12/22/2019 0 Comments Black Lung by Lanika YuleBlack Lung I should’ve expected a cave in, What with all the uneven ground I made; picking away without a plan. I didn’t know when I started digging That the gems I sought were compacted wounds, Mending into shiny scars, Polished by the mulling over and over til the tumbling rounds out those sharp edges. Hacking off chunks of heart to hawk Sifting through pomegranate seed shards sunk into pulmonary sponge, Whistling while I work. Holding the unearthed up in literary light, Prospecting my future With my deposits’ shares. Stories for sale - tuppence a bag! Strip mining productivity from my peace. Saw away the geode’s crust to unearth the bloody pulp Slice off the similes Sweep up my dust and these flecks of fool’s gold. I care less about diamonds in coal mines, but I’m stuck on what we’re sold as rare & dirty - spit shined and peddled to girls who pay too much for something so common Behold, my jewels - I’ve plucked them for your furrowed brow! Lanika Yule is a tender hearted scribe in possession of a Bachelor’s Degree in Women’s Studies and Political Science from Simon Fraser University. She lives in the Fraser Valley on land traditionally stewarded by the Stó:lō Nation. Her writing churns through themes of environmental degradation and embodiment, and applies a feminist lens to pick apart the spaces where these motifs intersect.
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12/22/2019 0 Comments Fly by Lucy WhiteheadFly I would melt a frozen orchid in my mouth until it blossoms, cradle the mosaic of a shattered snail in my hands, fuse it whole, breathe orbs of sunlight through the ether to the chrysalis of your body, turn your sickness into strength. But instead, this summer afternoon, I scoop a meniscus-flattened fly from the bathtub, dab the pool of wetness from around its waterlogged remains, blow like a miniature zephyr until I sense an almost imperceptible stirring, gentle twitch of consciousness. A single glistening thread unpeels from human skin. Six black legs spring against hot pink finger, separation of bodies, shake of slick wings, a moment of orientation, suddenly flight. This I can do again and again, give someone else another chance at life. Lucy's poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, Black Bough Poetry, Broken Spine Artist Collective, Burning House Press, Collective Unrest, Electric Moon Magazine, Ghost City Review, Mookychick Magazine, Neon Mariposa Magazine, Pink Plastic House, Pussy Magic, Re-side, and Twist in Time Magazine. She has a BA (Hons) in Archaeology and Anthropology from the University of Cambridge and an MA in History of Art and Archaeology from SOAS University of London. She lives by the sea with her husband and cat. You can find her on Twitter @blueirispoetry. 12/22/2019 0 Comments Pounds by Tom C. HunleyPounds Our eighteen-year-old daughter cringes, scowls at the scale. Mom, I weigh 1290, she shouts, her voice pained by a world that’s had its foot on the scale ever since she was born, freighted with the weight of her birth mother’s methadone addiction. It’s a digital scale, Sweetie, says my wife. You weigh 129.0. Our daughter bounds down the stairs to where her brothers and I are spilling soda and chips as the Seahawks fly past the Eagles. Dad, I lost pounds, she says. Not I lost weight. Not I lost X pounds. We clap and cheer for her. We haven’t seen such a smile on her face since the time two boys fought over her and the boy she liked got sent to detention. How many pounds did you lose, Sweetie? I ask. I don’t know. I weighed 133. Now I weigh 129, she says. So what’s 133 minus 129? I ask. I don’t know, she says, and I don’t know what the adoption blues are except twelve bars that I fear I’ll keep repeating longer than I can keep counting, and I don’t know if she’ll ever leave home, and I hope I can be someone she can count on, that I can carry this weight which feels ten times heavier than my own body. Tom C. Hunley is a professor in the MFA/BA programs at Western Kentucky University. His most recent poems appeared in Rattle, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Crazyhorse, and Michigan Quarterly Review. What Feels Like Love: New and Selected Poems is forthcoming from C&R Press. My Friend Devon Asks What I Get out of Church A checkup on my OCD. The “Our Father’s” joined hands, Communion wafer in palm. I draw the line at holy water. Holy? Shouldn’t it be contagion- free? Ah, dogma. I’m not praying against the contraction of a virus. Nor do I adhere to the bulletin’s list of intentions, though please pull through, Sr. Berniece, your kindergarten classroom alphabet with its X xylophone and B bat, where I was safe a year before abused. Devon, I go because it’s a milestone when I progress from holding a stranger’s five-fingered germth to Eucharist between thumb and index. The favor I seek accompanied by Southern pipe organ: His salvage that I survive my head. Jon Riccio is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers. A 2018 Lambda Poetry Fellow, recent work appears in decomP, SUSAN, Wordgathering, and Word For/ Word, among others. He received his MFA from the University of Arizona. 12/22/2019 0 Comments Poetry by Allison BlevinsAs I read my wife’s text messages, I struggle to capture—in a neat, tight box—the heat spreading across my chest. Later, she’ll ask if I felt sad at all. My face always looks just angry. To explain how the heart trembles, how an ache seems to swell and swell the longer you push your fingers into the pulsing and liquid center—isn’t enough. I try to hold on to her arms lifting me from my hospital bed. Hold how she adjusted tubing that branched like crags and ravined from my body. My eyes glued tight with salt. How the water etched my checks, dried skin to paper, and she walked backwards holding my body to hers, walked me to the bathroom over and over, washed my hair, called out to nurses on the intercom, spooned broth into my mouth after testing the heat on her tongue. Love is both of us swimming in an ocean of morphine—both of us reaching out for each other. Love is this other woman too. And we all live in the warm wound of my slowly splintering heart dropping clots like paint in the shallows. Memoir of Gray Like winter paints strokes of naked birch across a canvas washed with watered pigment—the between blue and leaden green of your eyes—I’ve painted a memoir of gray. I know I took too long to say plainly how often my silence meant I was dreaming of running, too often I imagined stopping the car, disappearing into the nearest field. Like winter, I never cared much if someone found me—or when—if I’d be flesh, or if my skin would have feathered and blown to the ground as leaves to crumble and dance in the January frost. Only the children in the back of our van stopped me, their faces waiting. How their lips would have blued, their breath. Not you. And I’m sorry. This is where you lost me to the sadness. I should have told you gray had painted my eyes, sealed my mouth. I should have told you again and again, I no longer believe you love me. My body shakes under the weight of all our love. Allison Blevins received her MFA at Queens University of Charlotte. She is the author of the chapbooks Susurration (Blue Lyra Press, 2019), Letters to Joan (Lithic Press, 2019), and A Season for Speaking (Seven Kitchens Press, 2019), winner of the Robin Becker Prize. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Harbor Review and the Poetry Editorial Assistant at Literary Mama. Her work has appeared in such journals as Mid-American Review, the minnesota review, Raleigh Review, Sinister Wisdom, and Josephine Quarterly. She lives in Missouri with her wife and three children where she co-organizes the Downtown Poetry reading series. For more information visit http://www.allisonblevins.com. 12/22/2019 0 Comments Poetry by Juleigh Howard-HobsonThe Promise For once under the light of the full moon a werewolf stopped a priest from destroying a fairy ring, alive with unfortunate denizens of the otherworld. The fairies were trapped by a circle of thin silver chain thrown down by the priest, who was holding a can of gasoline to pour on them before setting them alight. At great personal harm to himself,(for silver can be deadly to werewolves), the werewolf grabbed the chain from the ground around the fairies, and with it choked the life from the so-called holy man, freeing the fairies, one and all. In return, their Queen promised him anything. All he asked for, though, was a decent burial, when the time came, far away from those who hunt and hurt what they do not understand. –W E Stream The bells will be long. And they will echo From the side of the hills across to where Our low roads weave unseen through the meadows Toward the woods. And we will bury you there, Between the trunks of the Ash trees that shade A world apart from any other. We Will dig a hole, tearing out the root made Tangles until a hollow grave slowly Emerges. Held safe by deep tendrils, you Will rest. No one will hunt you anymore. No one will bother you. We’ll always do What we have promised to. A settled score Paid in full. The bells will be long the day We learn of your death and take you away. (Poet’s note: the folklorist ‘W E Stream’ doesn’t actually exist, except to lend a certain explanatory base to some of my numinous pieces.) An Aubade, of a Sort Don’t come back to me in nightmares, wrapped in Old arguments, re-playing the roles of Antagonist and victimized… again… Again. Don’t enter my sleep that way, rough Edged and shrill, still poised to inflict, still Toxic and damaging. Unchanged by death. Don’t show up, disturbing and provoking, Spoiling for another fight. Infernal Fucked up mess that you became, with your meth, With your pain, with your constant invoking Of slights made to you, wrongs done to you, times When you disappeared for days and no one Cared where you were. There was no shame, no crime When we stopped caring. What was done was done By you to yourself. Everyone you touched You tortured towards the end. Mangled, shredded, ripped Apart, yelled away, pushed against…I don’t Want the end of you in my head. It’s such A wretched ugly part. Instead, please, slip Back a few years in my dreams, come alone Without the issues, without the screaming, Without the anger emanating. Please, Let me sleep well and let me start dreaming -- Not nightmaring -- of you. Let dawn bring peace. Juleigh Howard-Hobson’s poetry has appeared in Mooky Chick, Ghost City Review, The Ginger Collect, Coffin Bell, Dreams and Nightmares, Mandragora (Scarlett Imprint), Lift Every Voice (Kissing Dynamite), and many other places. She homesteads off grid with ghosts for neighbors in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Noms: The Pushcart, The Best of the Net and the Rhysling. Pronouns: She/Her Twitter: ForestPoet@PoetForest Dial-a-Phone Memories I wish we could ring up old memories and listen to the voice as it reiterates the stories. Our index finger brushing through the yellow pages, “where’s the number I can dial to find the people I haven’t seen in ages”. Or maybe I’ll check the voicemail and listen to the ones I missed. The memories I didn’t embrace because I was simply too selfish. Then I’ll text my friends about the things that we did, and text the ones that didn’t make it about the things that they missed. I wish there was a Dial-a-Phone, so these memories were forever, Maybe that's the one material thing that I would always treasure. ‘Úna’ is a new and upcoming writer from the Northwest of Ireland. She entered the poetry space back in August, after creating social media under the name Úna Saint James – a pseudonym that allows her to express her creativity, whilst maintaining some level of anonymity. Her writing is heavily influenced by the Irish greats such as Behan, Heaney and Yeats, as well as The Dubliners and Luke Kelly. So far, she has been published in the Train River Publishing Winter Anthology 2019 and continues to share her work online through various social media platforms. Twitter and Instagram - @ÚnaSaintJames 12/22/2019 1 Comment The Promise by David SpicerTHE PROMISE Boy, you’re tailor-made for prison, my father said when I was ten and stole a candy bar. I challenged the comment every time I showed him straight A’s in English. He said, Too bad your grades stink in science. I assembled model cars, painted them candy-apple colors. He said, Those toys are for babies. You get high from that glue? I wondered why he treated me that way, whether he hated himself and me. He whipped me often with his studded leather belt. I asked him why. To make you a man. I said, Did your father beat you worse than you beat me? He said, Shut your trap. I lingered for decades as he played catch with my nephews, offered them gifts I never received. You look like a monkey fucking a football, he said when I fixed flats at his station. One November I refused to listen any longer. We spent that last election day debating. Who was the better man? Win or lose, I said, Dukakis, but I was wrong. My father gloated. We argued like two lousy lawyers with no facts, called each other fool, son of a bitch, motherfucker. He boomed, LEAVE! I slammed the door to smother his voice. My girlfriend said, Don’t be a prodigal. I wasn’t. If I relented, he’d welcome me back. I’d have no future, a cynic repeating his mistakes. But I wanted light, promised myself never to see him again. He thought I’d crawl back, head bowed, lick the hardwood so Daddy’d forgive. When I didn’t, he asked if I’d take $1000 to make amends. I hung up, yelled, Leave me alone. He tried to hire a mechanic to jump me. The man laughed. A priest called. Reconcile with your dad. I epiphanied, No, that my father wanted to twist his father’s hate knife into me a last time. One forgiving day I drove to his house. Tossing a baseball to his sister’s boy, he called my cousin Son. I decided—recalling the one time he told me, I love you—not to return, said, He’ll never hurt me again, and sent a note: We’re gasoline and matches. Goodbye. Six months later I learned he died in vomit, consumed with bile. Sometimes I pass his empty yard and remember him saying, A real man never breaks a promise. David Spicer is a former medical journal proofreader. He has published poems in Santa Clara Review, Synaeresis, Chiron Review, Remington Review, unbroken, Third Wednesday, CircleStreet, The Bookends Review, The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Yellow Mama, The Midnight Boutique, and elsewhere. Nominated for a Best of the Net three times and a Pushcart once, he is author of one full-length poetry collection, Everybody Has a Story (St. Luke's Press) and six chapbooks, the latest of which is Tribe of Two (Seven CirclePress). His new full-length collection of poems, Waiting for the Needle Rain, is forthcoming from Hekate Publishing. His website is www.davidspicer76.com 12/22/2019 0 Comments The Vase by Lynn ValentineThe Vase The fractures started with the small things, the usual complaints, stress at work, money, love. False births and true deaths led to the dead jigsaw of shape in her life, the hope of children, the loss of adults. The vase exploded in slow-motion. Others felt the sharp chips and shards bounce and recoil into a charred heap of nothingness. The summer after the vase was a white time, the bright light of the psych ward, the chalk of tablets, the talk and more talk, the lean towards home. Slowly the gilding took place. The fresh breath of home in the Highlands, the view of the mountains, dogs, love and family held each shattered piece of the vase. And somehow they mended, friends carried the weight of the fragments. They spun and they soldered, offered up their hope. The gold came from all corners. The vase slowly took shape. Lynn Valentine writes between dog walks on the Black Isle in the Scottish Highlands. She is widely published, both in print and online. She has won and been placed in competitions. Lynn won a place on the Cinnamon Press mentoring scheme and in 2020 will be mentored by them, working towards her first poetry collection. 12/22/2019 3 Comments I’ll Be Right Back by Brian RihlmannI’ll Be Right Back because I have swallowed much anger and know what it is to walk through life with those hot coals burning my throat any man who comes to me with his hand wrapped in a bloody towel his knuckles impaled by shards of glass will not be asked anything rhetorical or absurd, such as-- “why’d ya do that?” but may sit at my table while I get the tweezers and the bandages Brian Rihlmann was born in New Jersey and currently resides in Reno, Nevada. He writes free verse poetry, and has been published in The Blue Nib, The American Journal of Poetry, Cajun Mutt Press, The Rye Whiskey Review, and others. His first poetry collection, “Ordinary Trauma,” (2019) was published by Alien Buddha Press. |
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