12/3/2022 0 Comments Poetry By Toby Grossman Judith Jackson CC
Amarok We drink sweat -licked beers, three of us. The boy with an axe for a father, the girl that grew into a deadly nightshade, and the child-woman with twig-pricked lips. The rehab has a strict substance abuse rule, but for a brief slice of fresh fruit, we are alive. Mouths shaped around arrows we sweet tip and toss. Targets a bit blurred by the alcohol but our aim still practiced from a lifetime of denial. My tongue gold pierced and silent, teeth-ivory fashioned into armor. Perhaps power is a matter of how much one doesn’t have to say to be known. Sometimes I forget how calloused irony-hewn hands can be and I rip off my skin hoping someone will caress the lantern-bone. I’ve broken most of my ribs that way. The axe that is the boy’s father wielded in the shadow of his palm like a cool weapon. The poison in the girl’s flower a velvet blue -blood. The twigs of the child-woman’s mouth sprouted glass leaves. After the short reprieve from pounded iron, we are once again, sculptures. Like this, empty bottles, we retreat into our lead pasts. And the wolves, they welcome us back, gladly. Toby Grossman is a poet exploring the inherent paradoxes in our absurd existence. She wrestles with scale differences between the smallness of our blue dot home and the largeness of human grief. She often writes through the lens of her experiences with mental illness and alienation. Her work has recently appeared in Kissing Dynamite and Feral Journal.
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12/3/2022 0 Comments Poetry By Erin Olson jon oropeza CC
Stick Puppets Such strange people, my parents, to have raised me, yet be like strangers, two-dimensional cardboard cutouts, stick puppets, caricatures, stiff performers with scripts and contracts. See them enter stage left, play their parts with painted-on faces There is the so good to see you face, the oh so sorry you haven’t been feeling well face, the I don’t know what you’re talking about, that’s not true, you shouldn’t feel that way, we’re just human, let’s keep things light face. We all pick up our scripts First, we discuss the weather, then I nod with interest as they talk about distant relatives who are still sharp, or had surgery, or are dead. Any direct addressing of how the other makes one feel will result in the I do not see you face. Of course, they were born and raised in an age when no one questioned being a cutout, whole families bobbing along with their masks, generations of stick puppets on the ferris wheel of time, smiling sickly from their cabins, round and round for centuries. To my knowledge, their living thoughts and feelings, a mystery, but what is scripted, etched in my very cells. And I am too corporeal, too three-dimensional, from the moment I was born, a well of colic and bile and joy and rapture. My heart lives in a cavern deep in feeling, I cannot flatten, and so, I was and am and always will be a threat, an ocean, a fire yearning to flood, to engulf, to consume, to love. Erin Olson is a licensed professional counselor and former teacher. She lives in southeastern Wisconsin with her husband, son, cat, and a burgeoning permaculture garden. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Neologism Poetry Journal, Amethyst Review, Last Leaves Magazine and Sky Island Journal. 12/3/2022 3 Comments Poetry By Masha Koyama Jerry Huddleston CC
WEST BEACH it was very small and they were paying too much for it, so I’d given them my card. they could have called. they could have left the city, moved to a quiet town around west beach where it’s still so cheap, slept in a cold bed together, made up the spare room for guests, shown visitors all the good places they had found, shared a good home and lived for what it was that was between them, but they didn’t know how to do that, so they stayed in their unit and hurt each other and were too tired from pain and grief to do anything except to bleed and cry and eventually leave for worse than what they had. a good door makes no noise when it closes but theirs was heavy and it banged. i was sad to see it. sad to see them in there. then again nobody seems very happy up in west beach, maybe because they are all stuck to a mistake, and nobody told them that you carry everything with you and wherever you go there’s the world again, there it is. Masha Koyama is a writer and editor from the suburbs of Toronto. 12/3/2022 1 Comment Poetry By Kika Dorsey Ron Gilbert CC
Dreaming I’ve not read the news in two days so I am dreaming about lakes so cold I can’t swim in them, and my father beckons to me on shore, and it is dark. I am dreaming of a hybrid car I think I own but have to return after I try to seduce the driver, who is a veteran and crippled from a war. I do not know what war. It could be the one in Ukraine, or Ethiopia, or Yemen, and all I know is how breathing comes so easily, like the way the injured man slides his leg and it arcs before planting like the curve of a planet, and I realize I don’t own the car so I will return it, and my father reaches out for me and touches my hand, saying, swim, and I’m looking at the cold water and bracing myself, holding my breath and pulling my hair off my face, the wet strands from my cold sweat, the water dark with ripples of white lines in the moonlight, my father asking from me what is not impossible but difficult, the wars trudging forward, the motors of the world spent on oil I will never own, and I with my broken hesitation to plunge into the place where the light is darkest. I lift my head when I hear words that have not been written while noticing the crickets stopped singing this late autumn day, have buried pupa underground where they sing in their sleep. Prayer I haven’t a way to climb past the dry seasons into your arms, the way they rain and drop from heavens that never answered my questions. The pond is sinking like the nights, and the breath of a day lends wind to the blackbird wings, while my hands are empty of joy and all I thought was mine. You are behind me like a twisted road and reach before me like an invisible season, one born out of the grace of burying, of folded wings and autumn’s waning light. In my shadow I sometimes see you, how you etch me with the dark. Behind me is yellow corn, before me a harvest to feed the cattle, a slaughter in November, a child a child no more, a place where her first words get lost in the clatter of all that followed them. I wonder what their sound was, whether you lent them your accent, your foreign lilt, your remnant from a home we all see as other, outside the dry ditch, the prairie aster, our bones, someplace of origin’s spoken need. Sometimes now I hear how what you have left behind is full of asking, both questions and demands, or more like a pleading to not move the target or lock the door, to cool this hot planet so that we don’t burn, to come to us in the silence. Kika Dorsey's work has been published in numerous journals and books, including The Comstock Review, Cleaver Magazine, The Denver Quarterly, The California Quarterly, The Columbia Review, Narrative Northeast, among many others. Dorsey has published a chapbook of poetry, Beside Herself (Flutter Press, 2010) and three full-length collections, Rust, Coming Up for Air. (Word Tech Editions, 2016, 2018), and Occupied: Vienna is a Broken Man and Daughter of Hunger (Pinyon Publishing, 2020), winner of the Colorado Authors’ League Award. Dorsey has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times. She has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Washington in Seattle and currently teach composition, creative writing, and poetry at Front Range Community College and the University of Colorado. 12/3/2022 2 Comments Poetry By Christopher McCormick Øyvind Holmstad CC
Theory of Dust Each breath fills my lungs with dust stars have spewed in their coughing fits. To write a theory of dust I flattened myself against the sidewalk in front of my house, palms skyward and I’ll tell you, I could feel the Earth forgetting us one acre at a time. It reminded me that my mother’s first act of love was to expel me into this life a star herself collapsing into lidocaine and general anesthesia the loving gravity of the epidural. On some nights darkness pantomimes around my bed while behind my eyes I recreate the tranquil eons before light crowned us wondering what it’s like to love dirt as only roots do. Today, my mother tells me I’ll know my tomatoes are ripe by the way they leap from the vine into my hand. How they need to be held by something they don’t understand. The Music of Leaving Each moment is a birth a fresh tear in the screen door left swinging on a rushlit afternoon. Creaking wood may signify an ending, the moment a flame burns through its oxygen and fades. Whoever passes through is forgotten, then, in a singing of hinges, a rasp of air. Maybe someone who’s gone is remembered only by the trees whose gaze makes hairs of the arms straighten like a chill wind whispering through browned Autumn grasses. Maybe there is no good way to record the music of leaving, whose instruments are a gloaming sky and the faithful progress of rust. Christopher McCormick is an MFA in creative writing candidate at Bowling Green State University where he teaches English and is an assistant editor for the Mid-American Review. His work has appeared in The Mill and Working Artist Collective. When not reading or writing, he enjoys cooking for his friends and walking in the woods. 12/3/2022 1 Comment Poetry By Kierstin Sieser robin_ottawa CC
Love’s Poem I could say it plainly, but love leaves the flatlands where the sun is constant. It builds tunnels under the mountains somewhere far away. People think love likes the light, but it prefers the earth and the blood. It likes the dampness of decomposition. The small sticky sounds of birth through the soil. It snuggles closely with death turning the pins and needles to lava, filling all the empty wind with an unmade bed of intestine and laddered rib cage. Love dreams the dreams of a baby fox playing in a sand dune. Love dreams the dreams of a vulture wearing its Sunday best and waiting for the cars to pass by. Love dreams the dreams of a small child waking in the night to a crescent moon of warm milk. Love hides the silence, kisses muscle and root and vomits the bones of a mouse. Love walks the halls wailing and tangled in sinew, imagines breath and the mouse runs away. Love is the child with a vulture on its shoulder, fox fur draped around its neck. Love repeats the names and draws the faces with the tip of a match. Love listens for the rain, laying in the darkness. I could say it plainly, but love leaves the flatlands where the sun is constant. Kierstin Sieser is a singer-songwriter/music producer, poet and painter. She releases music with her band Tiny Ocean and as a solo artist. She published a Chapbook of art and poetry, Creation Myths in 2021. She lives in Connecticut with her son and two dogs and works for a humanitarian organization. 12/3/2022 0 Comments Poetry By Jane Zwart Alex O'Neal CC
Repetition Compulsion In some things we are proof against our own hands; people can’t tickle themselves, for one. You either prod another body for its hidden release, the trigger that undoes composure, or you’re the one with skittish skin, with flesh goaded by caress. I must have believed loss was the same. I must have thought fates never panicked. I didn’t know, then, that grief’s architects are fair game for becoming its bereft. You ask how I broke my fingers. Easy: I snatched joy from my own grasp. Little Mettle A girl who loves wolves, when her father leaves, howls after his truck turning the corner. My son comes home for his mittens when she asks him to hold the toad she finds. Together these kids jump and crumple on a trampoline, together admire the fuschia dripping quinceañera gowns. We need our courage for different things. I use mine to talk with the other mothers: the wolf-tamer, elegant in overalls; the beauty with a sunroom sewing-machine; a goddess who back-slaps a grape from her baby’s gasp, honeycomb inked up her arms. We stand in each other’s driveways some dusks, withstanding bees drawn to wine and popsicle. I do not know whether the others would call it brave, but sometimes we stay until dark, withstanding the kids’ abandon, steeled for their shrills of glee or broken skin. Jane Zwart's poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, and Ploughshares, as well as other journals and magazines. 12/3/2022 0 Comments Poetry By Jeff Finlin Lise1011 CC
The Becoming And all this movement collapses Like a fallen flame Quiet and Descrete as a silent lover That clings to you alone in the night As a memory Fading To Become An invisable earth within To be rested in Cradled and Loved Beyond the hum that is emotion- need And body Beyond the sweetness of sound draped in dreams Beyond the wear and tear of metal on metal That is A lifetime of boiling blood To grieve itself impermanent like the dying of ones mother Facing upward Under the endless sky in the fall expressing the sugar maples Exploding in color And countless time We must trade For the deal That is the day HARRISON I saw the Toothless Eyeless Wrinkled Writer Man corroding like a piece of rotten meat Cigarette dangling Smiling Sitting at the kitchen table Dreaming of fish lichen And birds And the openness of land Wine and words a hogshead to make Head cheese from Becoming it all I realized he’d left it all on the paper And I thought to myself Shit motherfucker . . . You . . . Yes, you . . . You’re still carrying something around Something you need to put down Maybe it’s that gnawing feeling in my gut and heart The explosion of breath and heart that kept happening Clogging the catch Under the front walk Barking a fathers fear I still had something to lose Something to gain Something to get Something to hang on to A dream poisoning the river And the fish were frozen In the mercury meld Of hanging on Waiting for the thaw Maybe his ounce of smoldering hope Accepting the hopeless With its ratty ass devil eyes Dawning a sunset hat Made of perfection and Talking of thunder coyotes fame or fortune Or a grass greener than…. the brown chunk of winter inside me backstroking through my blood if freedom is to come I have to leave nothing for the birds at the landfill but teeth and bones not a word unwritten unspoken undreamed and Maybe God Will pluck my eyeballs for a new birth In the next life Like a raven in the Borders So I can truly live again Born in Cleveland Ohio, Songwriter and writer Jeff Finlin was born the grandson of Irish railroad workers (who seemed to be in the habit of leaping from trains.) Having released numerous records to critical acclaim around the world, the latest of which is Soul on The Line . His Song “Sugar Blue” was featured in The Cameron Crowe classic film-----“Elizabethtown.” The Chicago Sun Times writes of Jeff Finlin--- “Finlin writes with the minimalist grit of Sam Shepard and Raymond Carver. Tune in for an elusive magic.” Jeff has written two books of poetry and prose and a book on yoga and recovery. His latest book, Lightbox, is out now. He has written extensively for the East Nashville Magazine and been published nationally in American Songwriter, Elephant Journal, Huffington Post as well as the other online rags. 12/3/2022 1 Comment Poetry By Laura Stamps Peter Organisciak CC
Red Wagon In the mailbox today. Another postcard. Oh, this is fun! Writing postcards to herself. Mailing them. Receiving one or two every week. These postcards she writes to herself. And the messages they contain. Her dreams. Ideas. Observations. What she wants. What she’s thinking about. What she wants to remember. Anything. Everything. Yes. This mail. These postcards. They make her smile. Just seeing one. Yes. They do that for her. And it doesn’t matter. That she’s the sender. That she’s the receiver. Doesn’t matter. None of it. None. She reaches into a decorative box on her desk. Selects a blank postcard. “Dear Elaine,” she writes to herself. “Don’t forget this. Don’t. This image. I want to remember this. What I saw today. A chilly morning. Driving to work. And there. A young man. Maybe sixteen or so. On the sidewalk. Pulling a red wagon. Like a child’s wagon. His cargo? Three tiny Chihuahuas. Bundled in warm sweaters. Sitting quietly. Serenely. In their red wagon. Enjoying the ride. The bright sunshine. The blue sky. The chilly air. And this young man. Out for a morning walk with his dogs. This image. It makes me smile. Just thinking about it. The four of them. Yes. There is still joy. Here. To be found. In this world. Plenty. Don’t forget this. Don’t. This image. There is joy.” Laura Stamps loves to play with words and create experimental forms for her fiction and prose poetry. Author of 48 novels, novellas, short story collections, and poetry books. Most recently: CAT MANIA (Alien Buddha Press 2021), DOG DAZED (Kittyfeather Press 2022), and THE GOOD DOG (Prolific Pulse Press 2023). Winner of the Muses Prize. Recipient of a Pulitzer Prize nomination and 7 Pushcart Prize nominations. 12/3/2022 0 Comments Poetry By Kris Spencer Jerry Huddleston CC
Three Scenes from the Making of a Revisionist Western He drinks alone. Says, The world isn't a bad place, it's just big. Working on the script, he sits on the hotel bed throwing playing cards at his reflection. Writes in the margin: We all run out of time in the end. A Presbyterian town thrown together with raw lumber. It takes three weeks to build. The unfinished front of a cotton mill stands blond against the iron-dark mountain. Cattle lift their heads at the sound of horses ridden hard down gullies and off through a river. One night, the snow falls so heavily it is like church music. In the restaurant, there are fresh flowers on the pianola. The actor draws white and opens with his queen’s pawn. Still wearing his duster, he eats cowboy food as he moves the pieces. I don’t think. Usually, I don’t think; I hold it all in and then act. In the final frame, he stands there in the doorway one arm holding the other. Kris Spencer is a teacher and writer living in London. He has a growing international reputation, with poems published in the US, UK, Eire, Europe, SE Asia and Australia. His first collection, Life Drawing, is published by Kelsay Books with a due date for release in early 2023. |
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