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12/13/2023 Poetry By Jess Gagne Shawn Nystrand CC
tritina for my friend who keeps buying fentanyl for Katie and Nick When someone you love has briefly died four times in the past six months, they say: detach with love. Sometimes it’s hard to make the call, but you’ll know it’s time to detach with love when love just isn’t cutting it, when you’re not saving anyone’s life with your love, when your love isn’t changing anything or helping or fixing everything, when love starts to feel worthless – “Careful, before love loses all meaning forever,” you’re told, “detach with love.” When it feels easier to break up with love itself than with that person who just keeps trying to die, and they can’t help it, break up, instead, with the idea of being able to rescue someone from anything other than love. They say it’s the hardest thing, to care about someone enough to detach. Forgive me if I seem detached, if we don’t talk – I don’t want to say anything other than “I love you.” fantasy with the cure for cancer (ghost ghazal) Instead of dying, my mother runs marathons, chasing the orange splash of her spark bird through the trumpet vine in search of one more autumn not a ghost. In her poem, she swims the white apple blossoms of the orchard until she climbs out of the flowering pool in search of the man she knows is on the moon: a maybe-ghost. In my grandparents’ living room, I try on her wedding dress and take Polaroids, and she is there to shake the frame until I appear, white, her finger in the corner a ghost. In the mirror not covered with black cloth, I grow into the yellowing lace. She says, “There’s no harm in believing that I’ll live to see my grandchildren,” and I dream her ghost. In the dream, everyone else dies instead. Wet with guilt, I mourn; will not wake until she finds me, and I tell her, trembling with forbidden relief: everyone we know is now a ghost. In both worlds, my mother refills the birdfeeder. She wreathes olive branches, eucalyptus, yellow jessamine, and the mist on the morning glory into a gift from her ghost. Jess Gagne (she/her) is a Montessori educator and poet from Connecticut who is currently living, teaching, and writing in Brooklyn. She is an Events Associate at Brooklyn Poets and a member of the Sweet Action Poetry Collective who is working on keeping all her plants alive, mastering the art of the stationary bicycle, reading more non-fiction, and observing a new small detail about the world each day. You can follow her on Instagram @infinitejess__ 12/11/2023 Poetry By Emma McCoy Tristan Loper CC
Cast and filter for Alaska John we are fishing, him and i, and speaking first-born tongues. what i see is fractured. the glint of water on rock, the splayed legs of a mosquito, the silver flashing underbelly of river-rapid salmon and their netting scars. it is past noon and the fish-blood is drying on the bank in augury patterns. some priest of another language might read them, but i am limited to silver salmon-scars and the way he casts the gossamer line. he tells me, “this is how i hook a fish.” i tell him, “this is how i write a poem.” we both mean the same thing. Emma McCoy (B.A. Literature) is a poet and author trying her very best. She is the Assistant Editor of Last Syllable and a poetry reader for Whale Road Review and Minison Project. She’s the author of “In Case I Live Forever” (Alien Buddha Press 2022), and has been nominated for the Best of the Net 2024. She has work published in various spots and loves to make banana bread. Catch her on Twitter: @poetrybyemma Instagram: @emmawritesnreads 12/11/2023 Poetry By Raphael Emmae Flickr CC
Summer, 2019 For L Let this be a poem in which the speaker makes it out alive. Let this be a prayer to the god of Monster Energy and guitar solos and winged eyeliner and strawberry yogurt and Robert Smith and paperbacks and night streets hazy with crickets’ breaths. I take polaroids of mud splattered Converse and hang them next to dried basil flowers and inhale the gas station horizon’s purple sunset yawn and the sweat dripping from clouds and the asphalt pebbles beneath my Sharpie marked soles. Tonight we eat popsicles by the convenience store until our tongues turn blue. Tonight we count planes like stars and watch a raccoon painted golden by the streetlight dive into a trash can. Tonight we are drenched in neon light. Tonight the moon is behind clouds, and tonight you tell me we are meant for great things and I believe you are, but all I am meant for tonight are rain drops twinkling by my ears like the littlest birds and lightning sparking in a lightbulb spinning in the science lab microwave and the overgrown pool behind blue fences where I pretend I am on top of Mount Olympus or searching for sharks by Catalina Island or strolling down a street in Edinburgh-- Tonight is the prayer we walk into as dew drops twinkle on grass. The first fall leaves blush. Raphael Emmae (they/them) is an Asian artist and writer. They’re currently a junior at Interlochen Arts Academy, where they major in creative writing. They like safety pins and other shiny objects. Find them on Twitter @chlorinecrow. 12/11/2023 Poetry By Stella Gleitsman JenavieveMarie CC
Crow The first ring I got was a crow’s skull from my mother it had, meaning it was, not old enough to be crumbling wearing it, I waited for the day it stuck to me and I was bird too half-flighting and precise open to wind red and courage bent like a tree root constantly showing my skeleton I wore it all the time I liked how it jutted I really enjoyed how it hurt as I typed as I played mercy and fawned over my day it made me feel very unsoft historied like I fell here straight from a mountain from a basket of cords traded in a gray bespoke market where women held a baby in their heads it made me feel decadent my feet liked the rhythm if I could’ve been born anything else, I would’ve liked to have been born a collar bone I would have liked to be a flat penny there is no day that comes to me where I am not at odds with my blanket my eyeliner makes me feel octagonal, crow I layer it against the ridge of my eye to become more under-earthly it is justified to be angular it is correct to be jagged to deplete rivers only crack only one long planet of edge Notebook, Guitar, Unicorn Key-Chain Please / Pleo / Cleo / Pluto / Maybe / Mercy My rack of Note paper Black and pink like my hiccups Killed in a simple move Over a winter That made sway Hid me in hay I spilt everything Down those rhino milks The paper my only Community that day Wafting me with sand Prayer sand Tomato bead Calling me beautiful Saying I’m sorry Heart / Rock / Bastion My guitar That buried crosses in my Yard. That lifted me out of Fucking hell. My guitar, A sighing maybe A goganol might. A goblin golfing course Running at me Bruising me Like It makes me mighty It controls me My withholding island Princess / Horse love / Horse blood / Pillow girl Groomed and purring So femme and glory god My furry woman I wear double tooth So sparkly and wretcher Wrestler insight Unicorn key She makes me so kind She makes me so kind We marry each other Stella Gleitsman (they/she/he) is a poet and artist from the Lower East Side of New York. They make zines and artist books. 12/11/2023 Poetry By John Bennett Chris Bee CC
To An Artist, Dying Young Stay longer with us, your light is so fair. Heaven can wait; you’re not needed there. Keep the candle of vision bright. You must be aware: a warm light, like yours won’t be found elsewhere. Stay, melt the frost around our frozen souls, until these shivering regrets release their hold. John Bennett is a graduate student studying psychology. His literary and philosophical influences include classical Greek theater, Rimbaud, Gide, and Nietzsche. John is an Army combat veteran, having served five deployments. His poetry has appeared in Zenith literary magazine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and Words & Whispers. John is on Twitter @JohnBen46646181, and Instagram @johntbennett1. 12/11/2023 Poetry By Gabriel Pulido Shawn Nystrand CC
Queer Heaven My friend Jack and I are talking about heaven and hell. and how I’m going to heaven. Naturally. Except he doesn’t believe me. Someone convinced him of our hell bound, long ago. But I insist, and don’t our visions begin with our desires? If someone believes that Rihanna’s umbrella, queer and trans people, sexually liberated people, are to go to hell then you better believe I chose to dream us sacred and worship every bone of our body. This morning Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love of All crescendos until my body unbraids itself from my cloud. I am greeted by a sky of queer people, everywhere I go, all the time, we are here. The days of being the only one are far behind us. An orchestra of Mariah Carey’s whistle notes welcome me into every room I float to. what a time to be dead and breathing. In heaven there are no pearly gates, all migration is welcomed, here, bridges extend themselves so your back does not have to. Feminist theory, poems, and answered prayers, Oh My Gloria Anzaldua. Here, we are all royal. Everyone gets a piece of Cady Heron’s crown. Hell, take the entire thing, wear it till the rhinestones fall off. Drip, drip, spill off tiny stones on divine souls. In heaven, there will be drag. All costumes are yours for the wearing. Ariana Grande was right, god is a woman. Sasha Colby is indeed god. What a time to be dead and breathing. Drag sanctuaries are unmatched, Alonya Chest makes shows a home You go in there and you feel, you feel 100% right for being gay. Do you remember on pose, when Angel got her red heels, The joy of finally being seen? In heaven, we all heal. Receive the toys, and proms, and lives our younger selves desperately needed. Finally, the category is love. I have fallen Dangerously in Love, Crazy in Love, Love on Top, Drunk in Love Still, no Love Drought. All I can say is, I love us deep, deep, deep, deep. To be free means to entangle yourself with love, and dare say that this time freedom will be glorious. By no means am I always right, but I mean everything that I write. Queer and trans Mexicano with a pen, every day in this Joteria ass heaven, I practice my craft and open my heart, out in the open, like glitter and lightening poems on prayers, prayers on poems. Breathe. Feel the future, it is so abundant. See the past, it no longer haunts us. Taste the present, it is finally a gift for us. Unwrap your holy and marvel. Gabriel Pulido (@gabrielpuede) was born and raised in Sacramento, California, and first became involved with creative writing in the youth poetry slam scene. Gabriel centers on stories of joy, life, resilience, and everything in between. Gabriel has been published in Tendon Magazine and Culture Strike. Currently, Gabriel is a doctoral candidate in Higher Education (with a double minor in African American and Diaspora Studies & Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) at Pennsylvania State University. 12/4/2023 Poetry By Jessica Bell Nicholas_T CC
on monstrosity i take a class my last year of college about monstrous texts |||||| the root of monster is terata meaning both monstrous and marvelous, is used in place of words like deformity ||| deviant |||||| to make a monstrous text you stitch it together, build a body of other bodies, like frankenstein’s monster / my grandmother tried to teach me to sew when i was little ||| she’d hold up needles and run thread through their eyes, stitch together tears in pillow cases and my grandfather’s work shirts, replace buttons | my professor told us that, technically, the bible is a monstrous text made of psalms and teachings || monstrare means to teach, to demonstrate || i’m not much for sewing \ made a shitty stuffed elephant once, for my uncle, with pittsburgh steelers fabric because \ that’s \ his team || and i’m / his | niece ||| to make a monstrous text you’ve got to disorder the narrative ||| break it |||||||||||| stitch it together ||| my grandfather was a diabetic \ kind of monster || what is a monster? unpredictable, uncontrollable; || teaches us something about fear ||| i learned fear watching him stick his fingers with needles to measure the insulin in his blood, how much more he needed or how much less ||| a body stitched \ together of little cells, little lives in his blood || we read dracula and i think about the essence of all the bodies in the vampire’s, a monster in a monstrous text |||| eating, consuming // becoming those around him ||| my grandfather ate up my uncle’s innocence as a boy ||| taught him how to drink | mostly jim beam and mountain dew || told him he should fuck and never love ||||| ate up my mother’s /// my brothers’ || my grandmother’s |||||||| ate up mine the boiling of urine is the first smell to hit the mortician’s nostrils. great, shallow lakes of yellow, filthy liquid simmering inside a bowl of pelvic bones. you liked to joke about the air freshener in the bathroom off the hallway when our family gathered for the holidays. make sure the plug-in is on, i don’t wanna be smellin’ that shit, you would say after thanksgiving dinner, your eyes glassy and glazed over with marijuana-induced ballerina pink. when your son, my uncle, would come strolling out, a bear-paw hand rubbing the roundness of his beer belly you’d roll your eyes, mutter aw, hell, under your breath. i have heard and read of the scent of burnt hair and skin and deep-fried fat, but never of the excrement. the piss and shit of a man seem to me like no one else’s business, but i am left with nothing but the horror of knowing a boy i went to high school with, who once grabbed my ass in a hallway between classes, who inherited the only funeral home in our hometown from his father, knows what this by-product of you smells like. let me be clear; i do not envy him. it could be said that you were full of piss and vinegar and used-up motor oil. it could be said that in death there was a foulness about you that preceded your bitterness in life. it could even be said that these things were, in some ways, things to love. what i mean to tell you is here i am, on a loveseat, smelling of dog hair and mud, and wishing, for all the ways you ground yourself down on every nerve i’ve ever had i would have rather held myself out before the boy mortician’s nose like the traffic guard of your dying, slowing down this life violation; like the water-wrinkled prune of a child’s extended palm, fresh from the bowels of a white, porcelain tub. Jessica Bell (she/her) is an emerging writer currently living in Southwest Virginia with her partner and their five pets. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University and is interested in hybrid forms that explore themes of grief, addiction, and family inheritance. In her free time, she can often be found by the river reading any one of Sarah J. Maas’ fantasy novels. 12/4/2023 Poetry By Whitney Vale James Loesch CC
The Sunken Road “Who , if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’ hierarchies?” Rainer Marie Rilke I am haunted by what I do not know of your dying. Do you hear my loneliness, the dove in my heart do you hear death bite into my age do you hear the web of life falling? As you lay dying, a hospital bed became your last ship: In your living room, you asked, “is that for me” when answered yes, you wept. Were those your last words? (No one can tell me.) Tucked around your curled body, the sheet caught each chambered sound. Morphine increased heartbeat decreased. I arrived after your passing after your last dialogue with the air with the flame with the earth with the oceans. Death came around the mountain, driving 6 white horses, she carried you down a sunken road They all came to greet you (hallelujah) Yes, they all came (hallelujah) I am not the same. I sang the old song, the old tune to you and I laughed with you again. Here I am, begging for that thing which wounds: a charm of words to ring the white throat of the page. Whitney Vale, MFA Creative Nonfiction from Ashland University, has essays in Entropy, The Rumpus, Essay Daily, and The Black Fork Review, Poetry includes a chapbook, Journey with the Ferryman (Finishing Line Press) and poems in Gyroscope Review: The Crone Issue, Harpy Hybrid Review, Prospectus: A Literary Offering, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Quartet, RockPaperPoem, and Crab Creek Review. A short story is included in The 2023 Writers Block Anthology (Hydra) and an essay in the newly released anthology, Awakenings: Stories of Bodies and Consciousness (ELJ Editions.) She has been a finalist for the Joy Harjo award, Barry Lopez award, and Minerva Rising’s memoir award. 12/4/2023 Poetry By Maria Connour Chris Bee CC
Prayer for the Health of a Child My older brother is expecting a baby. So why am I being so mean? The baby is coming in April, But it doesn’t matter to me. My mother is disappointed in me, She says I am being rude. Rude to my brother, rude to his wife, I am being very bitter and I don’t totally know why. My little brother does not mind that his older brother is having a baby. So why does it bother me so much? No, mom, I don’t want to see the ultrasounds, I don’t care if you think they're cute. My older brother cannot take care of himself, I think, and neither can his wife. A baby is a new human being. They will not be able to take care of a new human being. I am the only one who seems to be upset about this. My older brother is having a baby. So why am I being so mean? If a baby is born and my brother is old enough to be a parent, I am really old too. My mother will be a grandmother which means she is closer to death. I don’t want her to ever die. My mother will pay a lot of attention to this baby. Which means she will pay less attention to me. I still need her attention! I feel like my clothes are too small. I will not get rid of them. Maybe if I keep wearing them, my childhood will be not yet gone. If this baby is born and my jeans are too small then my childhood is over and it sucked. Why didn’t I get one like everyone else did? Why now, is this baby going to get a good childhood, the one I didn’t have? I want a new childhood. I want a do over. I had a dream that my brother’s wife miscarried and it was my fault. I guess I hope this baby has a better childhood than mine. I guess I hope this baby is happy and healthy. God, please let this baby be healthy. When I Get Like This I cannot describe the ache I get when I think of this. When I get like this, I want to take off all my clothes. I want to lay on the floor. I want to start with my face and dig my nails into my cheeks. From there, I pull downwards, ripping my skin off. I continue, carnally tearing every inch of my flesh off of me. I feel the need to rid myself of me. When I have no skin left, I go for my organs. I dig my fingers into them all and crush them like pomegranates, Except for my heart, which I take a bite out of. I need to know what is in my heart. The blood seeps down my chin. I take my bones and whittle them into knives, with which I stab my eyes out, Oedipus style. There is nothing I want to see anyway. That is what the ache feels like. In actuality, I will shower, multiple times a day, in an effort to scrub all of myself off of myself. This is what it feels like when I get like this. Little Brother When I am four my brother is born and I do not care except for how it will affect me. To a child unaware of the worlds wonders, A baby boy born is just a nuisance. When I am eight, my brother is four. Watch your brother mother says. Am I my brother's keeper? I ask the one in charge. When I am not watching, My brother rides his bike downhill and crashes. This is the first time I remember empathy. When I am twelve, my brother is eight. He is wild, untameable, eager to climb, prone to fall. When my mother leaves a candle on the table watch your brother she says to me. When he gets burnt, there is no one to blame but myself. When I am four my brother is born and in what is one of the first habits of Undiagnosed Obsessive Compulsive, I get out of bed to watch him sleep. I watch to make sure he’s breathing. I get up how many times in the middle of the night to make sure. The ups and downs, the ins and outs, the exhales and inhales. During the day, I am reckless, juvenile, and unassuming to this tiny human being, But at night I watch to make sure he is still breathing. While he sleeps, I am able to see how vulnerable, glass, and china he is. He is so small. Maria Connour is a fourth year student at Ohio Northern University who is double majoring in both English Literature and Studio Arts. She works as the fiction editor for the Ohio Northern Literary Magazine, Polaris, which she had a short story published in her sophomore year. She also has had a poem published for Girls Right the World. She finds most of her inspiration writing about her two brothers and through studying religion, as she was raised in a Catholic home and attended a Catholic school for nine years. 12/4/2023 Poetry By Megan Feehley Chris Bee CC
Clot When I gift you my hands, wrapped in the Sunday paper I do not think of my dad’s hand over mine, his index finger shielding me from the trigger when we aimed that old revolver at a milk jug and he said this is the weight of it All I knew was the blood in my ears and the itch to use that metal hook to scrape the dirt out from under my nails. The memory of my mom’s drumming heart, which only ever said run is stuck somewhere behind my teeth when I let you feel around in the dark of my ribcage your knuckles snagging on tangles of veins and nerves It barely hurts when you, still reeling from it all, choke on the word love, while it leaks out of your eyes and onto the floor You have your own problems to worry about, like where all this blood came from and why there’s writing on the walls I hope that if I keep kissing you, if I don’t let you come up for air, if I dissect your heart while you sleep, that I’ll be forgiven for forgetting the weight of it Megan Feehley is a writer and poet from San Diego, CA. She has a BA in English and enjoys reading stories that feel like poking at exposed nerves. Megan's work can be seen in Spare Parts Literary Magazine, Black Hare Press, and Livina Press. |
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