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12/4/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Erica Anderson-Senter Chris Bee CC
THE SLOWING elegy for my Papa It only speeds up from here, I tell Danielle two weeks after you die. I mean it, too, this trite observation on death and dying; our conversations muffled under muted morning clouds in October. Let’s instead, you and I, remember mayflies breaking tension of green water—delicate legs still and quiet. You laid heavy in the hospital bed: your skin on your hands sank-- I don’t know how else to say it except your skin sank and sagged. You looked like you but a shadow you— lips dry and mouth slack. Wait, I wanted to talk about the lake. Mornings hushed with fog between coves: we’d sit, you and I, and watch the mayflies drunkenly bumble through this new life they’ve found: unaware of greedy fish mouths—nothing urgent, just breathing. You and I, pointing out birds, waiting for the day to invite us in. I’m bold enough to say that mornings belonged to us: in Tennessee, in Indiana, in the hospital the day you died. I remember your death-rattle, that forced squeal of spirit leaving, the way your chest jerked as it slowed. You slowed. The slowing. I put my hands on you—remember? Remember the morning you said our Tennessee lake lived because we called it our own? The vast expanse of green water as far as I could reach with my breath. I held you as you died-- I hold you now: dead—as far as I can reach. ONE SMALL LETTER TO A DEAD PAPA I told my friend Kelly about the owl I saw slipping from pine to pine across the alley—common variety Barred Owl: round head, large wingspan. Kelly said, was it good to see him again? And it was. It was good to see you all flight-feathers and elegant swoop and talon under a soft moon: October everywhere outside of my car. A red fox trotted alongside my black Honda while I drove home the night you died: a gentle-footed reminded that this, this way, straight ahead can be quiet and hopeful. How many signs, Papa, before I calm? Maybe the fast-flitted chickadee or ironweed in purple pursuit of the sun or small mountains with name like Wilder or Devil’s Loop or Pineville. Maybe these can remind me-- all aware and wide-eyed and searching—that clean water exists just outside of ourselves. Erica Anderson-Senter writes from Fort Wayne, IN. Her first full length collection of poetry, A Midwestern Poet's Incomplete Guide to Symbolism, was published by EastOver Press in 2021. Her work has also appeared in Midwest Gothic, Dialogist, and One Art. She has her MFA from Bennington College.
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12/4/2023 1 Comment Poetry By Lori D'Angelo Lee Coursey CC
Satisfaction In this world, have you found a life worth taking, making yours? And did you add a dash of salt, a pinch of awe, some cinnamon, maybe a pound of sugar, Or did you not need any sweeteners, was what you had enough? Lori D'Angelo is a grant recipient from the Elizabeth George Foundation and an alumna of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Recent work has appeared in Bullshit Lit, Idle Ink, JAKE, One Art Poetry Journal, and Wrong Turn Lit. Find her on Twitter @sclly21 or Instagram at lori.dangelo1. 12/4/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Maryann Hurtt Nic McPhee CC
Sweet Lush Tom is thirty-six years sober shares he is happy has learned the trick travels town to town trading sugar baby melons big and round and plump he wonders about our mean world when the possibility of one bite candy water joy waits for our tongues in clear-headed temperance Maryann Hurtt is retired after thirty years working as a hospice RN with before and after cook, bus girl, museum guide, teacher aide, and library assistant gigs. She is drawn to stories of resiliency in hard times. Once Upon a Tar Creek Mining for Voices (Turning Plow Press) came out in 2021. Tar Creek has been called “the worst environmental disaster no one has heard of.” She is passionate its stories are remembered and heeded. 12/4/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Skylar Camp Nic McPhee CC
My Comment History as a Woman Who Was Abused and Can’t Stop Herself From Telling Other Women They Deserve Better He’s an asshole He’s abusive You’re being abused You don’t deserve it Divorce him Leave him You shouldn’t have to ask him to be nice to you You shouldn’t have to tiptoe around his temper It’s not normal to be screamed at It’s not normal to be called names He should be your partner not your third child He should be your lover not your rapist Don’t stay with him for the kids Don’t let your kids think this is normal Life without him will be hard Life without him will be so much better You deserve kindness, safety, peace, happiness You deserve to be loved in a way that doesn’t hurt Sometimes Sometimes I think about the male lawyer who told me I should stay married to an Sometimes abusive man because I think about the if I left I would be male pastor who poor. taught me my body was a piece of gum The bills are that no one would late and the tires are want if it had been bald but no one yells chewed. at me anymore and I would rather starve I have been than live with him for tasted, bitten, shared another goddamn and I am loved with second. deep gentle love that changed every idea I Sometimes had of what love can I think about the be, love so good it male landlord who hurts. found out I’m divorced and said Sometimes he’d let me know if he I think about how couldn’t find anyone angry I am at men else. in general, at those men in particular, how The landlord angry I am about who took me is an the way the world ass but this cheap works. apartment with its leaky roof and nearby I demanded gunshots is the safest autonomy, freed place I have lived in myself from shitty years. men with shitty love to give and now I only drink the reddest and sweetest of love. Skylar Camp (she/her) lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her two kids, her partner, and their fuzzy kitty. Her writing focuses on religious trauma, divorce, polyamory, queerness, parenting, and more. Her work appears in The Broadkill Review, JAKE, and is forthcoming in Queerlings. Find her at skylarcamp.com. 12/4/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Emma Conlon JenavieveMarie CC
Hot Girl Shit after Amy Kay eating in bed / forgetting to wash the sheets / digging the box out of the kitchen trash because you forgot to read the instructions / arguing with fascists on twitter / browsing cat adoption websites to ease the void / kissing strangers and calling it love / scribbling small scraps of poems onto loose paper you’ll never see again / shopping second hand / singing in your car at a stoplight / remembering to take your antidepressants / waking up with weird tan lines after falling asleep on the beach / nursing the plants you forgot to water back to life / drinking a whole bottle of wine by yourself / upholding your boundaries / sending the call to voicemail / scratching your bug bites until they bleed / letting the slurpee melt into sticky soup on your hot dashboard / catching the spider in a glass and letting it go outside / sleeping beneath your unfolded laundry / taking advice from the five year old you babysit because you have nothing left to lose / giving a fake phone number before slipping away into the night / following your skincare routine like a religious zealot / playing animal crossing instead of doing your homework / refusing to break eye contact when strangers stare at you / getting the tattoos you’ve always wanted / crying over your breakfast before work / procrastinating as long as humanly possible / having a drunk cigarette, as a treat / picking other people’s litter off the ground / refusing to shave your legs until you’re good and goddamn ready / ordering takeout on a weeknight / listening to the same music you liked when you were 14 / hushing the hum of your people pleasing heart / staying up until the sun starts to rise / forgiving yourself for the things you cannot change / refusing to go quietly / screaming back at the howling abyss Emma Conlon (she/her) is an emerging poet and a recent graduate of the University of Virginia. Her work is published or forthcoming in Eunoia Review, Pen & Pendulum, Merak Magazine, Red Noise Collective, Sweet Lit, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection, Changing of the Tides & Other Poems, was self-published in 2022. Find more of her work at emmaconlon.com. 12/4/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Nathan Hassall Nic McPhee CC
The Loss of an Old Friend falls from the cloud-fattened evening each line of rain melts into earth’s singing mouth, throbbing: Maybe in the separation between grass and soul the space between raindrops between organs in order of failure brown earth white rock cloud torn by a finger-bone moon Maybe in the separation between grass and soul are seeds a river slices through the mountain’s ribcage into the reservoirs of the last sentence you garbled from your face-down concrete skull flooding my mind with lyric Maybe in the separation between grass and soul are seeds that fill the gaps between worlds just outside the hospital ward in your last bleep a bird plunges its beak into the soft body of a fish a daisy stems through a tonsil of dirt into a leafing vernacular of light Nathan Hassall believes in poetry's transformational potential. He weaves dreams, altered states, numinous experiences, and the natural world into his work. Hassall's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Red Noise Collective, La Piccioletta Barca, The Inflectionist Review, and more. He currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Malibu, California. Find out more at www.nathanhassall.com. 12/4/2023 0 Comments Poetry By Sara Eddy Nic McPhee CC
I Had a Charmed Childhood and I’ll Never Recover From It Seriously, you should pity me. Life will never be as good as tick-free fields, books on blankets in the yard, mom’s lemonade from a piney kitchen. Pond-swimming, river-canoeing, pavement still sun-warm at night. Lucky Charms, tomatoes from the vine, watermelon seeds in the grass. My friends were smart and equally charmed with professor parents and not too much money. Spring peepers, cicadas, chickadees. We rode on each other’s handlebars. It feels like I’m forgetting some things, important things about Depression, and alcohol, how your friends’ parents can get suddenly terrifying. Calling my dad to get me from a sleepover in the middle of the night. Diet culture, frozen foods, Ronald Reagan, AIDS, Dukes of Hazzard. My dad waking up screaming in the middle of the night. Kids who just disappeared, or who died in plain sight, trying to twist themselves out of who they loved. Parents who stayed together, no matter what. No one was watching us, and no one was watching us. O, Life will never be like that again. Tits Up When this all goes tits up, 100% nipples to the sky– boiling oceans and shrinking land mass–I’m going to miss pizza joints. I’m gonna fuckin pine for streaming services, check engine lights, DMV wait-times, the hassle of air travel. Slow internet and soft serve. You can’t even imagine what we’re going to lose. When I’m Little-House-in-the Burning-Woods trading scraps of old t-shirts for my neighbor’s candle stumps I’ll be thinking of long drives up into the hills. I will never get over the loss of Joni Mitchell’s Blue or the smell of gasoline. All I want for now is to live out my days in the squalor of puppuccinos, zoom calls, gently impending doom, & pretend it's not all spiraling down. Sara Eddy (she/they) is the author of two chapbooks of poetry, Tell the Bees (A3 Press, 2019) and Full Mouth (Finishing Line, 2020), and her full-length collection, Ordinary Fissures, will be released by Kelsay Books in March 2024. She has published widely in print and online literary journals: her poems have appeared in Threepenny Review, South85, Raleigh Review, and Pink Panther, among other venues. She is Assistant Director of the writing center at Smith College, in Northampton, Massachusetts, and lives in nearby Amherst in a house built by Emily Dickinson’s cousin. 12/4/2023 0 Comments Poetry By William Ross r. nial bradshaw CC
Night Walking An absence can be a presence in life. — Annemarie Ni Churreáin Walking home on a warm winter night, I sense you near me. It must have been the mist that coaxed you out, a strange veil hiding the horizon where you were always headed, bags packed and ready. Sixteen years now since you settled in your chair and found yourself shipping out on the opioid express. Tonight, you’re on the move again. You rose up from your grave, came two thousand miles in the dark to be with me. We walk in silence—still, I hear your voice and take comfort in your presence, sister. Jackson’s Point The cottages rode a gentle hill south of the lake, and at the heart of the horseshoe road an enormous tree, its hidden roots probing the centre of the round world, fingers firmly gripping, while a crown standing up of eyes and ears into the sky heard everything passing beneath and said nothing, or perhaps the whisper of leaves was how it spoke of the jackass neighbour who yelled at his wife, pounding the kitchen table and, heading for his truck, slammed the front door, his rottweiler that tore the ear of a wandering mutt, in another cottage a teenage son adrift and hooked on amphetamine, and only the lake remained as calm as the giant buried waist-deep in grass, looking down as muscle cars and pickups rode the horseshoe at the end of day, little kids ran screaming, and birds took flight. William Ross is a Canadian writer and visual artist living in Toronto. His poems have appeared in Rattle, Bluepepper, Humana Obscura, New Note Poetry, Cathexis Northwest Press, Topical Poetry, Heavy Feather Review,*82 Review, The New Quarterly and Alluvium. Recent work is forthcoming in Bindweed Magazine. 12/2/2023 0 Comments Poetry By B. Fulton Jennes Christian Collins CC
I Was a Child It Fell to Me It fell from the nest it was pushed its mother wanted to retrieve it didn’t couldn’t it was sick it was perfect just wanted to fly too soon. Leave it be let the cats have it let it die she chided wouldn’t leave peeling potatoes at the sink to help. I would save it it was mine not hers. Egg yolk, bread crumbs dolloped from a doll spoon into a pink craw of raw need please please please. Eyes hazing crazing desperate child determined head wobbling limp now a beautiful small thing to bury. B. Fulton Jennes’ poems have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including CALYX, Comstock Review, Rust and Moth, SWWIM, and Tupelo Quarterly. Her collection Blinded Birds (Finishing Line) received the 2022 International Book Award for a poetry chapbook. Another chapbook, FLOWN, will be published by Porkbelly Press in 2024. 12/2/2023 2 Comments Poetry By Trish Hopkinson Jenavieve Marie CC
The Hospital Bed Floats suspended with stillness reserved for the dead. My son lies angled, head raised, paled with no expression, no tension-- nothing to demonstrate the cranium fractured in three places, his swelling brain. Somehow I contend with the sudden awareness-- a child unborn is a child who never dies. his face unscathed. There is surveillance video & people who make an occupation of watching human beings destroyed on screen, not unlike the monitors bleating the vitals of my stilled son, who hours before rode his bicycle across a city street. Someone watches a replay as a pickup truck going forty-seven miles per hour strikes. My son My thoughts halted by grace—only able to wait for results, for doctors, more forms, more coffee, for him to wake. needs nothing but the bolt in his forehead measuring pressure, nothing but the IV delivering fluid, the circulation pumps & the breathing tube. None of which will answer him when he comes to. These machines feed on him as he once fed from me, bound by the unnatural—a man mending, summoned to life by the green line of an electronic pulse. Anniversary Five years since you resurrected halted fusion & supernova burst in reverse—your protostar rebirth expanding into sequence realigning patterns of bone & brain with mere flecks of hurt. Such linear constructs do nothing for reliving—imagination forming interstellar spin—the moment nuclear turned neutron & the call that came in near midnight. You coast sidewalk curb where intersection awaits vehicle & bicycle collision beneath a red-faced stoplight. How many rotations to green before you felt it—the urge not to go or rather, found resolve to stay? My maternal sense you must exist —your fluorescence even when dim not unlike the emerging sliver in the telescope you propped on the porch to view last summer’s moon eclipse. Trish Hopkinson is a poet and advocate for the literary arts. You can find her online at SelfishPoet.com and in western Colorado where she runs the regional poetry group Rock Canyon Poets and is a board member of the International Women's Writing Guild. Her poetry has been published in Sugar House Review, TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics, and The Penn Review; and her most recent book A Godless Ascends is forthcoming from Lithic Press in March 2024. Hopkinson happily answers to labels such as atheist, feminist, and empty nester; and enjoys traveling, live music, and craft beer. |
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