12/2/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Lorelei Bacht Øyvind Holmstad CC
To kiss, kiss him. Smell of the jackfruit, colour of the sun: you are going to be alright. What you need is a bird to fly, and a fish to follow. Knee-deep in the hollow, the world revealed its alignments, at the moment when you thought it would not. Ring of fire, red gushes of rainbows – whose head is that in the toilet, thinking: this is not a human? Thinking: this has to be the end? Behold: the upturn and rebound. The song of sunlight, the yellow knife cutting through your waters of dark. Dark was a bad idea – there'll be plenty of time for that when the bucket is kicked. Meanwhile, darling, it's time to kiss, kiss him. Lorelei Bacht is a bookworm and poet living in Asia. She enjoys climbing trees and observing orb weavers. When she is not drawing sad little sketches, she writes - too much. Her work has appeared / is forthcoming in Visitant, The Wondrous Real, Fahmidan, Abridged Magazine, Odd Magazine, Postscript, PROEM, SWWIM, Strukturriss, Hecate, and others. She is also on Instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer and on Twitter: @bachtlorelei
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12/2/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Koss John Brighenti CC
Mother, Superego, When You Died, the World softly changed shape, altered course in its unremembering. The sociopaths, freed to be themselves, released their imprecise meanness, as the never-internalized superego ceased to steer the shaky stern. Their fits done in unison and alone, on a plane, inside a tin house or boat, the rage of their grief rocked waves an average brain might not fathom. Like the earth, lives shifted a little or a lot, our incompletenesses unmasked and raffish. No one could pay their bills on time, balance a checkbook, make their insurance, or track the holidays, as you, Grandmother, were the calendar, the forever-admin of this named family, all stuck in some time-wrench of our own design. What you skillfully managed and gave so easily, replayed in memory and awkward apery. Yes, all our unfitness laid bare. When you left, the maples I had planted to fill in the lightning-torched yard withered in their rings. But the songbirds continued to sing each morning. They knew something bigger than grief. A medieval goldfinch, blooming black and cadmium, tried to enter through the glass, and for the first time, I fed the birds, who clustered hungry at the window feeder, my winter cronies until the coons and squirrels moved in on our ritual, leaving glass streaks and bits of plastic and seed on the brown mottled ground. When you left, creepy men in cars parked outside my window. In the wee morning hours, one beat my door in. I found beer caps in the grass, at home, and near your grave. The funeral home sent grief counselors to sell me my own funeral. I told them I was gifting myself to the buzzards. They never give up. I still get fliers all these years later. When you left, your piano did not sing and please our ears ever again. The cover is still hinged over its ivory keys. I’m sorry for the dust. It has been years now, yet I haven’t found a new home. When you left, your Wednesday friends still met without you, sadder, but faithful. Each week, one by one, a husband died, or another friend. I run into one of them now and then. Edna’s daughter took over her life, moved her grandkids in. My “lifestyle” didn’t jibe with her daughter, and that was the end of our friendship. You predicted all of this. Of course, when you left, the homophobes shed their pretty clothes-- you had always kept them in tow. You made people better. Your chair at the round oak table, fifty years north, still sits empty. I find you in your chili recipe, your worn black shoes, in the purple hues, 40s Christmas music, and in all the things untended. Find work by Koss in Hobart, Cincinnati Review, Spillway, Diode Poetry, Five Points, Outlook Springs, Lumiere Review, Anti-Heroine Chic, and many others. She also has work in or forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2020, a Diode anthology, and Kissing Dynamite’s Punk Anthology. Find her on Twitter @Koss51209969 or http://koss-works.com. 12/2/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Alyssandra Tobin Frerk Meyer CC
I Complete My First Obsessive Compulsive Test with My Doctor Who Wants Me to Have Only the Cutest Thoughts & Urges HOW MUCH OF YOUR TIME IS OCCUPIED BY OBSESSIVE THOUGHTS? At the zoo my favorites are red pandas. Tiny creatures who tumble and soft. Put them on a mug, a tee shirt, a lunchbox. I imagine hugging one and am rendered tear-edged, mama clutching her fresh baby. There has never been anything wrong with me. I wake up and go to sleep same as you or anyone. HOW MUCH DO YOUR OBSESSIVE THOUGHTS INTERFERE WITH YOUR WORK, SCHOOL, SOCIAL, OR OTHER IMPORTANT ROLE FUNCTIONING? I’m digging a tunnel that goes back to when Shrek was in theaters 2001 What bliss Even as babies we got so hopped up on war Margie’s dad with his arms white with bandage Boys in the cafeteria chanting SADDAM INSANE SADDAM INSANE SADDAM INSANE HOW MUCH DISTRESS DO YOUR OBSESSIVE THOUGHTS CAUSE YOU? what ill will lies in my belly my whole body turning against me with tremors and flashes I am capable of the outdoors trees don’t always bother me HOW MUCH OF AN EFFORT DO YOU MAKE TO RESIST THE OBSESSIVE THOUGHTS? oh well i don't see me going anywhere anytime soon it’s all indoors or bust sleep until noon who will stop me besides my cat who needs fooding me i don't need no food nah i used to sure but that was different times weaker times less valiant times. now i stay indoors and the lightbulbs go out one by one soon it’ll be just dimness then darkness when the sun really gets lost if a man came into my house & told me how to treat my cat i’d say okay but do you even know her? & he wouldn't & that'd be that if i get outside my house will i take a mysterious illness & die okay & so what do you want me to do HOW MUCH TIME DO YOU SPEND PERFORMING COMPULSIVE BEHAVIORS? I am flush with the kinda joy you get when you think your neighbor is gonna kill you & then doesn't cold breath of release sirens in the street attending to some other body’s removal as mine just stoops & dodges I hallucinate washing machine sounds If my apartment had a washing machine then it would feel like home I'd keep it running & pulse to zipper on metal to button in drum to water filling then fleeing HOW FREQUENTLY DO YOU DO RITUALS? her being a Rasional woman before shee was so handled her now present condision all that know her can testafy to the truth shee yet remaines a miserabl creetr under a strang distemper & frensy uncapibl of any rasional action her distemper supernatural & no siknes of body but that some evil person had her thay swabbed her body HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF PREVENTED FROM PERFORMING YOUR COMPULSIONS? As a kid I thought can openers could kill me. Stupid, yeah? Now I know one day it’ll be god who kills me/ maybe through the hand of the billions/ maybe through stray virus/ maybe through sourceless fire/ a grief so big/ an angry mob/ my boss on a bad day/ me on a bad day/ falling trees/ no oxygen in the room/ a teen with a gun/ a horse’s hoof/ a cruel man’s hand/ the weight of a car/ a lover’s anger/ mouse shit/ no helmet/ cellular betrayal (that’s cancer, babe!)/ heart has no valves/ traffic sans pauses/ strange beasts/ mafioso/ tornado/ desert island/ sharp scream/ spontaneous combustion/ no way down the mountain/ runaway cart/ drawn & quartered/ collapsing cave/ sword blade/ poorly constructed ship/ hammer to the forehead/ second hand smoke complications/ an attack (physical, violent)/ necrotizing fascitis/ joke gone bullshit/ hiding spot discovery/ military of any country/ foodless pantry/ gunshot gunshot gunshot gunshot gunshot gunshot gunshot/ tall stairs/ shaky rock/ clog in the veins/ Craigslist exchange/ faulty wires/ asbestos exposure/ chunk in throat/ dog rabid off leash/ birth pain/ lane change/ poison in the blood/ serial killer on the run/ brain filled with holes/ curse of the phaoroh/ undiscovered allergy/ suicide prevention hotline/ mercury ingestion/ five foot long saw/ pit of snakes/ meteor shower/ excess water/ nonstop laughter Alyssandra Tobin's chapbook, PUT EYES ON ME NOT LIKE A CURSE, is forthcoming from Quarterly West in 2022. Her poetry will or does appear in New Ohio Review, Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, elsewhere. 12/2/2021 1 Comment Poetry by Paul Jackson Martin Cathrae CC
Survivor Part 1 1983 The year of the unkind fist. I was the Trailer Park Kid Living from tree fort to tree fort. Dodging my buddy’s older brother, Boo, whose bucked toothed sneer Was usually followed by a beating. I was rust colored corduroy And a bowl cut. I was He-man and Gobots, Birthday cake in the front yard. The world felt so distant, But some truth sucks At playing hide and seek. And we sucked at hiding The truth that our little trailer Housed a hurricane Nestled in my father’s clenched fist. And how he danced his hand Across my mothers courageous chin, Upturned saying “Go ahead mother fucker, I can take it.” And how this one moment, Definitely not the last one, But this one replayed itself Like a crashing song on repeat. A knuckle loop jaw line dance My heart skipping terrified beats A scared little kid The last one standing in this Cacophony of abusive musical chairs. I can’t tell you how many words I’ve written in an attempt To pull the meaning from what I saw. All the choked blood and broken teeth in the words. The language pulled out of the vein The dictionary of a still beating heart Saying I love you and I’m still here and Can’t you see me? Sometimes being a survivor And bearing witness are so similar, Twin sisters sharing misery With everyone within the blast radius. Sometimes being a survivor Is more than the pithy statements Carved into the backs of the living. Sometimes being a survivor Is looking at your own children And finding love somewhere So deep and so wide That you can toss all of those old memories in And hope they drown. Sometimes being a survivor is Accepting that the part of you that died that day Will never come back. Some part of me will always be 1983 The Trailer Park Kid. A part of me will never be more than a child My heart will always see things Through a child’s eyes And that makes it so hard sometimes. But I survived. Survivor Part 2 1983 My favorite superhero is the Hulk. I had been known to strip down to my underwear And growl at the elderly neighbors Flexing my child muscles. Intoning in what was probably A comical Cookie Monster voice That I am the Hulk. What they didn’t know is that I too have survived monsters. I survived colliding voices The wet sound of an open hand Across a defiant cheek The thunder of broken teeth Twinkling red porcelain chips In the bathroom sink. The sound that hair makes When it’s ripped away from the scalp Like a child pulled from its mothers reach. I lived with monsters. Then, when I crawled out of my skin And stared at a life That stretched like an empty hallway I, too, became a monster. No amount of growling Made it hurt less. I was surrounded by pain And hatred The son of the monster The son of the nightmare That jolted my mother from the few Fleeting hours of sleep she could muster Between shifts and second and third jobs. The four horsemen of poverty, hunger, loneliness, and grief Galloped by my bedside each morning When I rose to start the day. The leering faces of addictions And regrets And a worthlessness that cradled my head when I ended the day alone Or empty Or sad. But here’s the twist I never hated them enough to Not love them I never hated them at all. All I ever wanted was to be told That the monsters weren’t real But we know the truth. Now that the monster that never stayed Beneath my bed Has been laid beneath the ground And I see his face in Every mirror And in the eyes of my children I only feel love And grief And I miss him often. We are so much more Than every mistake we’ve ever made And surviving is More than making it out alive It’s found in our ability to find grace In forgiveness. I still roar sometimes It’s my way of saying hi old man I miss you. Paul Jackson is a lover and a fighter, hustling misery and poems out the backseat of a broken heart in Phoenixville, PA. He’s been conducting these verbal autopsies for the last 30 years in the quiet comfort of his own home, but now has decided to release them into the wild void. 12/2/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Danielle Cowan kelly bell photography CC
Body High Yo ‘08, can we get high and watch HGTV? Act like we Luxurious enough to love it or list it Just buy the best View in West Bubbafuck—or cop that stone place Some host called “quaint enough to be a summer home” Cause HGTV ain’t quaint enough to use cop outside a sentence about “community safety.” They watched it all through ‘05, his last Summer alive Spent spectating Geography that could redirect death or at least The sex worker asleep under our stairs, neighbors Loud-mouths mastering Mookie and Tina vibes—the first Niggas I saw Spike Name but not imagine. But you’re ‘08 so inside, we sleepin to Sounds of next door gay Bar-goers tentatively shooting 2 A.M. shots. And damn They ain’t even built the Whole Foods we Gotta walk through the projects to till 2010. With this fiancé she watches like claiming, decorating Aren’t about if but when. Sorry, bro but before this eddie hits lemme Get out the rest of this heavy shit... You know that dumb happy Natasha Beddingfield song? Released either right before or after you came around? Deadass thought she said “There’s no more life And the darkness is light and my body Cries. There’s only butterflies.” Never told anyone but I fucked with that Heavy. Maybe it’s because Titi Tiffany told me that he was up Somewhere sippin cherry Kool-Aid from a veritable chalice So much strawberry ice cream his nappy Curled baby girl used To beg for before Sticking her tongue back out so he could Remove the offending texture. And Titi Gladys with her Jehovah’s Witness joy Said I’d be able to see In Jehovah’s afterlife paradise. Little me even knew I wouldn’t want that But if we ain’t Banking on bodies to Balance out space... seems like we all blind. Aw shit I’m stoner self-aware, aren’t I? If I lost you I think it’s hitting. Danielle is a blind, Blackarican and queer poet Born and based in NYC. Her work has received an honorable mention in Causeway Lit’s Revolution Issue and was performed as part of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater‘s Block by Block project. 12/2/2021 1 Comment Poetry by Monica Smith Hart Øyvind Holmstad CC
Dark Matter Matters the story I tell my son to comfort us both Baby, everything-- every. single. thing. in our whole w i d e universe holds-together because of darkness. This thing that we think is super scary is just the universe’s glue. It’s true! Dark matter, the scientists call it. This dark matter doesn’t reflect or give off any light, so we can’t see it, no matter how hard we squint or how w i d e we open our eyes. No telescope or FLASHlight or microscope in the world will let us see it. Weird, right? We can’t touch it, we can’t see it, so we only know it’s there because of how it makes other things act. It’s kinda like the wind, like how a gust makes leaves shoot up off the ground into tiny little tornados, how plastic bags and shopping carts go on unscheduled flights, how the kite tries to get away from us and we cannot see what’s—pulling—at—it-- But, if we’re paying attention when the wind blows, then we might notice other things: like how the dog can catch smells in the air, tracing the path with her nose and her eyes closed. Like how water can ripple without being touched. Darkness works the same way, my darling. Dark matters. It lets us see what we otherwise miss, like stars and streetlights and lightning bugs. Like how bright neon green the alarm clock light is. Like how the straight-back chair somehow makes a funky-round shadow against the wall. So remember, my child: the dark matters, and we need not be afraid. Monica Smith Hart is an English professor living with her husband, son, and two rescued pit bulls in the Texas Panhandle. 12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Lynne Schmidt Dane CC
Maroon Dodge Ram with five bullet holes blasting through the driver’s side window. Call a tow truck in the morning peel the vehicle off the street once the body is cold in the morgue. Call it gang violence, talk about the people drinking champagne in the streets. Call it drug deals remind the public he was throwing heroin out of his window before the police arrived. Show the photos of the spiderwebs in the glass, get close enough you’re able to count the holes like a game of connect the dots. Ensure the detachment from human, include every detail of all the horrible things he did since he started dealing drugs at the age of thirteen. Show the holes in the glass. Be careful to not show the blood stains. Because if you do, you might have to tell the public he was human, too. The photos show the maroon truck, riddled with golf ball sized bullet holes. The photos don’t show how for the better part of two years, a neighbor looked in a parking spot to see if the truck was parked in the hopes of saying Hi, how was your day? Thank you for helping me. Lynne Schmidt is the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, and a mental health professional with a focus in trauma and healing. She is the winner of the 2021 The Poetry Question Chapbook Contest, 2020 New Women's Voices Contest, a 2020 Pushcart nominee, and a ten time Best of the Net nominee. Lynne is the author of the chapbooks, SexyTime (forthcoming 2022) Dead Dog Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2021), Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press, 2019) which was listed as one of the 100 Best Breakup Books of All Time by Book Authority, and On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West, 2020), which was featured on The Wardrobe's Best Dressed for PTSD Awareness Week. In 2012 they started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma around abortion. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans. 12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Kelly Dillahunt John Brighenti CC August, Dayton, Ohio three empty months and one terrible day passed and you asked me over for a beer. your living room was the same but the world had changed. maybe you were bored or drunk or wanted a fuck maybe you'd seen me out with someone new last week or you couldn't face the night alone after someone shot up our home. i was sunburned and puffy eyed and not particularly strong you were forging armor from domestic lager the cans lined up like soldiers. i knelt before you with vanilla lips and stained jeans like offerings i left them at your feet and mouthed wordless prayers we are alive. maybe you couldn't hear above the thudding of my heart but i didn't ask you to love me back. Off Linden I was thinking about that place where you used to screenprint, those old buildings, off Linden. We'd watch the sun go down out the wall of windows with the plants. The air in that studio smelled like warm dust and crayons Old wood. We'd get real high. There were so many colors up there, the spilled inks and stacks of t shirts Your red hair. You'd put on hip hop or podcasts and I always learned something new. You don't print t shirts any more, or live here, and that shop is in a whole other building across town now But that was a happy place, up there at nights stoned, hot shirts folded against me. Class (warfare) of Covid 19 You know that old saying you can take the girl out of the trailer park but it'll just track her the fuck back down? I don't know about you, but I'm real tired of running the socioeconomic poverty trap rat race anyway. Do not pass go; do not collect your welfare check. And it doesn't seem to matter that I've never seen a hard drug up close and in person because my neighbors have and that shit'll get you by proximity all the same the way we're dumped in here, cheek to jowl, in the trailer parks and the hollers and the goddamn west end, the poor and the poor bastard who can't stop, the have-nots. And they write us off, and hold us down, the people at the top of the ladder while they wax nostalgic about their hypothetical bootstraps and hand us down crumbs like they're chunks of gold and we should be grateful, groveling across the widening gaps of an unraveling safety net. And maybe it's a lesson I missed with my cut rate education, but where do I sign up for some of that trickle down privilege? Kelly Dillahunt is a queer former librarian and aspiring cat lady who grew up in a trailer park outside Dayton, Ohio. Now, she fixes houses and writes things. 12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Lee Hudspeth John Brighenti CC
Between Steps in Bozeman The hotel parking lot is a stark, black plane Efficient industrial buildings look down on it, stone-faced The big sky looks down also, and on my morning debut I am referring to the “big sky,” so treasured and adored It manifests its true big self today High above the fray Bigger than me Bigger than any of us Tolerant, on this blessed 74-degree day Other days, cold and biting Like the cuts we inflict on each other While insisting valiantly that we are right Instead, we are gusting We are whipping up a fury of fight-or-flight Hotel lobby—take a step Concrete swale—another step Tarmac—step... In the space between steps Tranquility escapes To... where? Into the sky above us? Into the pause between the footfalls? That calm is gone now, shattered No evidence remains Leaving, instead Recriminations, confusion, umbrage and self-defense Like a wild herd These emotions effortlessly jump the rickety fence of civility They land and don’t look back I do look back, then up, at the unblinking big sky... Another faltering step When I Align the Doors and Windows Exactly So When the windows and doors of my house are aligned exactly so And the wind blows from the west I hear it whistle and thrum upstairs Disembodied yet indomitable With no specific point of origin, constantly seeking its path It plucks me the way a finger plucks a guitar string Is this wind the intonation of God’s voice? Is it the penetrating manifestation of ineffability? I remember being lulled into this same daydream-like state of mind long ago in church Listening to the pastor’s lilting voice His actual words were not important The intensity of that experience came from his unflinching belief The certainty of his understanding was like the wind Unstoppable, demanding, hypnotizing Also comforting I wanted to yield to his words, to say, “Yes, you are right” I wanted to fall into the grace and forgiveness of his sermon It would have been so easy It would have absolved me of any responsibility I wavered then I’m still wavering to this day Why would I need someone else’s understanding to be my compass? I have my own passage, flawed as it may be I listen to the wind’s exhortation I write and rewrite my own sermon I align the doors and windows of my frail, short-lived house exactly so I let my voice slide, whisper and howl through the world The voices in the wind want to be heard Lee Hudspeth is a poet and nonfiction author living in Southern California. His debut, full-length poetry book Incandescent Visions was self-published in 2019. His haiku have appeared in Cold Moon Journal, Poetry Pea Journal, The Heron’s Nest, Akitsu Quarterly, Failed Haiku, Presence, Fireflies’ Light, Haiku Journal, and Stardust Haiku. He is currently working on a second poetry book. He tweets @LeeHuds and his author page is https://leehudspeth.com. 12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Julia Florek Turcan kelly bell photography CC
Atikokan Lullaby Blue karenin eyes blaze out - godless - over the old tenement building Rowhousing, whose grotto-crawling staircase shivers in the misty ice of dawn; where silhouettes of cigarette beggars stretch on into the blue wet light of new day; where young not-yet mothers bear down darkly to take in the brutality of brothers while white-knuckled fists take out ink blotted clumps of matted hair and raw staring secreted cherubs greedily cry out for more; where screaming sounds of electric sirens dispatch. But not for them. For them icy moan madness dilutes to dull thud, replacing Grim Touch with fetishes and cheap rum for pretty painted monsters who open legs like lips and roar. Julia Florek Turcan is a writer from the Northern Canadian village of Atikokan, ON, currently residing in Winnipeg. She has performed on local and national stages including the Winnipeg International Writers Festival and the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. Her poetry appears in Contemporary Verse 2, The Literary Review of Canada, antilang, Northern Appeal, and other generous publications. |
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