12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Hattie Jean Hayes Øyvind Holmstad CC
The Morning in My Chest The coughing wakes me up. Though it wasn’t a sneeze, I bless myself. Prayer echoes off breath. Most days it’s fine. This morning: torsion from the get-go. I woke up wearing the bruise-gloved lung. Most days I don’t talk about it. Nobody knows about the redeye, six hours trying to decide: was my heart climbing out? Or burrowing deeper? Like grief, the moods of my body avoid explanation. To understand, you’d need to know, and who would I wish this into or over? It’s only a paper dress, paper blanket, a nurse’s smart fingers creasing my ribs and reminding me I’ll last longer than the pain. Most days I believe that. If you slide your hand up my shirt, I’ll let you feel the puffy muscle, swelling around my bones, asking for attention. I don’t need to use my hands. I can roll to my right, feel myself leaking out, rib-thin fissures. It’s been years since I could call my insides inside. You could call my body perfect. For me this is not a body at all, this is an underground bunker, soft lights simulating the sunrise. The sunrise. The sun rises and the first thing I think about is breathing. Devotion ‘21 My father, who aren’t in heaven, call me driving, talk reckless. I answer walk between train tracks. City rumble traffic folks cover confession. He’s never forgiven anyhow. I keep file of my loves. My friends, ledgered good or angry in heartmargin. Parents told me crazy, keeping friends anywhere, much less so close. Too close! The loyalty I got unbreathable. Choke any love not enough, leave empty space lungs to occupy. My holy mother raise me lifewrecker, ask “You ruin that boy again?” I’m wheat paste and Velcro is all. Impermanent bitch to get off. Mirrorshine talon blind everybody while I peel fingerpads unsticky. Imagine quicksand touch your shoulder before time realize soft ground. Maybe that’s not quite it. Eight years old scaled a mulberry sturdy, high as the house. Squirreled over from small pines to grab low branches, stuck up top til supper. Feet left the ground and forgot something gonna drag me down no matter I agreed. Yeah, that’s about where I am. Rooftop eyeline, denying any act of earth to save my sorry ass. Hattie Jean Hayes is a writer and comedian, originally from a small town in Missouri, who now lives in New York. Her work has appeared in Belletrist Magazine, The Conium Review, Hobart, HAD, and Not Deer Magazine. She is working on her first novel.
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12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Myna Wallin Øyvind Holmstad CC
The Veil Mania lifts you, a soft sea breeze filling your dress. On one shoulder, a dove. You stand, irresistible. Prospero appears, sleight of hand feats of the impossible. You hear stranger’s thoughts, time slows down as your thoughts speed up. Even when alone, you can hear voices, whispering. You can see beyond the veil-- grasp abstractions, like God, Truth, Happiness. Voilà, you are cunning as Cleopatra, willing to die by your own hand rather than relinquish your superior powers. Mania promises everything: success, allure, boundless energy, profound insights—sadly, soon lost like sandcastles in the tide. Now, it is worse than ever because you had a glimpse behind the veil. Eventually, nothing remains but murky confusion, dank vapour that sticks to you like a wet black cloak. Snake Eyes Crazed, lacking a sense of time direction. Time fluid, slowing down speeding up without warning. Some suicidal ideation but no specific plans. My brother sister visit from US universities, offering a hearty dose of pragmatism, pitying eyes darting away. She has no abnormalities in cognition, perception or speech. Depression, my nihilist passenger, offered drugs, persuading me nothing was worthwhile, especially existence—this Kafkaesque trial. She says her mother was ‘erratic, paranoid, and hysterical.’ My father’s brown eyes helpless, confused, placed his hope in the doctors, experts who medicated me into a near coma. The patient appeared well dressed and well groomed. In drama school one of my instructors took phenobarbital: We never knew what she would do or say. She’d lose her balance or fall asleep in the middle of a sentence. No evidence of psychomotor agitation. She wasn’t surprised when I wore my dead mother’s fox fur hat or sunglasses to class, doing my best Audrey Hepburn. But she did ask which drugs I was on. Myna Wallin is a Toronto, Ontario, author and editor. She has had three books published: a collection of poetry, A Thousand Profane Pieces (Tightrope Books, 2006) and a novel, Confessions of A Reluctant Cougar (Tightrope Books, 2010) followed by her second poetry book, Anatomy of An Injury (Inanna Publications, 2018). “Confessions” was longlisted for the ReLit Award in 2010. Myna’s poetry has won two honorable mentions: in 2009 she received an Honorable Mention in the CV2 2-Day Best Poem Prize, and in 2010 she also received an Honorable Mention in the Winston Collins/Descant Prize for Best Canadian Poem. Wallin’s poem was chosen for the League of Canadian Poets’ Poem-in-Your Pocket-Day, 2018. Recent poetry of Wallin’s appeared in Vallum Magazine, The Quarantine Review, Sledgehammer Literary Magazine, and the Miramichi Reader. Myna has a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto. Mynawallin.com 12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Sheila E. Murphy Martin Cathrae CC
From October Sequence 15/ She’s still Wise today she is Alert I ask a few things And the answer is Profound I have to sift To sort and scatter What to learn from what She says I know there’s no Disaster plan who needs The worst a singing feeling Sinks into the comfortable Couch I need a conch to hear What is beneath the language Offer me a path and I will Substitute the faculty Of sitting where I am To learn from her or other Where what is becomes removed From habit systems In the nearby dark 18/ Don’t warn me about Brittlebush the fragrance Hurts don’t let the ocotillo Change your magnet heart Be wild with me awhile I have been here am not From here what difference We are not alike let us ride bikes Let’s censure predators Who reproduce like weeds Let’s not be who they Show themselves to be As neighbors shrill their way Through walls I do not Want to hear I like a chilly Metronome prefer host cities To be hospitable and softly Far away that I may learn Myself and you and season My way forward to familiar Moments fretted with Untended melody Sheila E. Murphy. In 2020, Luna Bisonte Prods released Golden Milk. Murphy's book titled Reporting Live from You Know Where (2018) won the Hay(na)Ku Poetry Book Prize Competition from Meritage Press (U.S.A.) and xPress(ed) (Finland). Broken Sleep Books brought out the book As If To Tempt the Diatonic Marvel from the Ivory (2018). Murphy is the recipient of the Gertrude Stein Award for her book Letters to Unfinished J. (Green Integer Press, 2003). As an active collaborator, she has worked with Douglas Barbour on an extended poem called Continuations. 12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Moriah McStay Martin Cathrae CC
A reflection on Time, my father, and pie The last Time I saw you, they’d laid you on your bedroom floor, tube in your mouth, eyes slack, face half-covered by a blanket. You were so much smaller than you should have been. When I go back in the summers, I won't walk over the place you lay on the floor. What if I step on your face, or ribs, or thighs still lingering, breathless and invisible. The last Time before the last Time I saw you, I sat beside you on the bed. You ate pie and were happy about it. It was a quiet, summer afternoon. Nothing much was happening, except the Red Sox on TV, and the beach earlier, and pie. I think it was strawberry rhubarb. We eat it still, in the summer, even though you aren't there and it was your favorite. But strawberry rhubarb means July, and July doesn't end even if you aren't here to watch the waves. Moriah McStay is an MFA student at the University of Memphis, the Managing Editor of The Pinch Journal, and author of the novel Everything That Makes You (HarperCollins). 12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Grace Koon Tony Webster CC A Moment in Time The hum and the glow Of a bulb in the snow In a silent town Before you came around Warm light Against the stark white Frozen flittering glitter In the cold, dead of night Just a moment in time, When nothing mattered The fact still remains, But I try just the same Smoke Filled Room Sometimes see more clearly Through a smoke filled room Feel my heartbeat in my head As I pull the stitches out of a warm afternoon And while I'd rather think of later, I can only think of soon Because the record player is on repeat With its melancholy tune Grace Koon is a writer and musician from Northern Delaware. She is the songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist in her 3-piece alternative rock band, Grace Vonderkuhn. She enjoys spending time with her partner and her dog, both in nature and on the couch. 12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Douglas Richardson kelly bell photography CC Poem Poem can be Sixth Street under the green-leafed sycamores in June an autumn leaf somehow on the sidewalk Poem can be clouds over the western prairie changing the light of the landscape Poem can be the danse macabre that gets you through Death Valley Poem can be her mother’s child yet have the opposite personality Poem can be everything Poem can be nothing a wave through a rope but the rope not progressing Poem can be a boat on the lake morning in its wake memory in the wind for sailing Mona Lisa and Banksy Outside the Super 8 She recoils from the mark’s stare then smirks like the woman called Mona Lisa marijuana in her handbag event horizon in her eyes Her boyfriend orbits eccentrically reluctant hustler mismatched with the ancient profession yet something in the way he plies She calls him Banksy just for kicks Douglas Richardson is a poet and novelist who lives in Santa Ana, California, with his wife Jen and cat Wes. He is the founder of Weak Creature Press. He has written a fiction series, American Strays, which comprises the novellas The Corruption of Zachary R., Trust Fund Baby, and Kay Sutter Through the Ages. His poetry has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, Black Poppy Review, Cajun Mutt Press, Hobo Camp Review, Misfits’ Miscellany, The Nervous Breakdown, Straight Forward Poetry, Trouvaille Review, and Poetry Super Highway. In 2013, he won the Poetry Super Highway contest with his entry, “Notes from the Graveyard Shift.” 12/1/2021 1 Comment Poetry by Susan Vespoli kelly bell photography CC Little Queen of the Buck-Up The balloon was helium-filled, a jack-o-lantern smiling down from the ceiling of a Dollar Store, shimmery orange face in a sea of foil zeppelins. Molly’s legs dangled through holes of the metal cart I pushed, her chin up when she spotted it, pointed, please! and how could I not buy it for her? Little queen of the buck-up, the brush-it-off. Her visits with her mother ever rarer now. My daughter whom we’d picked up, who’d climbed in the backseat next to her carseat to snuggle, piggy-backed her into the store, then vacated into the aisles. The balloon was helium-filled, a jack-o-lantern. How could I not buy it for her? Little queen of the stiff upper lip, the dry eye, who watched her mom exit the car when we dropped her off, fingers clasping the ribbon. When in my yard, the string slipped; orb lifting into sky, going from moon-size, to pinprick, to gone, Molly cried and cried. Susan Vespoli writes from Phoenix, Arizona. Her work has been published in Rattle, Anti-Heroin Chic, Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, Mom Egg Review, and others. Her full-length collection about addiction in her family, Blame It on the Serpent, will be published by Finishing Line Press in January 2022. All proceeds will be donated to addiction support and recovery organizations. https://susanvespoli.com/ 12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Eileen Cleary Simon CC
DEAR GRIEF-LAKE, We failed to notice you circling our gates in the denning season. You breached the park, Dear Predator, where we latched our children between crisp greens and wooly sky, scraped the soil, showered your scent across the play-yard, Dear Raptor. Dear Innocence Eater, Slash Monger, Star Stealer, you approached in the way we tried to seal you out, telltale blue smoke of your breath vanishing. How happy we were, blind and unaware of you crouched there. MISSING Name: the song before “Time for supper.” Or “Wait till your father.” From: Mrs. Walsh’s second grade. The orchard where Daisy fetches sticks. Date: every day since. Age: that changes. We like to think that his bones lengthen, muscles strengthen and birthdays make him older every year. Eyes: shade of fawn or baby bear, a walking stick, or a baseball mitt. Hair: shag, combed on tiptoes in front of the mirror. Scars: not that we know. Complexion: we used to think, fair. And freckled. Clothing: never found. Eileen Cleary is the author of 'Child ward of the Commonwealth' (Main Street Rag Press, 2019), which received an honorable mention for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book Prize and ' 2 a.m. with Keats' (Nixes Mate, 2021). In addition, she co-edited the anthology ' Voices Amidst the Virus', the featured text at the 2021 Michigan State University Filmetry Festival. 12/1/2021 0 Comments Poetry by Jeannie E. Roberts onur bahcivancilar CC How Can We Know a Life Unless We’ve Lived It? As if bees in motion lake water quivers trembles atop the ceiling spreads reflective flutters around the room. Here your musings deepen enhance the array where letters launch dance across the page flow like the hover of wall ripples catch a wave. Like the lake how can we know a life unless we’ve lived it? The revelation of essence expands beneath the sparkle heightens upon the plunge awakens amid the voyage as it sways beside the camouflage of catfish swirls within a school of bass dives where the turtle turns and weeds weave near the barbels of carp billow in tempo with crustaceans’ antennae as the sturgeon surveys its benthos-- when its elongated body leaps appears airborne for unknown reasons splashes disseminates circles reverberates being. Here the journey diffuses radiates the dispersal of reflections a narrative you and only you can know and tell. Jeannie E. Roberts has authored seven books, five poetry collections and two illustrated children's books. Her newest collection, As If Labyrinth - Pandemic Inspired Poems, was released by Kelsay Books in April of 2021. She’s a nature enthusiast, a Best of the Net award nominee, and the poetry editor of the online literary magazine Halfway Down the Stairs. 12/1/2021 1 Comment Poetry by Julene Tripp Weaver Alex Holyoake CC Slow Growth Bombarded by men who could sit hours on a lake in a boat waiting for a fish to bite. Patience their virtue—we had few options. I was a girl in the country who had to save myself, mother had hands like scissors and a mouth with no words. Hoping for the best, after we moved, I followed the dream- rebellion—independence, I escaped into city parks, crushed pennies on railroad tracks. Nothing was right. I said no to unwanted advances, forged a path. My dreams grew and the clouds cleared—I had to get small before I could get big—dreams squashed too easy after Father died, but there is something about moving on despite all odds against. Miracles live on the horizon—a tiny seed I could have discarded, but I held it in my dark center, it had to germinate a long time, it was cheerless and mournful for years. With no other option but to press forward, it finally bloomed like an orchid that took forever, then stunned me with love. Julene Tripp Weaver is a writer and psychotherapist in Seattle, Washington. She has been sheltering in place since March 2020 when the states started restrictions, and writing about the pandemic weekly. Author of a chapbook and two full size poetry books, she worked in AIDS services for twenty-one years. Her third collection, truth be bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS, was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and won the Bisexual Poetry Award. Her book, No Father Can Save Her, is also an eBook. Find more of her writing at www.julenetrippweaver.com. |
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