atkins lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County, Virginia, with artist, Phillip Welch and their family. More work and info at: www.cynthiaatkins.com 11/30/2021 Poetry by Thommy Verstrepen Alex Holyoake CC Ghazal for the boys playing. We learn tag playground-early, running from being an it: each kid saying homo preceded by no. It’s an unruly game, I can only play house with wound and wounder: a Stockholm Syndrome no. When my nephew stains the question if I actually like dressing as a girl, the spring in my step is a quick slinky stumbling down the stairs of grace. Pride-cleaning my color with an acetone no. I play hide and seek with shame in masculinity, though I’m cheating by howling with the catcalls. My first time-out is a small protest, to be more human than boy-wrong, to honest my own no. If my heart on the floor is lava, I gladly melt into myself. Into a chance to shape me defiance, to make me question, to name me Becoming. I don’t play house for I am home now.  Thommy Verstrepen works in Belgium as a digital creative during the day. Their nights are filled with turning dreams into reality - and the other way around by means of poetry, theater, and tabletop roleplaying games.
11/30/2021 Poetry by Katie Proctor deveion acker CC You and Me, Summertime When you hold me will it be like I dreamed it or something better? We’re a household name, blue envelopes and writing paper, and I think you’re pretty with the lights off because I like the way it sounds when you tell me good morning. I see you in my dreams with your glass skin in a violet haze screaming fuck the summer heat and the bite of the meadow, the slats of the honeyed fence that keeps your hand from mine. I want you every day, want to call you mine and braid our lifelines, read your palm and say we’ll live forever if you’re by my side, in my bed, my rainfall glowing glossy and lucent. I guess we’re pretty in pink, indigo glitter and love heart lips, because I said I would kiss you through the window of the car I can’t drive and now you’re a part of me, I did your makeup because you’re all eyeliner and bad news. You’re the best decision I ever let myself make for grass stains and hay-fever romance, and I promise I’ll keep the bruises like a love letter to July until I see your face again and I can call you angel, sweet like lemons and jam. When it’s winter we’ll be a gingerbread and cinnamon love, until the tulips and the daffodils bloom. I’ll start again in March, ice cubes in lemonade. I’ll make you a drink and say happy new year. Ante Meridiem I woke up wrapped in white sheets with a ghost next to me, an intangible obscenity that clings to me all over, dampens the tissue-paper of my skin, gossamer and translucent, woven from the silver of spider webs in the dew, ante meridiem. You persist like the smell of smoke and fireworks splitting in my stomach, ten fingers in my hair, your invisible five, the shadow of a hand on mine and the body it grows from. You are a poltergeist on fire and playing with it, making me want to drown in something that tastes the way you do, every way, feverish and lost and blooming. And I wish you were here when I’m like this, insatiable and mouth dripping with honey, hold my hand, kiss me before it all shatters. In the temporary oblivion and the transitory quiet, you float, rising out of a vacant heart, the air of a dream dissipating.  Katie Proctor (they/them) is an 18 year old poet from Yorkshire, England. They write freeform poetry and prose typically regarding their experience with love, relationships and mental health. Their debut collection of poetry, Seasons, was published in 2020, and their sophomore collection A Desire for Disaster will be published later this year, both by Hedgehog Poetry. They are the editor-in-chief of celestite poetry, a journal of creative writing and non-fiction. They are currently on a gap year, and will be studying English and Related Literature at the University of York in 2022. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram @katiiewrites and online at katiiewrites.carrd.co.
11/30/2021 Poetry by Roxanne Noor Tony Webster CC
Twisted youth We are in high school, and the depressed artistic queer kid offers me blow in the bathroom. I refuse the offering and take a swig of rum from his bejeweled flask. I apply mascara thickly and am dressed in all black like a ninja goth. I look sad because I am sad. * When I go home I lay in bed and stare at the dilapidated ceiling. I can hear the paint peeling. I listen to the screams of my mother. I am fifteen and I do not meditate. I am fifteen and dysfunctional. I am fifteen and do not know what functional looks like. I am fifteen and being healthy extends to eating apples instead of McDonald's. * I am young so it is okay to still be this fucked up. I speak cruel things and I do crueler. My friend dies, the others are suicidal, and I think this is what getting older means. * Death is approaching on its hind legs. A shadow attached to my hip. The future is not a promise for girls like me. Roxanne Noor is a writer and editor living on an island in Thailand after departing from the urban chaos of New York City. She is the founder of Nude Studio, an online literary & visual journal working to expose global up-and-coming artists. Roxanne's writing can be found on Mixed Mag, Nymphs, Uplift Connect, Full Potential, & forthcoming on Sunstroke Magazine. |
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