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♦ So ♦ Flo ♦ Po ♦ Jo ♦
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The Second Annual Maureen Seaton Poetry Prize is open for submission through December 31, 2024 !
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SoFloPoJo Contents: Essays * Interviews * Reviews * Special * Video * Visual Arts * Archives * Calendar * Masthead * SUBMIT * Tip Jar
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Here is a preview of some of the many poets that will appear at this year's Miami Book Fair:
Diannely Antigua, Traci Brimhall, Nidia Hernández, Carlie Hoffman, Marie Howe,
David Kirby, Jennifer Maritza McCauley, Danez Smith & more to follow
Diannely Antigua, Traci Brimhall, Nidia Hernández, Carlie Hoffman, Marie Howe,
David Kirby, Jennifer Maritza McCauley, Danez Smith & more to follow
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November 2024 Issue #35 Poetry
Issue # 35 featuring:
Agboola Tariq A., Swan II, Laura Isabela Amsel, Arikewusola Abdul Awal, Chris Atkin, Tharani Balachandran, David Banach, Susan Barry-Schulz, Danielle Bradley, Jesse Breite, Jim Daniels, Martins Deep, Joanne Durham, Livio Farallo, Cathy Socarras Ferrell, Alfred Fournier, Danielle Garland, Ian Hall, Eva Heisler, Candice M. Kelsey, Frances Klein, Elizabeth Joy Levinson, Gessica Sakamoto Martini, Cole McInerney, Meghan Miraglia, henry 7. reneau, jr., Cindy Savett, Jacob Schepers, Mark Todd, Marceline White, David Earl Williams, Robert Wilson, & Alexander Lazarus Wolff
Agboola Tariq A., Swan II, Laura Isabela Amsel, Arikewusola Abdul Awal, Chris Atkin, Tharani Balachandran, David Banach, Susan Barry-Schulz, Danielle Bradley, Jesse Breite, Jim Daniels, Martins Deep, Joanne Durham, Livio Farallo, Cathy Socarras Ferrell, Alfred Fournier, Danielle Garland, Ian Hall, Eva Heisler, Candice M. Kelsey, Frances Klein, Elizabeth Joy Levinson, Gessica Sakamoto Martini, Cole McInerney, Meghan Miraglia, henry 7. reneau, jr., Cindy Savett, Jacob Schepers, Mark Todd, Marceline White, David Earl Williams, Robert Wilson, & Alexander Lazarus Wolff
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POETRY Launch Reading: Friday, Nov 8th at 7:30 PM ET
on Zoom. View it on our YouTube Channel @soflopojo |
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The Second Annual Maureen Seaton Poetry Prize is open for submission through December 31, 2024
Agboola Tariq A., Swan II
Brewing Miracle
inside the coffeeshop, fate holds every traveler by the shoulder.
there’s a whirlwind outside & everyone's thoughts
gamble for a calm. the atmosphere of the café is as somber as the face
of cold espresso, the only lighting, a thin ray lasering through the
small window. on a bistro table, a couple make promises over their glasses
of mocha & you can see God’s laughter streaming in their cups. the spiderweb
by the wall takes the form of a dreamcatcher & the heat from brewing coffee
untangles it. there's a coat leaning hopelessly behind a banquet chair, the ceiling, falling like
hedera, and for a moment, there's silence, as if waiting for a miracle to walk in.
inside the coffeeshop, fate holds every traveler by the shoulder.
there’s a whirlwind outside & everyone's thoughts
gamble for a calm. the atmosphere of the café is as somber as the face
of cold espresso, the only lighting, a thin ray lasering through the
small window. on a bistro table, a couple make promises over their glasses
of mocha & you can see God’s laughter streaming in their cups. the spiderweb
by the wall takes the form of a dreamcatcher & the heat from brewing coffee
untangles it. there's a coat leaning hopelessly behind a banquet chair, the ceiling, falling like
hedera, and for a moment, there's silence, as if waiting for a miracle to walk in.
Habibi
for X.
i watch two pigeons
pluck the plague
from their feathers,
and the ache in my chest calls
toward qibla.
last eid, we made promises
and exchanged portraits.
i matched each of your face cards
with an emoji— your purple hijab, dark laali.
the thermal distortion in your eyes,
how it ignited my bones, lightened
my spirit. i chugged a river
and the flicker in my belly plunged
into an inferno.
prayed maghrib at sunset— not
to jinx the moment/um―
electromagnetic waves pulling our deen
into whole
i placed kisses
on every arc and dimension
of your face
and you wouldn't stop telling me
to keep it halal.
after eid,
i asked to see you and
you send me a portrait
without you in it. the sun sets
and my back is against the qibla,
resisting qabul.
this ache, this plague.
i asked to be loved
& you carve my prayer in my beloved’s rib.
Ya Rabb, i only ask for what's mine.
for X.
i watch two pigeons
pluck the plague
from their feathers,
and the ache in my chest calls
toward qibla.
last eid, we made promises
and exchanged portraits.
i matched each of your face cards
with an emoji— your purple hijab, dark laali.
the thermal distortion in your eyes,
how it ignited my bones, lightened
my spirit. i chugged a river
and the flicker in my belly plunged
into an inferno.
prayed maghrib at sunset— not
to jinx the moment/um―
electromagnetic waves pulling our deen
into whole
i placed kisses
on every arc and dimension
of your face
and you wouldn't stop telling me
to keep it halal.
after eid,
i asked to see you and
you send me a portrait
without you in it. the sun sets
and my back is against the qibla,
resisting qabul.
this ache, this plague.
i asked to be loved
& you carve my prayer in my beloved’s rib.
Ya Rabb, i only ask for what's mine.
Agboola Tariq A., Swan II is a poet & he studies Law at the University of Ibadan. His writing explores self / identity and space. His works are featured or forthcoming in Lucent Dreaming, Brittle Paper, Variety Pack, table//FEAST, Olumo Review & elsewhere. He is on X @Agboola_Tariq_A
Laura Isabela Amsel
After Four Months of Silence, the Muse Offers a Hawk
Glare-blinded, you cannot know each dawn
if a stippled hawk hunches in the oak’s
crutch, crouches on a lichened fence, sways
a Gingko’s golden spire. Cannot know
towhee, warbler, lark, or wren. Cannot
predict sharp shinned or Cooper’s,
blood-stained slate or the lid
of the galvanized bin where you
cache millet and black thistle. A hawk
can be neither conjured nor denied.
The raptor-shadowed grass, ignored,
the blue jay’s vigilance, futile, its screech,
unheeded. The whump against your window―
four finches and a chickadee trapped
between wall and window-glass. The plummet,
the cunning thrust, the hawk’s low pass,
its talon-dangled catch, black capped
and bloodied. Hydrangea petals,
leathery as vellum, rustle as the Cooper’s
hawk plucks, then eviscerates the chickadee―
its breast-down, the gray of laden rain clouds, drifting.
Glare-blinded, you cannot know each dawn
if a stippled hawk hunches in the oak’s
crutch, crouches on a lichened fence, sways
a Gingko’s golden spire. Cannot know
towhee, warbler, lark, or wren. Cannot
predict sharp shinned or Cooper’s,
blood-stained slate or the lid
of the galvanized bin where you
cache millet and black thistle. A hawk
can be neither conjured nor denied.
The raptor-shadowed grass, ignored,
the blue jay’s vigilance, futile, its screech,
unheeded. The whump against your window―
four finches and a chickadee trapped
between wall and window-glass. The plummet,
the cunning thrust, the hawk’s low pass,
its talon-dangled catch, black capped
and bloodied. Hydrangea petals,
leathery as vellum, rustle as the Cooper’s
hawk plucks, then eviscerates the chickadee―
its breast-down, the gray of laden rain clouds, drifting.
Laura Isabela Amsel was born in the Mississippi Delta and now lives in Charleston, South Carolina. She holds an MA in Spanish from Middlebury College. Her poems have appeared in Terrain, Another Chicago Magazine, Cloudbank, Common Ground Review, wildness, Nimrod International Journal, Harbor Review, and Atlanta Review. A Brief Campaign of Sting and Sweet, winner of the Brick Road Poetry Prize, is her first book of poetry.
Arikewusola Abdul Awal
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Memory And The Call Of Waters
after Su’eddie Vershima Agema I The world, like a deer, stands aloof memories Of my childhood: my memory is a heavy bush Growing in darkness. Birds do not sing, parrots Mock dumb show, and yet, again, I hunt for joy In this thicket of my life. Deer blood drenches my Fingers: I hunt the game that haunts my life. My hunt bag exhausts my shoulders with memories Of loss, with the wind whistling names of exiles― Wrested away from their breaths— into my ear- Drums, but I am an Osè tree drained of sap: Death has unleaved me of all tenderness & my sister Was the first to fall, stumbling into the land Where only sleep can reach. II I sing alongside crickets and frogs, piercing The ears of night in search of a runaway dream From the slumber of my past. But the night, heavy with drowsiness, leads me To a labyrinth. I am haunting myself with songs. III Wet clay. Dry loam. My memory is An attic full of chinks. IV Loss begins with the hands pushing An idle air behind the gaping void, And grows with tyrant memories Feeding you to carnivorous loneliness. Does loss not seek to outlast us? V Away from the border of the bush, The sea sticks out its tongue, beckoning With a ballad the percent of water left in me: Come answer the call of water, come Drown your sorrows here. So I take a leap Towards the sea, and leave behind the accent Of my footprint to narrate the story of a hunter Who dares the sea to drown his bitter memories. |
The Mud Vision
after Seamus Heaney There in that town, in that busy town, Hope sprang at dawn, and staggered on The quiet road to oblivion. The town brooded below the hill & the hill stands above the town, still, Witnessing the Sun wend happy rays away From the mouths of its supplicants & watches them wrap themselves in chaos. You run to the hill and the hill hides you Nowhere. Where else will you run? Bless the men who erected a haven from the Castle of pickled moments. Bless those who left Their wounds and revived the piano with the Nostalgia for sunrise inside their night music. Bless the wounds that fester, aching beyond The horizons of their lives. Bless their vision Rusting in the dust. Yet traces itself to the moon. Bless them, see them nailing figments of a lost hope― Tethered miracle— on their life cross, awaiting A sacred balm like the arrival of the first rain. THERE IS A WAR CHASING ME AROUND There is a war chasing me Around the nooks of my life Like a cat after a rat. I am running out of myself, burning Out at the feet of the fleeting night. Tell my mama, I have not learned The art of wielding a sword, and yet Hitler of life has come measuring my neck Between exile and survival. Tell my papa, his [son] stone is bleeding In a distant land & the mouth of The cave is consuming itself from hunger. The night crawls into my body. Crickets enter With their dirge: love is an outcast here. This War is a bonfire yearning to eat me whole. O mama, open your arms for my homecoming. O home, I beseech, harbour me behind your walls. |
Arikewusola Abdul Awal writes from Nigeria. His recent works have appeared in Eunoia Review, Polyphony Lit Journal, One (Jacar Press), Brittle Paper, Sprinng, JayLit, and elsewhere. He is a student of English and Literary Studies at Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria. He enjoys spending his time with the full moon.
Chris Atkin
Make Some Noise
In 9th grade I was voted the loudest kid at Oak Canyon Jr. High,
which is funny because I rarely spoke.
It’s even funnier after I tell you I voted for myself,
more than once, more like, 47 times.
My English teacher ran the yearbook,
and I happened to sit by the back table
where a pile of nomination forms sat waiting to be filled.
So with a few stealthy swipes of a borrowed pen
Scott and Alyssan became the biggest flirts
and Sean and Kailey were the most likely to make it on Broadway.
I could’ve written myself into any role I wanted,
and I settled for loudest, not best smile or most likely to succeed,
I was just happy to be seen as someone with a voice.
It might’ve been a self-fulfilling prophecy
long before my AP Psychology class,
taught me the meaning of the phrase.
At home we spoke in nothing but whispers.
Cancer kept my mother up all night
so we kept quiet all day while she slept off a hangover
the aftermath of a chemical cocktail fed intravenously through a port in her chest.
We kids kept our problems to ourselves
or cried them out in the shower
drowned out by the sound of running water,
while we blamed our red eyes on spray and steam.
Dad was gone five days a week,
and we could not bring ourselves to waste precious weekends whining
over childhood problems that seemed petty when we knew
where he had been and how hard he worked
and all the moments he missed while away.
We watched him shrink and shrivel
as he worked himself to death
trying to keep my mother here a little longer.
So is it any wonder that I wanted to be loud,
to set free all the secrets I sunk into composition notebooks,
to shout out my sadness, scream obscenities until my tonsils ached and
my tongue grew dry, and all the quiet in the world made way
for all the things I could never say while both my parents were dying.
In 9th grade I was voted the loudest kid at Oak Canyon Jr. High,
which is funny because I rarely spoke.
It’s even funnier after I tell you I voted for myself,
more than once, more like, 47 times.
My English teacher ran the yearbook,
and I happened to sit by the back table
where a pile of nomination forms sat waiting to be filled.
So with a few stealthy swipes of a borrowed pen
Scott and Alyssan became the biggest flirts
and Sean and Kailey were the most likely to make it on Broadway.
I could’ve written myself into any role I wanted,
and I settled for loudest, not best smile or most likely to succeed,
I was just happy to be seen as someone with a voice.
It might’ve been a self-fulfilling prophecy
long before my AP Psychology class,
taught me the meaning of the phrase.
At home we spoke in nothing but whispers.
Cancer kept my mother up all night
so we kept quiet all day while she slept off a hangover
the aftermath of a chemical cocktail fed intravenously through a port in her chest.
We kids kept our problems to ourselves
or cried them out in the shower
drowned out by the sound of running water,
while we blamed our red eyes on spray and steam.
Dad was gone five days a week,
and we could not bring ourselves to waste precious weekends whining
over childhood problems that seemed petty when we knew
where he had been and how hard he worked
and all the moments he missed while away.
We watched him shrink and shrivel
as he worked himself to death
trying to keep my mother here a little longer.
So is it any wonder that I wanted to be loud,
to set free all the secrets I sunk into composition notebooks,
to shout out my sadness, scream obscenities until my tonsils ached and
my tongue grew dry, and all the quiet in the world made way
for all the things I could never say while both my parents were dying.
The Drowned Man and the Storm
On a Monday night in 2005, after family prayer, I sit beside my father
while we watch water swallow whole streets on the evening news.
Hurricane Katrina was relentless, left 400,000 homeless,
living rooms sunk to the bottom of a lake the size of all suburbia,
everything safe, and warm, and familiar, ground to silt and sludge.
I ask dad if we’d fall apart if a hurricane hit us?
He just smiles and says “we are stronger than that.”
That it would take more than an act of God to tear HIS family apart.
I went to bed that night reassured.
Eleven years later, I come home to find a storm brewing inside my house.
My father has hung a flag, all the wrong shades of red, and white, and blue,
and it roars like thunder as it's whipped and cracked by canyon winds.
I find my mother crying in the garage, she doesn't want her children to see
her weeping, the heavy rainfall that precedes the coming squall.
I remember a meteorologist saying “The most dangerous part of the hurricane is
the front right quadrant,” oh and how right my father thinks he is,
thinks himself noah’s cleansing flood, his ideology a reckoning,
a baptism, meant to wash clean a nation in rivers of blood.
At sunday dinners, my father’s tongue lashes out like lightning, his words
a regurgitated battle cry, something he heard on FOX news the night before.
His voice, a thunderous boom, and in it I hear nothing but Hannity, Beck, and Carlson.
My siblings and I take refuge in the farthest corners of our broken home
laying down sandbag after sandbag even as flood waters pool around our ankles.
Then I realize what I’m standing in,
that the blood filling up the hallway smells so much like my sister’s,
the daughter that used to be my father’s son,
feels as cold as my youngest sister’s silence,
tastes like the way she bites her tongue each time my father opens his mouth.
It turns out, dad was right, an act of god could not tear his family apart.
It just took him, a man rigid like a mountain, with a mouth like a natural disaster,
and I don’t think he could close it if he wanted to.
You cannot rewind a hurricane, and you can build new walls but that will not make them a home.
Soon, the wailing outside begins to sound like desperate knocking,
and for a moment I know that even though my father is the storm,
he’s the drowned man, too, just another lonely deadman,
lost at sea.
Chris Atkin is a high school English teacher and poet from Orem, UT. His body of work largely consists of pieces about masculinity, identity, his work as an educator, and his relationship to his body, weight, and his body dysmorphia. A two-time Pushcart Prize Nominee, you can find his work in The Lascaux Review, Last Leaves Magazine, and The Rising Phoenix Review.
Tharani Balachandran
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What I did today instead of writing a poem
Googled gestation period of an elephant. Despite not being an elephant, worried that my unborn child might belong to a terrible boyfriend that I recently broke up with. 7 years ago. Googled natural childbirth. Promptly threw my computer out the window. Did a Kegel. Watched a prenatal yoga video while eating a bowl of Doritos. Did another Kegel. Examined the 20-week ultrasound photos. Worried that the baby doesn’t look like me. Texted my husband at work to ask if he likes me as a friend or more than a friend. Went to the library. Checked out Making More Milk, Breastfeeding Doesn’t Need to Suck, and Your Pregnancy After 35. Googled geriatric pregnancy. Read about all the risks associated with giving birth at 35. I’m 39. Went to the grocery store. Bought a 12 pack of Pepsi. When the cashier asked me how far along I am, showed him my wedding ring and told him to stop flirting with me. Visited my geriatric parents. Listened to my mom talk about how easy breastfeeding is. Ate half a pound cake. Ignored my mom when she asked when I last ate a vegetable. Did another Kegel, discreetly. Googled how big the baby should be by now. Googled how big a sweet potato is. Spent 30 minutes researching different varieties of sweet potato. Roasted a sweet potato and called my mom to tell her that I am having vegetables for dinner. |
Tharani Balachandran is a first-generation Canadian lawyer and poet who lives on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen peoples in Victoria, BC with her husband, daughter and cat. She is a Best of the Net nominee and her work has appeared in multiple publications including On the Sea Wall, Anti-Heroin Chic, Quail Bell Magazine, and The Racket. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, including Brown Sugar Skin, released in 2024 by Garden of Neuro Publishing.
David Banach
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At the holy gates
We are sorry to announce that we have begun requiring two factor authentication for access. We have sent a code to your first hotmail.com email address the six digit code is also equal to the number of sunsets you ignored, the number of children playing you never paused to watch, and the smiles you never cracked for people in checkout lines. We’re sorry. That is incorrect. We’ve texted a five digit code to the number of your first Nokia flip phone, the code equal to the number of people whose eyes you failed to meet as you walked by dollars not given to those that asked, and kisses smooched without feeling. We’ve locked your account. Choose one of these personal safeguard questions to answer: 1. What was the middle name of the person you first thought about as you masturbated? 2. What was the phone number of the person that you were most cruel to in 7th grade? 3. How many meals did you fail to thank your mother for? That is incorrect. Please prove that you are human by clicking on all of the memories of moments where you were not fully conscious of the miracles going on all around you. Continue to click on new memories as they appear. You will never exhaust them all. If you continue to click, irrationally hoping to finish making up for your life this will verify that you are human and that you deserve nothing ever resembling a heaven at all. Vertical Divider
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motherfuckers
(a poem about love) A flock of balloons on strings in the wind blowing bouncing off each other and off the poor women’s head struggling among a multi-colored maelstrom of kid’s birthday balloons pulling tugging them in tangles through the gusts of wind in a parking lot finally screaming Motherfuckers! as she tangled and untangled herself. and it was a moment of complicated feeling as she saw that I saw understanding the love gone into choosing this bundle of helium wishes for a child the exasperation and frustration embarrassment and anger at the frustration sadness at the anger the feeling of failure it was all there in her face all the difficulties of loving in this wind-swept world where kindness is lighter than air. || and I have been there failing at the holding on and saying it to myself as well I imagine saying darling you don’t need to try so hard you can fail at being your best you can even let go let them float off into skies getting smaller rising smaller and vanishing gravity pulls us down and let it rest your heart just a moment is enough even the love that gets away above till we can’t see it anymore even it finds that place beyond all skies where we are no longer alone |
I meet Kristen and Simone at the Hardware Store
So I’m at the Ace in town the hardware store for some conduit
and a junction box and the free popcorn when down the electrical aisle 14A
right past the pool supplies I see Kristen Stewart dressed only in a powder
blue wrestling singlet with white trim and red Ace helpful hardware person apron and she is
talking to Simone Weil thin angelic in her glasses and trench coat and as if it could not be
any other way around her head is orbiting a cloud of hardware items like electrons
in an atom in an elementary school filmstrip all in black and white of course
duct-tape superglue little pliers
drill bits screws and nuts
bits of popcorn swirling in
cosmic configurations around her
black and white face
I see her affliction and Kristen's earnest hand on her shoulder saying
Dude. . . you are soo gay
and Simone glances up all oracular saying only
All sin attempts to escape emptiness
Poof! she vanishes her halo of orbiting paraphernalia too except a small pair
of pliers opening and closing flitting like wings of a dove
cast iron Paraclete holy hardware ghost
flying towards my head and vanishing into my skull
But Kristen is just bored hand on one hip chewing gum
Um . . .can I help you with something
like all this is totally normal I start to explain my conduit and receptacle problem
but all that comes out are Simone Weil quotes
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
So Kristen is all like:
Uh huh . . . like. . .do you have a problem I can help with
I'm just able to mutter
Time’s violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters
she looks straight at me with those grey listless eyes
Yah. . . Simone can have that effect on people when she is confused.
Show me what you need, Hon.
I can’t look away transfixed pointing to the junction box receptacle I came for
what comes from my mouth is just
A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror
may very well believe the image is herself.
An ugly woman knows it is not.
At that Kristen quick pops my shoulder with the butt of her palm shucks my other arm
as the blow turns my body executes a quick takedown kicking my leg out at the ankle
I’m on the ground on my hands and knees Kristen is riding against me pressing her hips
into me pushing me down
I look back mouth gaping and out comes
Human existence is so fragile a thing that I cannot love without trembling.
But that just pisses her off and she wraps her arm around my waist manhandling
controlling my body pressing my head down to the dirty floor dusty and littered
with plastic particles rubbing my nose in it as if I am not allowed to speak
of what she’s doing still I try to object
Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing;
it is the person crushed who feels
sounds from a useless mouth and she tosses me about turning me to the other side
of the aisle tugging up my head gripping a spotless white shining length
of plastic conduit its girth filling her thin fingered hand tugging my head
violently jutting the pipe into my face:
Dude! THIS is what you need.
So I’m at the Ace in town the hardware store for some conduit
and a junction box and the free popcorn when down the electrical aisle 14A
right past the pool supplies I see Kristen Stewart dressed only in a powder
blue wrestling singlet with white trim and red Ace helpful hardware person apron and she is
talking to Simone Weil thin angelic in her glasses and trench coat and as if it could not be
any other way around her head is orbiting a cloud of hardware items like electrons
in an atom in an elementary school filmstrip all in black and white of course
duct-tape superglue little pliers
drill bits screws and nuts
bits of popcorn swirling in
cosmic configurations around her
black and white face
I see her affliction and Kristen's earnest hand on her shoulder saying
Dude. . . you are soo gay
and Simone glances up all oracular saying only
All sin attempts to escape emptiness
Poof! she vanishes her halo of orbiting paraphernalia too except a small pair
of pliers opening and closing flitting like wings of a dove
cast iron Paraclete holy hardware ghost
flying towards my head and vanishing into my skull
But Kristen is just bored hand on one hip chewing gum
Um . . .can I help you with something
like all this is totally normal I start to explain my conduit and receptacle problem
but all that comes out are Simone Weil quotes
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
So Kristen is all like:
Uh huh . . . like. . .do you have a problem I can help with
I'm just able to mutter
Time’s violence rends the soul; by the rent eternity enters
she looks straight at me with those grey listless eyes
Yah. . . Simone can have that effect on people when she is confused.
Show me what you need, Hon.
I can’t look away transfixed pointing to the junction box receptacle I came for
what comes from my mouth is just
A beautiful woman looking at her image in the mirror
may very well believe the image is herself.
An ugly woman knows it is not.
At that Kristen quick pops my shoulder with the butt of her palm shucks my other arm
as the blow turns my body executes a quick takedown kicking my leg out at the ankle
I’m on the ground on my hands and knees Kristen is riding against me pressing her hips
into me pushing me down
I look back mouth gaping and out comes
Human existence is so fragile a thing that I cannot love without trembling.
But that just pisses her off and she wraps her arm around my waist manhandling
controlling my body pressing my head down to the dirty floor dusty and littered
with plastic particles rubbing my nose in it as if I am not allowed to speak
of what she’s doing still I try to object
Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing;
it is the person crushed who feels
sounds from a useless mouth and she tosses me about turning me to the other side
of the aisle tugging up my head gripping a spotless white shining length
of plastic conduit its girth filling her thin fingered hand tugging my head
violently jutting the pipe into my face:
Dude! THIS is what you need.
David Banach is a queer philosopher and poet in New Hampshire, where he tends chickens, keeps bees, and watches the sky. He likes to think about Dostoevsky, Levinas, and Simone Weil and is fascinated by the way form emerges in nature and the way the human heart responds to it. You can read some of his most recent poetry in Isele Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Etymology, Ars Sententia, and Amphibian Lit. He is co-editor of Touchstone, the journal of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire.
Susan Barry-Schulz
I’m a Person Who Believes in Loneliness
―Diane Seuss, The New Yorker May 23, 2024
I believe in the dim. I’ve walked those cliffs before.
It doesn’t matter where. Half-echo, half-mist, the half-
empty milk glass my domain. I believe in long night runs
with a yellow Sony Walkman when one is young and still
has legs that work. If they ever did. In the woods, alone
on a cobbled sunlit trail, a momentary flicker of connection.
I am sensed and sensing. Reminded of my belonging.
I dreamt I slept most soundly within the confines
of an instrument case—soft foam and crushed velvet
cradling each specific curve, three solid latches
closing behind me with a click. I was a safe.
I believe in Casper the Friendly Ghost and his melancholy
hopeful ways. But not the uncles—that ghastly trio.
I don’t think they have his best interests at heart.
In the lake, just today, another flicker—neck-deep
and eye-level with the northern swallow, green-gold
ripples flowing outward from my sternum. I am origin
and destination. Sensed and sensing. World-worthy.
Vanished. The leaves of the swamp maple outside
my bedroom window reach toward me with their gifts
of oxygen and shade. I’ve made a record of my gratitude.
A heavy ledger. I believe in sorrow. In plays of light.
In the balance. But, still, it hurts. I’m lost in the Lost
soundtrack. And the Psychedelic Furs. Can you see
right through me? I sat on a footbridge in Ithaca,
high above a muddy creek—head on my knees.
But I don’t want to scare people, I just want to make friends.
I believe in the ghost in you. In loneliness. In a person
who believes in loneliness. Mrs. Dalloway said
she would buy the flowers herself. And she did.
Pages and pages of flowers. Some lovely rose.
Geraniums, soft with light. I’ve marked them all
in wax pastels. Here, I’ll show you. Do you remember
the heat that summer? The abundance of hydrangea?
It doesn’t have to make sense. I was pretty. I was pink.
The desert island question is my favorite.
Lines Written During the Hottest July on Record
—after Eduardo C. Corral
Grief blooms in the heat like patches of blue-green algae at the far end of the lake.
The stiff soles of grief’s new shoes echo in an empty church.
I gleam the last bits of grief from the bottom of a salt and vinegar potato chip bag.
Grief flaps in the wind like sun-bleached towels on the clothesline.
A red-tailed hawk over a field of hickory and Queen Anne’s lace cries out in grief’s perfect pitch.
Grief—a catch in the hip—limps across the earthen dam.
Caught in a sudden rain shower, rings of grief multiply and expand.
From the river bank I catch grief, throw it back.
Grief never asks if I am ready.
Late afternoon—the oldest window AC unit in the house churns out grief’s cold lullaby.
I brush tufts of grief from the old dog’s back, watch it take flight.
Grief requires wide margins, bold fonts.
After the heavy rains, grief—like the bloated blue hydrangea—cannot withstand itself.
Grief plays on beyond the final whistle; no penalties.
Birds gather grief to use as nesting materials.
Grief is slippery when wet.
Quiet flash of fireflies in the middle of July—grief’s kiss, smiled sigh.
Grief remembers the words to all three verses of Silent Night.
Grief is allergic to feathers.
We carry our grief in five-gallon buckets, wheel-barrows, conch shells, clavicles.
I sign my name in grief’s black ink.
—after Eduardo C. Corral
Grief blooms in the heat like patches of blue-green algae at the far end of the lake.
The stiff soles of grief’s new shoes echo in an empty church.
I gleam the last bits of grief from the bottom of a salt and vinegar potato chip bag.
Grief flaps in the wind like sun-bleached towels on the clothesline.
A red-tailed hawk over a field of hickory and Queen Anne’s lace cries out in grief’s perfect pitch.
Grief—a catch in the hip—limps across the earthen dam.
Caught in a sudden rain shower, rings of grief multiply and expand.
From the river bank I catch grief, throw it back.
Grief never asks if I am ready.
Late afternoon—the oldest window AC unit in the house churns out grief’s cold lullaby.
I brush tufts of grief from the old dog’s back, watch it take flight.
Grief requires wide margins, bold fonts.
After the heavy rains, grief—like the bloated blue hydrangea—cannot withstand itself.
Grief plays on beyond the final whistle; no penalties.
Birds gather grief to use as nesting materials.
Grief is slippery when wet.
Quiet flash of fireflies in the middle of July—grief’s kiss, smiled sigh.
Grief remembers the words to all three verses of Silent Night.
Grief is allergic to feathers.
We carry our grief in five-gallon buckets, wheel-barrows, conch shells, clavicles.
I sign my name in grief’s black ink.
Self-portrait as Via Negativa
my mother says it isn’t ladylike
for me to whistle. to keep my hands
stuffed in the pockets of my thin-whale
Levi’s corduroys. not ladylike to play touch
football in the street with the neighborhood
boys, to come home late with knees stained
and torn. not ladylike to wear men’s shirts,
like the striped ones i found at the Salvation
Army and wore buttoned up all the way
to the neck. not ladylike to cut my hair short
and asymmetrical. not ladylike to run through
the streets at night in the rain with music flowing
through my headphones and my growing bones.
not ladylike to sit with my feet so far apart at mass.
not ladylike to forego makeup, jewelry, perfume,
polish. to play punch me as hard as you can
with my brother. to wear black boots. to come home
late smelling of smoke and beer and other things.
to champion hunter-green and heather-gray
over pink. not ladylike, the way i walked,
bouncing on the ball of my foot with each step,
because i could and i liked the way it felt.
not ladylike the way i thought my calves
looked best in soccer cleats and mud.
in a dream
we are running away
from a house we don’t own
down a long flat drive
toward the sea. i’m not
just keeping up—i’m pulling
ahead. sprinting. each breath a taking
of the lord’s name in vain. which is to say
a sacrifice. a holy trade.
my mother says it isn’t ladylike
for me to whistle. to keep my hands
stuffed in the pockets of my thin-whale
Levi’s corduroys. not ladylike to play touch
football in the street with the neighborhood
boys, to come home late with knees stained
and torn. not ladylike to wear men’s shirts,
like the striped ones i found at the Salvation
Army and wore buttoned up all the way
to the neck. not ladylike to cut my hair short
and asymmetrical. not ladylike to run through
the streets at night in the rain with music flowing
through my headphones and my growing bones.
not ladylike to sit with my feet so far apart at mass.
not ladylike to forego makeup, jewelry, perfume,
polish. to play punch me as hard as you can
with my brother. to wear black boots. to come home
late smelling of smoke and beer and other things.
to champion hunter-green and heather-gray
over pink. not ladylike, the way i walked,
bouncing on the ball of my foot with each step,
because i could and i liked the way it felt.
not ladylike the way i thought my calves
looked best in soccer cleats and mud.
in a dream
we are running away
from a house we don’t own
down a long flat drive
toward the sea. i’m not
just keeping up—i’m pulling
ahead. sprinting. each breath a taking
of the lord’s name in vain. which is to say
a sacrifice. a holy trade.
Susan Barry-Schulz grew up just outside of Buffalo, NY. Her poetry has appeared in Rust & Moth, SWWIM, Heron Tree, B O D Y, Shooter Literary Magazine, Bending Genres, Leon Literary Review, West Trestle Review, The Westchester Review, Stone Canoe, and in many other print and online journals and anthologies. Her work has been nominated for both the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Danielle Bradley
Karst Topography (II)
Lately I’ve taken this principled
stand against limestone
The tampon in me is very dry but
to be porous is a crime in puerto rico
It’s true I’ve inclined towards malfeasance in the past
but these days I’m all about absolution
Dissolution is disappearance done slow and
what’s most youthful about me is
I’m not too sure of object permanence or
if slowness is good
After all this learning,
I think of contours in new light:
to be dimpled is important and
to dissolve imperative
It’s true that I am still utilitarian first
But now what comes second is dedication
to plugging geysers before their moistness
might permit flowers
Lately I’ve taken this principled
stand against limestone
The tampon in me is very dry but
to be porous is a crime in puerto rico
It’s true I’ve inclined towards malfeasance in the past
but these days I’m all about absolution
Dissolution is disappearance done slow and
what’s most youthful about me is
I’m not too sure of object permanence or
if slowness is good
After all this learning,
I think of contours in new light:
to be dimpled is important and
to dissolve imperative
It’s true that I am still utilitarian first
But now what comes second is dedication
to plugging geysers before their moistness
might permit flowers
Puerto Rican and Irish by way of Florida, Danielle Bradley received her MFA from the MFA for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she was an MFA, Delaney, and REAL Fellow. She is the winner of the 2022 Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award in Fiction (selected by Robin McLean), the 2022 Harvey Swados Prize in Fiction (selected by Alysia Sawchyn), and was longlisted for the 2024 DISQUIET Prize. Her work appears in The Penn Review.
Jesse Breite
|
Photograph, 1997
Some things fall out of the frame― this photo, for instance—me and Rob surprised by the camera in the hallway of our adolescence. Even here, we have the seeds of pharmaceutical need in our pockets, football-shaped blue pills named Adderall and Ritalin, bloodshot lightning in our eyes, illicit plants, budded and rolled in our socks, ICEEs in our hands, and my sister: maybe she took the picture noting our funky scent. Maybe she was in her room with the door closed― how she lived always toward the end. Maybe the door is closed, but it was rattling with Ace of Base, inside she bounced off the walls with her best friend, Katie, a name which means pure, and together they were high on the pure dopamine of each other’s presence. And maybe we hear their raucous laughter, small spirits cartwheeling, caterwauling against limitation and drywall, tumbling through their bodies across the pastures of a shaggy carpet on which, many moons later, the strange racket pushing out of my sister will finally cease. |
Ohio
In the blueblack dark of midnight I shave down ginger root to stems and chew the pungent concentrate, the spiced earth you have become, and say the word, Ohio, the name of the street where we first existed together, and I imagine if I go to Ohio, I might find some hint of you, sister, your restless footprint, the dresses you left in the closet. But everything that’s real disappears like the creek behind our house on Ohio Street, gone, and the church with a blacktop, a ball hoop, departed. The small pond with a weeping willow, extinct. How did so much of our brachial spines disappear? I ask you who also dispersed― your face in the Super Moon looking down from a marble-headed ascent. Even as I say it this ginger root makes me something else, calorizing the past for the engine of my breath. I chew what I can of this pithy rind, to know what I’ve lost. Dear Ohio, Dear Mouth, don’t eat all at once. Don’t give it all away. Don’t try to spell what can never sing again. |
Viewless Wings
A man takes himself out back
into a dark shed,
full of broken mirrors, fire
and oak, ore and flesh.
For his sister, he vows
to craft a horse, so he takes up
the hammer, the chisel,
crushes every shard
(himself refracted), sews
some pink flesh, some
sparkling steel into
the alphabet of bones,
the spine. Fine as powder,
he broadcasts the skin,
the texture of animal moods
harnessed, beaten airy thin.
He slices the wood, striated
as glacial abrasions, smooths
muscle, flattens wings,
folds them into the arched back.
Jesse Breite’s recent poetry has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, River Heron Review, Tar River Poetry, and Rhino. His first full-length poetry collection is forthcoming from Fernwood Press. Jesse teaches high school in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives with his wife and two kids. More at jessebreite.com.
Jim Daniels
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My Last Work of Art
received a D in 8th grade art. The assignment: create something useless. Perhaps I did not understand the meaning of the word useless or the word assignment, or the word create. Perhaps I did not understand the meaning of some thing. step one: I twisted a coat hanger into a mangle of wire. step two: I covered the wire with wet newspaper and let it dry (this is called paper-mache, or papier-mache, if you want to get all art-class on me) step three: when it hardened, I painted it with layers of colors over and over until it turned the perfect shade of mud. The teacher’s glasses hung on a beaded chain. She yanked her head back when something offended her. Upon viewing my work, she nearly staggered into the bulletin board loaded with thumb tacks. I sat at one of the awkward high art-room stools that afforded no leaning. They were meant to be freeing, the teacher said. Liberated from my low desk, I had been inspired. Perhaps I did not understand the meaning of inspired. Something useless? I could do that! The teacher didn’t think I took it seriously. I was the first one done. Useless doesn’t mean ugly, she said. I squeezed the mangled worthless egg in my hands and looked down at the tile floor from the distance of that high stool. I didn’t understand the meaning of the word ugly. I deserved a C. The D was spiteful, piling on. The other students stopped their useless work and looked on. The teacher wrung her hands in her art smock, then took her glasses off to glare. I have spent the rest of my life making that useless thing over and over, trying to get the color just right. To camouflage despair. You have to be enchanted to become disenchanted. We never got the chance. I shouldn’t speak for everyone. Some got A’s. I tossed it in the wastebasket on my way out the door. A ‘D’ in art wasn’t going to mess with my future. Maybe I did have a purpose for my thing, despite working to make it ugly and useless. My future was the color of the thing in that wastebasket. Our world, on the edge of Detroit, surrounded by concrete and factory grit and the loud gray industrial hum of silent people earning a living. Our world, not round at all, but mangled. I understood mangled. The only thing my mother could draw was a fish, like a sideways Q, and she taught me. On good days, she’d draw a few bubbles to indicate it was breathing. I took a shortcut through a muddy field to school every day until they built yet another factory on that vacant lot. It manufactured some small car part. I tried to sneak through their parking lot, dodging forklifts but ran into the proverbial brick wall. No shortcuts. Every road and path led to the rolling loading-dock doors of those factories. I didn’t quite know that then. I just knew I hated school and was losing interest in Jesus sculpted to the cross in agony. Get a life, Jesus, I wanted to say. Get a load of this, I wanted to say, palming my useless thing like it was a rock that might break a window. That might force me to run. |
Jim Daniels’ latest fiction book, The Luck of the Fall, was published by Michigan State University Press. His most recent poetry collections include The Human Engine at Dawn, (Wolfson Press), Gun/Shy, (Wayne State University Press), and Comment Card, (Carnegie Mellon University Press). His first book of nonfiction, The Abridged Book of Water, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. A native of Detroit, he currently lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.
Martins Deep
Let my life go on without me
the way driftwood journeys towards the shore, wet with the prayer of the drowned. like a horse is sent back into battle with the muscle memory of its fallen rider on its back, the ache of the rider’s weight pulling at its reins away from a spear, or into fire. in that graceful uncertainty as what leaf in the thicket a tear will fall, like liquid emerald, from the eye of an angel assigned to a dying child. on the bridge of river kaduna, i’ve seen an empty canoe float into the sunset with the song of an old fisherman. i’ve carried what i remember of that song into the city, its watery light glowing inside of me, on the way home, my shadow leaving a thin-film interference on the wet ground. how many of my dead can i count will run through me beneath this starry sky? what is the verdict against their collective griefs and rage, turning my face, each season of despair, from god to paper? who, among the species of extinct birds, will sit in judgement? boy, all these mangoes without me? let my hunger survive me, dear god. i’m a sinful man, but hear me. i was scared to death when i stepped on a snake in a cornfield, and when i found it was just its moulted skin, i wept in envy, that it carries on its life as fear, slithering in and out of a crack in memory with an undying desire for my heels. |
Martins Deep is a poet, digital artist, and an MFA student at the University of Memphis, Tennessee. His works have graced—or are forthcoming in Magma Poetry, Strange Horizons, december, Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, Lolwe, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. He says hi on X @martinsdeep1
Joanne Durham
|
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Daniel Ellsberg is Interviewed a Few Weeks Before He Died at 92 Years Old
Daniel Ellsberg disclosed the Pentagon Papers in 1971, a secret history of American lies
in Vietnam. He spent the rest of his life as a devoted peace activist.
Blue veined hands river into bony fingers,
flank the well-pressed suit that hangs
on his gaunt frame. Hands rest
on a desk beside a vase of morning lilies.
He knows the threat of clenched fists
desperate to hold power, spent forty years
trying to prevent nuclear war he fears
is nearer now than when he started.
Yet here in this photograph, he smiles
straight at death whose outstretched hands beckon.
How can I grasp such conviction?
With ungloved fingers my friend mulches
the weeping willow in her yard,
wipes her brow and tells me, trees thrive
from roots entwined with others. I link arms
with a woman I’ve never met
at a rally against gun violence,
her first. Hand gripping her placard
she confides: Nothing changed today,
but I’m changed. I see
all the doors I’ve knocked on
that never opened, trying
to elect leaders who could sway
our flailing hands to embrace
the whole of this world, and I thank Dr. Ellsberg
for telling the reporter, I couldn’t think
of any better way to spend my time.
Joanne Durham is the author of To Drink from a Wider Bowl, winner of the Sinclair Poetry Prize (Evening Street Press 2022), and the chapbook, On Shifting Shoals (Kelsay Books 2023). Recent awards include Third Wednesday Magazine's Annual Poetry Prize and the Mary Ruffin Poole Prize. Her poetry appears in Poetry South, Vos Populi, CALYX, Poetry East, NC Literary Review, and many other journals and anthologies. She lives on the North Carolina coast, with the ocean as her backyard and muse. https://www.joannedurham.com.
Livio Farallo
my genes climb on monkey bars
i am waiting alone in the rain where relevance is a soiled
dog barking at the funeral procession. the living pause for the dead
as they always have. this can’t be erased by sunshine. mud dries
itself without shaking like a dog and while money is laid on the
bar to buy freedom it rents a calliope of exhaustion. i am confident
a jury will never convict me. i am confident i have no peers. rain
collects at my feet like seed broadcast with a laugh and a scarecrow
is a pirate in a wheatfield and both are dead if brains are treasures
next to unbreathable air. on the open road i am counting atoms that
bounce off the asphalt; i am filtering clouds through a screen door.
a dead ocean travels far waiting for a bucket of rain and if i linger
in mud i won’t gleam or give birth: i can’t breathe in lava. the under-
taker has a wooden heart that promises miracles deeper than a neuro-
surgeon’s. miracles percolate soil like mushrooms throwing spores on
the great plains. i am waiting in a dustbowl where the crust of the
earth is the skin of heated milk: an industrial complex: a woven grain
field. a knitted bucket of rain squinting into the distance has forsaken
bone for softer things but, i can’t do likewise and rinse this rash from
my hands. the air i grip boils like a shockwave of locusts. they interrupt
themselves like a jack-knifed truck: you never hear them. you might
stop to gawk at the fireworks; useless as the day that unchains them.
i have forsaken rain for the wave of a policeman who trips on in
unfathomable blue.
i am waiting alone in the rain where relevance is a soiled
dog barking at the funeral procession. the living pause for the dead
as they always have. this can’t be erased by sunshine. mud dries
itself without shaking like a dog and while money is laid on the
bar to buy freedom it rents a calliope of exhaustion. i am confident
a jury will never convict me. i am confident i have no peers. rain
collects at my feet like seed broadcast with a laugh and a scarecrow
is a pirate in a wheatfield and both are dead if brains are treasures
next to unbreathable air. on the open road i am counting atoms that
bounce off the asphalt; i am filtering clouds through a screen door.
a dead ocean travels far waiting for a bucket of rain and if i linger
in mud i won’t gleam or give birth: i can’t breathe in lava. the under-
taker has a wooden heart that promises miracles deeper than a neuro-
surgeon’s. miracles percolate soil like mushrooms throwing spores on
the great plains. i am waiting in a dustbowl where the crust of the
earth is the skin of heated milk: an industrial complex: a woven grain
field. a knitted bucket of rain squinting into the distance has forsaken
bone for softer things but, i can’t do likewise and rinse this rash from
my hands. the air i grip boils like a shockwave of locusts. they interrupt
themselves like a jack-knifed truck: you never hear them. you might
stop to gawk at the fireworks; useless as the day that unchains them.
i have forsaken rain for the wave of a policeman who trips on in
unfathomable blue.
Livio Farallo is co-founder/co-editor of Slipstream. His work has appeared in The Cardiff Review, The Cordite Review, Triggerfish, North Dakota Quarterly, The Blotter, and elsewhere. He lives in Niagara Falls, New York.
Cathy Socarras Ferrell
|
The acute accent slipped off the third syllable
of our family name. We flattened our vowels, verb conjugation, the sway in our hips. We dropped the last of the songs. Benny Moré and José Martí. Las palabras, the ghosts in our throats, red threads of saffron turn into gold. Alchemy in la olla. Abuelo’s recipe for ropa vieja. Smoked paprika. Loam and sepia. What color is the soil in Cuba? ¿Quién se apoderó de nuestra tierra? Abuela said she would never go back. Might as well be martian. A wedge of lime. Will you squeeze the juice into my tumbler? Rum and sugarcane. Turn this Coke into a Cuba Libre, please. No cigar. Dark hair and ojos verdes. I am a fake Cuban, but I can still roll my rs. |
Cathy Socarras Ferrell is a poet, writer, and educator of Cuban-French-Irish heritage. The granddaughter of immigrants, she finds inspiration in family story-telling, walking (anywhere), and the Sandhill cranes in her yard. Cathy enjoys playing with form, space, and the sounds of language. Her work can be found at Making Waves, Santa Clara Review, Novus Literary Arts Journal, Compulsive Reader, and other literary journals. She is an alumna of Tupelo Press’ 30/30 Project.
Alfred Fournier
Never Ending Summer Poem
for JRH
Before I wrote this poem that never ends
I wrote a thousand poems
that didn’t know how to begin.
It never occurred to us
that we were lovers then.
That Life was giving us
everything we could taste
and touch not because
Life liked us but because
that’s what Life does.
The interface between sorrow
and imagination
was the way you supposed
the story knew nothing about us,
that we were free
beyond the watchful eye of God
or whoever pens a story so big
that everyone in the book believes
they are the main character.
So we huddled
in your tiny basement room
trading secrets like baseball cards.
Creating collages
out of colorful pictures snipped
from early issues of Heavy Metal magazine.
Air brushed nude barbarians
by Richard Corben, green-skinned
alien women, a man’s head exploded
by laser fire
while we failed to notice
the brightness outside
your basement window
where a cardinal inscribed his signature
in song on the air.
Built a snow fort each winter
of adolescence
in your side yard.
By then Hustler had replaced
Heavy Metal.
Took off on bicycles
never to return
to the selves we’d been.
Your mother the dance instructor
never knowing where we went.
My mother crazy then dead.
We didn’t know about madness then
but we learned how to get high
with the best of them
carved our initials
Everywhere
thinking we could be
Forever like this.
But when they started construction
on 696 and high school
was pushing us toward the door
into so-called adulthood
we got scared.
You were scared
Mr. Anderson your drafting teacher
would fail you for skipping
but he was also the baseball coach
and had fallen in love
with your firebrand curveball
and made you do
a thousand pushups before homeroom
and called it good
and passed you with a D-minus
But I
was truly lost because
I thought I’d found something
climbing the mulberry in your backyard
or zipping on our bikes
past newly constructed skyscrapers
lining the highway in Southfield
miles and miles from home
and higher than we’d ever been
together.
But 696 terrified me
drawing its high arc
across I-75 so close to our neighborhood.
So you spray-painted our initials
across the new smooth surface
days before it opened to traffic
and I
cried like a baby cardinal
but only on the inside
‘cus we were high
above that dark pavement
pointing north just like a compass
across the night and still
the traffic flowed like adult blood
everyone hurrying past
with no Life at all
And we
both felt everything
we’d done disappearing
and what waited outside
the heavy double doors
of Dondero High
was nothing
like the Life we’d made
out of nothing
but each other’s company
and pocket change
spent on Hostess Cherry Pies
because
once
we were
the smallest children
Life could imagine for itself
and made our own
imagined world
and it was ours
and anything could happen
And you’d grin
and make me laugh
and it didn’t matter
that Mom was gone because
the color of the sky was summer
and the left handed cursive
you pulled across the page
was us
and everything
should have stayed like that forever
because the Life we discovered
was the world underneath the world
but we were teens, and so,
helpless
against the world’s pull
So I got a job at Taco Bell
and you at KFC and life
interceded
with its dull demands but even
Forty years later
both of us. know
that love is not like we imagine
and it happens sometimes
in the most familiar places
and the worlds we create
from our pale and urgent longing
from our innocence and grief
from our crazed imaginations
are closer to the truth of the world
than some punch-clock life
society hurls us into
like undereducated meat
lean muscle for the GNP
and it’s a good thing probably
that love we fail to recognize
is love untarnished
everlasting
And I hope you see
why this poem can never end
and why the cardinal
unnoticed from your window
had to sing
every day
of the neverending summer
we lived
but can never return to.
for JRH
Before I wrote this poem that never ends
I wrote a thousand poems
that didn’t know how to begin.
It never occurred to us
that we were lovers then.
That Life was giving us
everything we could taste
and touch not because
Life liked us but because
that’s what Life does.
The interface between sorrow
and imagination
was the way you supposed
the story knew nothing about us,
that we were free
beyond the watchful eye of God
or whoever pens a story so big
that everyone in the book believes
they are the main character.
So we huddled
in your tiny basement room
trading secrets like baseball cards.
Creating collages
out of colorful pictures snipped
from early issues of Heavy Metal magazine.
Air brushed nude barbarians
by Richard Corben, green-skinned
alien women, a man’s head exploded
by laser fire
while we failed to notice
the brightness outside
your basement window
where a cardinal inscribed his signature
in song on the air.
Built a snow fort each winter
of adolescence
in your side yard.
By then Hustler had replaced
Heavy Metal.
Took off on bicycles
never to return
to the selves we’d been.
Your mother the dance instructor
never knowing where we went.
My mother crazy then dead.
We didn’t know about madness then
but we learned how to get high
with the best of them
carved our initials
Everywhere
thinking we could be
Forever like this.
But when they started construction
on 696 and high school
was pushing us toward the door
into so-called adulthood
we got scared.
You were scared
Mr. Anderson your drafting teacher
would fail you for skipping
but he was also the baseball coach
and had fallen in love
with your firebrand curveball
and made you do
a thousand pushups before homeroom
and called it good
and passed you with a D-minus
But I
was truly lost because
I thought I’d found something
climbing the mulberry in your backyard
or zipping on our bikes
past newly constructed skyscrapers
lining the highway in Southfield
miles and miles from home
and higher than we’d ever been
together.
But 696 terrified me
drawing its high arc
across I-75 so close to our neighborhood.
So you spray-painted our initials
across the new smooth surface
days before it opened to traffic
and I
cried like a baby cardinal
but only on the inside
‘cus we were high
above that dark pavement
pointing north just like a compass
across the night and still
the traffic flowed like adult blood
everyone hurrying past
with no Life at all
And we
both felt everything
we’d done disappearing
and what waited outside
the heavy double doors
of Dondero High
was nothing
like the Life we’d made
out of nothing
but each other’s company
and pocket change
spent on Hostess Cherry Pies
because
once
we were
the smallest children
Life could imagine for itself
and made our own
imagined world
and it was ours
and anything could happen
And you’d grin
and make me laugh
and it didn’t matter
that Mom was gone because
the color of the sky was summer
and the left handed cursive
you pulled across the page
was us
and everything
should have stayed like that forever
because the Life we discovered
was the world underneath the world
but we were teens, and so,
helpless
against the world’s pull
So I got a job at Taco Bell
and you at KFC and life
interceded
with its dull demands but even
Forty years later
both of us. know
that love is not like we imagine
and it happens sometimes
in the most familiar places
and the worlds we create
from our pale and urgent longing
from our innocence and grief
from our crazed imaginations
are closer to the truth of the world
than some punch-clock life
society hurls us into
like undereducated meat
lean muscle for the GNP
and it’s a good thing probably
that love we fail to recognize
is love untarnished
everlasting
And I hope you see
why this poem can never end
and why the cardinal
unnoticed from your window
had to sing
every day
of the neverending summer
we lived
but can never return to.
Alfred Fournier is a writer and community volunteer in Phoenix, Arizona. He runs poetry workshops for a local nonprofit. His poetry collection, A Summons on the Wind (2023, Kelsay Books), was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. His poems have appeared in Hole in the Head Review, Third Wednesday, Cagibi, Gyroscope Review, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. He lives on the edge of the Sonoran Desert with his remarkable wife and daughter and two birdwatching cats. alfredfournier.com.
Danielle Garland
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The Handshake Seems to Choreograph Itself
THE MOTHER stands with her daughter at the entrance of the first grade art gallery, waits for the others to emerge from the November drizzle, makes small talk with the teacher, places her umbrella in the corner. Soon enough, THE MAN and THE WOMAN arrive. [THE MOTHER dries her nervous palms subtly on her jeans] THE MOTHER considers that THE WOMAN is more reserved than she looks in pictures: one hand in her pocket and the other on THE MAN’S arm. I’ve heard so much [THE MOTHER’S arm begins to lift and extend] so much about you! [There seems to be a brief look of surprise, at THE MOTHER’S hand reaching, at THE WOMAN’S own hand leaving THE MAN’S arm, each crossing the space between them] Thanks for coming. [Their palms and fingers meet with equal pressure, neither dainty nor dominating] Families filter in under the fluorescent lights as THE MAN moves his hand to the small of THE WOMAN’S back. [Rain drips from THE WOMAN’S jacket as their hands rise and fall together] THE MAN asks Where should [the hands loosen and fall in unison] where should we go first? THE MOTHER gestures toward the daughter, who has headed over to the portrait of precariously stacked tea cups. [Already THE MAN’S hand is intertwined with THE WOMAN’S] THE MOTHER feels the breath she’d been holding exit her [the room is cool and THE MOTHER’S hands are clasped together now] and she leads the way to the daughter. |
Danielle Garland (she/her) is a writer, science communicator, and artist from southern Appalachia who spends time thinking about grief, the intimacy of movement, and the fragility of narrative. Her work has been published or is upcoming in The Rumpus, Ninth Letter, The Inflectionist Review, Empty House Press, and others. Find her on Instagram @_daniellegarland
Ian Hall
We Still Kill the Old Way
What a fateful contraption, the body. There are reckonings
performed in the inner ear to keep you upright, exorcisms
done to stop the cells from sickling, the blood
from petering out. It must be forensically
scrupled. & in its functions it abides
a friar’s one-mindedness. But there is also marvelment—God in the means
of production. It intuits: no one has to teach you to read
the braille of the nipple. & in a breeze we can learn to sign the lingo of the hard
of hearing. A man could tell you tungstenfaced I’m not fat
I’m tactically wide & you wouldn’t need to draw out the blood
pressure cuff to figure his truthfulness. You’d just see it
in the way he has his pants torqued on. & even the measliest of us is his own
paterfamilias—every fart confected in-house. There is no need
for prescription hirelings to muck out the dogtrot
that runs from diaphragm to rectum. Kidneys, the gallbladder, are there to deal
with the impishness of uric acid, to render it
aloof & alkaline. But the soul is no custodian. There’re occasions when you’ll file
a quitclaim, deed yourself to others. & they’ll do you like those pages from the New
International Bible with the daylight’s pinched out of them. In havoc, they’ll garrison
you, let you grimace them through. But after the peace
has been sued for, the trebuchets razed for banquet tables, they’ll make off with everything
that’s not hammered down. & liegeless you’ll be left
to repatriate, tasked with selfcraft from the floorboards
up. & the delegates that come to congress with you will be Heaven
Hill, sweet-tar cigarillos, & foodstuffs all powdered
& pestilent. Until some afternoon you waken & within your skull there is a trampling
like Exodus. You pull down the sheets & see your legs
kudzued with varicose, your wife
beater ripped to tourniquets. & in your surrender
colored rags you’ll gimp to the mirror, grimed over, & reckon
whether it’s you or the lot of them that deserve credit
for this walking Golgotha.
What a fateful contraption, the body. There are reckonings
performed in the inner ear to keep you upright, exorcisms
done to stop the cells from sickling, the blood
from petering out. It must be forensically
scrupled. & in its functions it abides
a friar’s one-mindedness. But there is also marvelment—God in the means
of production. It intuits: no one has to teach you to read
the braille of the nipple. & in a breeze we can learn to sign the lingo of the hard
of hearing. A man could tell you tungstenfaced I’m not fat
I’m tactically wide & you wouldn’t need to draw out the blood
pressure cuff to figure his truthfulness. You’d just see it
in the way he has his pants torqued on. & even the measliest of us is his own
paterfamilias—every fart confected in-house. There is no need
for prescription hirelings to muck out the dogtrot
that runs from diaphragm to rectum. Kidneys, the gallbladder, are there to deal
with the impishness of uric acid, to render it
aloof & alkaline. But the soul is no custodian. There’re occasions when you’ll file
a quitclaim, deed yourself to others. & they’ll do you like those pages from the New
International Bible with the daylight’s pinched out of them. In havoc, they’ll garrison
you, let you grimace them through. But after the peace
has been sued for, the trebuchets razed for banquet tables, they’ll make off with everything
that’s not hammered down. & liegeless you’ll be left
to repatriate, tasked with selfcraft from the floorboards
up. & the delegates that come to congress with you will be Heaven
Hill, sweet-tar cigarillos, & foodstuffs all powdered
& pestilent. Until some afternoon you waken & within your skull there is a trampling
like Exodus. You pull down the sheets & see your legs
kudzued with varicose, your wife
beater ripped to tourniquets. & in your surrender
colored rags you’ll gimp to the mirror, grimed over, & reckon
whether it’s you or the lot of them that deserve credit
for this walking Golgotha.
Ian Hall was born & reared in the coalfields of Eastern Kentucky. He is currently a PhD candidate in Poetry at Florida State University. His work is featured in Narrative, Mississippi Review, The Journal, Southeast Review, & elsewhere. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
Eva Heisler
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The Sylvia Plath Machine
–after "Sheep in Fog" x 3 The coat steps off into snow. Coaches or trees regard me sadly. The last to know. The coat leaves a trail of garlic and kielbasa. O chatty ghost in plaid. You watch, before you leave, horror films. All night the night is shrieking, and your daughter laughs at lazy jump scares. My ears hold sediment. The far woods muffle purpose. They threaten to let me through to a game of hoops, fatherless, furious dribbles. The coat wobbles off into headache. Referees or flagpoles regard me with suspicion. The first to quit. O flat-footed ghost. You mock, before you disappear, Freddy Krueger, and me. All night the night is the last, and your daughter checks under the bed. My ears are Pink Pearl erasers. Fog-eaten, the far trees are factory-made. Their collapse bars my way to the grieving child, coatless, fierce. The coat, unlucky, strays into zeroes. Ushers or streetlamps disregard me. The first to dissolve. I cannot add. The coat trails fortune cookies. O comic clairvoyant. You convert, before you die, dreams into decimals. All night the night is counting, and your daughter collects empties. The far thicket camouflages a wolfhound. Its howl bewilders the search for a daughter's soul carried off in a coat pocket. Small. Inconspicuous. |
All the Paintings Say This, It Is the Only Thing They Say
–after Ed Ruscha's The End paintings In gothic script: The End. In silent-film soot: The End. Measure the time it takes for non-colors to shift and someone to say "these are the dumbest paintings I've ever seen" and another to reply "stupid is brave," but it isn't really painting they're talking about. On my neck, breath. On the wall in scratched old-movie grays: The End. In the end, nothing more dramatic than moonlight, and the time it takes to register "the end" is the time it takes for the peal of a bell to travel five kilometers and a character to fall in love. This is where we came in. |
Eva Heisler has published poems most recently in Colorado Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Los Angeles Review, and Seneca Review. Honors include the Poetry Society of America's Emily Dickinson Award and fellowships at MacDowell and Millay Arts.
Candice M. Kelsey
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I Knew a Father
after Samuel Ace I knew a father who was a son who was a brother who was an orphan who married a woman who was a daughter who was a sister who wanted a daughter who was not me the only sister who knew a mother who preferred a daughter with longer hair or a daughter who liked dresses who didn’t cut pretty dolls’ hair who didn’t draw haunted houses where ghouls demanded sandwiches where ghosts did chest presses who read Arnold’s Bodybuilding for Men who had free reign over the girl who hid in the linen closet who lived like a punching bag like a receptacle like a girl who knew a father who threw her into the porcelain umbrella stand who used a bamboo walking stick to make his point who left the girl who was me with skin like a forest floor like a pattern of black rain frogs coldness knew (a mother who hated) her mother who hated her daughter who preferred cleaning her plate and asking for seconds but played by the rules of dieting games for a mother who moved the goal posts who punted the ephedrine pills who tallied the calories for a daughter who needed protection who knew a father who found her on the couch with a boy she knew a father whose breath was whiskey whose eyes were distant who slapped her face (who pinned me to the carpet like a girl who would never tell) |
Ecstatic Ghosts
My belly is the Savannah River
I mean to say my belly is soft & rippling
but the river captures it
makes my point prettier
Stretch marks
I mean to say the map’s perforated line
in the river divides me
like Georgia from South Carolina
Did you know I was alive before I gave birth
I was alive with abdominal muscles intact
but then my belly filled with song
Ruins
I mean to say my belly was a venue
for Ella Fitzgerald & Cab Calloway & Louis Armstrong
back in the day
Today
I mean to say my hips hold a shallow pond
abutting the scraggly woods
Have you visited Palmetto Park & Pond
on Carolina Springs Road
I know I hold no interesting history
but something there is about a woman
emptied & transcendent
Night
I mean to say a small patch of lawn in North Augusta
once held a thousand capacity dance hall
but WWII birthed its need for men & the land
was sold to a trailer park
My belly is the Savannah River
I mean to say my belly is soft & rippling
but the river captures it
makes my point prettier
Stretch marks
I mean to say the map’s perforated line
in the river divides me
like Georgia from South Carolina
Did you know I was alive before I gave birth
I was alive with abdominal muscles intact
but then my belly filled with song
Ruins
I mean to say my belly was a venue
for Ella Fitzgerald & Cab Calloway & Louis Armstrong
back in the day
Today
I mean to say my hips hold a shallow pond
abutting the scraggly woods
Have you visited Palmetto Park & Pond
on Carolina Springs Road
I know I hold no interesting history
but something there is about a woman
emptied & transcendent
Night
I mean to say a small patch of lawn in North Augusta
once held a thousand capacity dance hall
but WWII birthed its need for men & the land
was sold to a trailer park
Candice M. Kelsey [she/her] is a writer and educator living in both Los Angeles and Georgia. A finalist for a Best Microfiction 2023 and longlisted by Wigleaf's Top 50 Short Fiction in 2024, she is the author of seven books; her latest chapbook POSTCARDS from the MASTHEAD has just been released with boats against the current. She mentors an incarcerated writer through PEN America and reads for The Los Angeles Review. Please find her @Feed_Me_Poetry and https://www.candicemkelseypoet.com/.
Frances Klein
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Triptych
I: The Son
Early daylight through
the tower windows swaddling
each dust mote,
gentle scent of wood shavings,
of lamp oil,
a thousand-thousand
cast off inventions
in the toy chest,
the murmured waves
of father working in the next room
pulling him down toward
sleep each night.
Of course he never wished
for escape, not even once.
II: The Father
To be a father
of invention is to reach for
divinity, an act that demands
hubris and humility coexist,
uneasy bedmates.
Which trait offers its own
offspring up on the altar
of trial and error?
Which wails when the first feather kisses
a wave?
Which begins gathering
data for the next attempt?
III: The Sun
It is possible merely to exist
and still share blame.
It is possible not to know
the role you play
in the tragedies of others.
It is possible to rise each morning
intending to change, wax, wane,
and yet lay down each night
having done nothing but watch
others move in ways
you never will.
I: The Son
Early daylight through
the tower windows swaddling
each dust mote,
gentle scent of wood shavings,
of lamp oil,
a thousand-thousand
cast off inventions
in the toy chest,
the murmured waves
of father working in the next room
pulling him down toward
sleep each night.
Of course he never wished
for escape, not even once.
II: The Father
To be a father
of invention is to reach for
divinity, an act that demands
hubris and humility coexist,
uneasy bedmates.
Which trait offers its own
offspring up on the altar
of trial and error?
Which wails when the first feather kisses
a wave?
Which begins gathering
data for the next attempt?
III: The Sun
It is possible merely to exist
and still share blame.
It is possible not to know
the role you play
in the tragedies of others.
It is possible to rise each morning
intending to change, wax, wane,
and yet lay down each night
having done nothing but watch
others move in ways
you never will.
Frances Klein (she/her) is an Alaskan poet and teacher. She is the 2022 winner of the Robert Golden Poetry Prize. Klein is the author of several poetry chapbooks, including “(Text) Messages from The Angel Gabriel” (Gnashing Teeth Press, 2024). Her full length collection Another Life is forthcoming in 2025. Klein’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Best Microfictions, The Harvard Advocate, The Atticus Review, HAD, and others. She is on twitter @fklein907
Elizabeth Joy Levinson
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Hello, may I speak with the homeowner?
My name is AJ and I was wondering if you are interested in selling your property? Yes, I mean your home. Did you realize your roof is nearly 30 years old, that's the longest most roofs are warranted for? Were your taxes higher this year? I saw some tags on your neighbor's garage, is it still safe here? Do you still live here? I noticed some cracks in your facade, and a rat in your garden. Did your husband ever get around to finishing the basement? Can you keep up with your neighbor's improvements, fish out all the weeds on the fence line? The city is considering a violation for your flowers, they are all a little too loud and tall. Listen, I know at night you lay awake and imagine giving everything away. I’ve seen you standing in your yard in the morning, coffee in hand, feet planted firm to the ground, not knowing which way to go next. You can leave it all behind. We’ll take it all off your hands. Once, you watched a man fire a gun from the corner of your block, let’s make sure it won’t happen again. We’ll take care of everything. Don’t you want that, for once in your small and trying life, for someone else to clean the glass out of the stained carpet, for someone else to take the wheel? |
Elizabeth Joy Levinson is a biology teacher in Chicago. Her work has been published in Whale Road Review, SWWIM, Cobra Milk, Anti-Heroin Chic, and others. She is the author of two chapbooks, As Wild Animals (Dancing Girl Press) and Running Aground (Finishing Line Press), and her full length collection, Uncomfortable Ecologies, is available from Unsolicited Press.
Gessica Sakamoto Martini
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The Woman and the Man
The woman stands still on the train tracks. Next to her is a man and a gray afternoon. The woman’s name is the colour of a rainbow, but the man dreams in black. White smoke comes out of a train smokestack and fills the air. There is a brief moment when one cannot tell whether a train is drawing near or pulling away or whether the woman should have stepped away before or after having listened to the man state adamantly that the train was getting smaller and smaller. For the woman, it is hard to recall the first time she felt the ground shake beneath her feet, just as it is now. It has been so for too long. Later, only the man remains standing. The man swears it was impossible for him to save the woman, even to distinguish her from the train. Both, he says, were just black shadows cast on the ground by a white sun. |
Gessica Sakamoto Martini’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Ballast Journal, Unbroken Journal, Crab Apple Literary, Hex Literary, Red Ogre Review, Gone Lawn, FlashFlood (National Flash Fiction Day), Shoreline of Infinity, and others. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Durham University (UK) and is a Fiction Editor at Orion’s Belt magazine. She currently lives in Italy and can be found on X at @GJMartini.
Cole McInerney
Is There a Bug In My Ear or a Motorbike On the Highway
I want you to call back and tell me right now
whether the market near the Elora Quarry
still sells Libby’s brown beans----------
If not then I’ll get Clark’s from the Saveway
and make them on your stovetop when I get there
tonight but for now I’m driving this longhaul
without the proper license as a favour for a friend
and something cool I saw earlier I wanted to tell you
about that I’ll forget if I don’t say it now:
Those Union Pacific cargo trains are empty
I could see right through the metal ventilation holes
so you were right all along and one other thing
my mom said she had a dream two nights ago about
you being alright with us selling the farm
which informed her to not feel so sad about it
& that’s informing me now knowing you can’t
call back and this message will sit unheard
until I get to your kitchen tonight and delete it
and I’ll have to stop calling your home line
because we had to sell the farm Ray, we didn’t want to
but we did and if I see it tonight for the final time
I’ll try to grab ahold of the air in there
I want you to call back and tell me right now
whether the market near the Elora Quarry
still sells Libby’s brown beans----------
If not then I’ll get Clark’s from the Saveway
and make them on your stovetop when I get there
tonight but for now I’m driving this longhaul
without the proper license as a favour for a friend
and something cool I saw earlier I wanted to tell you
about that I’ll forget if I don’t say it now:
Those Union Pacific cargo trains are empty
I could see right through the metal ventilation holes
so you were right all along and one other thing
my mom said she had a dream two nights ago about
you being alright with us selling the farm
which informed her to not feel so sad about it
& that’s informing me now knowing you can’t
call back and this message will sit unheard
until I get to your kitchen tonight and delete it
and I’ll have to stop calling your home line
because we had to sell the farm Ray, we didn’t want to
but we did and if I see it tonight for the final time
I’ll try to grab ahold of the air in there
Cole McInerney is a poet from Niagara Falls, Ontario. His poems have appeared in White Wall Review, Echolocation Magazine, and Action, Spectacle.
Meghan Miraglia
Watching
Who is the girl on the screen?
Where does she go when she is sleeping?
Does she take her body to bed?
Does her body bleed while she dreams?
Do all girls smile like that
when it happens?
Do all boys stay angry?
What if my body is not an hourglass?
What if my body
is a body? What then?
I look around, but the other girls
are looking at the screen – mouths gaped
like zeroes, like doors swung open,
like dots over “I”s.
I’ve seen it before, but they don’t know that –
don’t know how it felt to watch those boys
become men, those girls become women
while my mother was watching me watching,
her hands folding the shirts I have started to outgrow.
My body is not an hourglass. My body is a body. What now?
The nurses answer questions
written anonymously, drawing folded slips
from a brown paper bag. They
look at each other
and smile.
They make us repeat the words
until we stop flinching.
But I don’t learn any of it until later,
when the television is off and my mother
isn’t there, watching. I’m with a friend, sleeping over at her house.
She was absent that day, didn’t see how
we’ll drop, knocked over, cups of crimson
overturned – shredded lilies, sunk.
Her mother and mine speak on the phone,
speaking in low voices. I’m in her bathroom, remembering
the cartoon girls, their faces round and white,
like saucers of milk.
She crouches on the other side of the door, her breaths
short, chaste.
My mother tells my father,
and I am no longer a girl:
her voice shapes the threshold I cross
without looking back, or forward.
They pick me up. They take me home. My mother
takes me to our bathroom, places me before our sink.
Her hands rinse, wring until the water runs clear.
Her hands reach for the cabinet: her reflection presses its mouth
into a line. Together, we dress the wound.
Who is the girl on the screen?
Where does she go when she is sleeping?
Does she take her body to bed?
Does her body bleed while she dreams?
Do all girls smile like that
when it happens?
Do all boys stay angry?
What if my body is not an hourglass?
What if my body
is a body? What then?
I look around, but the other girls
are looking at the screen – mouths gaped
like zeroes, like doors swung open,
like dots over “I”s.
I’ve seen it before, but they don’t know that –
don’t know how it felt to watch those boys
become men, those girls become women
while my mother was watching me watching,
her hands folding the shirts I have started to outgrow.
My body is not an hourglass. My body is a body. What now?
The nurses answer questions
written anonymously, drawing folded slips
from a brown paper bag. They
look at each other
and smile.
They make us repeat the words
until we stop flinching.
But I don’t learn any of it until later,
when the television is off and my mother
isn’t there, watching. I’m with a friend, sleeping over at her house.
She was absent that day, didn’t see how
we’ll drop, knocked over, cups of crimson
overturned – shredded lilies, sunk.
Her mother and mine speak on the phone,
speaking in low voices. I’m in her bathroom, remembering
the cartoon girls, their faces round and white,
like saucers of milk.
She crouches on the other side of the door, her breaths
short, chaste.
My mother tells my father,
and I am no longer a girl:
her voice shapes the threshold I cross
without looking back, or forward.
They pick me up. They take me home. My mother
takes me to our bathroom, places me before our sink.
Her hands rinse, wring until the water runs clear.
Her hands reach for the cabinet: her reflection presses its mouth
into a line. Together, we dress the wound.
Meghan Miraglia is a poet, essayist, artist and educator. She is an MFA student at Boston University.
henry 7. reneau, jr.
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It is dangerous to read Soul on Ice .
It is dangerous to read Soul on Ice . While I was cleaning my Glock , my niggaz are frontpage headlined as another death by racist pig infection , and as I listened to “Chill Out (Things Gonna Change)” by John Lee Hooker and Santana , in trepidation and awe , my mind echoed a wolf’s howl of hungry rage , annihilated every white racist cop in retroaction . Now I am a Black Identity Extremist and vilified and I bide my time as quietly as a fuse , and Amerikkka is ablaze . The urban ghetto landscape is riotous with the wildfire of comeuppance . The circular rhetoric of official spokespersons goes up in smoke . I am the cause . I am a revolution of Molotov cocktails . My body is a Snap-On wrench in the gears of the System . I reach out in ultimatum ; my hands are grenades , AK-47s , and sniper fire . My righteous indignation is indomitably lethal . Even my selective mercy transmutes +justments as fair play to the teleprompter stream of ticker-tape across the bottom of TV screens . I will not , cannot stop myself . It is dangerous to read Soul on Ice . |
Note : This poem was written in response to Margaret Atwood’s “It is dangerous to read newspapers,” which she wrote in protest of the Vietnam War, as well as my protest of the current deluge of book bannings currently re-history-ing Amerikkka, because a deliberately uninformed constituency is a prequel to slavery.
henry 7. reneau, jr. does not Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, Snapchat, or Instagram. It is not that he is scared of change, or stuck fast in the past; instead, he has learned from experience that the crack pipe kills. His work is published in Superstition Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Zone 3; South Florida Poetry Journal, and New Note Poetry. His work has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
Cindy Savett
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In The Rough
“I require a You to become; becoming I, I say You” Martin Buber Growling hour when October becomes twilight, my soul’s spiny hedge sprouts up beneath the mirrored sky it’s Your infinity I see as I stare at the reflection. I cry out in fear scrabble among nubs and leaves (bloodied palms, cheeks scratched) for a diamond-head hammer to sliver the glass. You make to seize my wrist, flesh out that We are – I scream Your name, tear my dress with my milk teeth, overcome before the everlasting threshold. Vertical Divider
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Sacrifice
Siren’s been sounding since late afternoon – streets are vacant, the last family moved on three months ago. I release the weight of absence from my front steps, raise up my ram’s horn sweep yesterday’s words off the porch, it is too late to be old I say to the night air as it bends aside to let me pass. I wind my way through Your currents touch the pressure of Your light on my tongue, this incessant wail strafes my ears, hour to hour startles Your starlight in my breath. I enter a dark room, lean heavily on the sonorous past, waning quarter moon brazenly rusts beneath the prayer shawl thrown across my mirror. |
Cindy Savett is the author of Child in the Road (Parlor Press), The Breath (BlazeVOX books) and the chapbooks: The Story of my Eyes, Battle for the Metal Kiss, Rachel: In the Temporary Mist of Prayer, and Overtures of Survival. Her work is also found in the anthology, Challenges for the Delusional, and is forthcoming in Poetry is Bread Anthology.
Jacob Schepers
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A Game of Telephone Is All I’m After Here, Honest
Among my host of favorite words, my favorite is chthonic. In telling you this you know almost everything you need ever know about me. In telling you this I am calling you my friend. In telling you this I am engineering my own demise. Halfway to becoming my truest form. Halfway to Rumpelstiltskin. Halfway to folklore. Most of the way to fairytale. The reason why this word is the favorite among favorites is known only to me. It isn’t yours to know. It’s not that I’m not willing to tell you. But the underlying reason for not telling you is one and the same of meaninglessness. Of incommensurability. The plural for doppelgänger is doppelgänger. There’s something of a noncount noun. Not being able to know how many there are. Naturally. And by definition. Of course. Natürlich und genau. Any poetic utterance ought to be a nonce word. An ounce of my blood fills a vial I keep on your side of the bed. Or something like that. Another engineering of my own demise. A pound of flesh can be scraped from my topmost layer of skin. Over time and only if you have the patience. I have a punishment demanded of me. A vengeance exacted and to exact. It’s an ongoing condition this business and I’m a B-theorist about time. In truth I’m a sucker for crunched consonant clusters. That’s not my rationale but an aside. A trail of breadcrumbs. Most likely sourdough because a focaccia seems daunting and sounds a mess and feels flimsy. Another thing flimsy is me. My whimsy. Chthonic is to chronic as passage is to savage. I’m trying to tell you something. I’m trying to tell you that the category of the chthonic is where I deem my tongue picks up language. From some otherwise unreachable pool. Some otherwise unteachable tool. A dog’s tongue picks up water from its bowl using a similar anatomical mechanism. It reveals itself in such moments to be a hidden appendage. So may we all. |
Jacob Schepers is the author of the poetry collection A Bundle of Careful Compromises (Outriders Poetry Project, 2014), the chapbook Connections & Choreography (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and the micro-chap Shipwreck Abstracted (Ghost City Press, 2024). He is an editor of ballast, teaches at the University of Notre Dame, and lives in South Bend, Indiana. More at www.jacobschepers.com and @JacobSchepers.
Mark Todd
A Complex from an Irish Dentist
I don't recall shame, or a second guess,
only the pink toothbrush on the lady's desk,
and a herd of adults on the other side of the table
acting as if I'd asked for more potatoes in a famine.
I didn't know what I was supposed to ask for
or even want in this place that wasn't our house.
I took the blue brush home, like she said,
and planted it on our bathroom shelf like a seed
guaranteed to grow on all kinds of terrain,
and now in any exercise of choice,
it's like standing in the ditch of a country road
matted in goose grass, stinging nettles,
watching the cows stumble along in all directions,
waiting for the nod from the farmer.
I don't recall shame, or a second guess,
only the pink toothbrush on the lady's desk,
and a herd of adults on the other side of the table
acting as if I'd asked for more potatoes in a famine.
I didn't know what I was supposed to ask for
or even want in this place that wasn't our house.
I took the blue brush home, like she said,
and planted it on our bathroom shelf like a seed
guaranteed to grow on all kinds of terrain,
and now in any exercise of choice,
it's like standing in the ditch of a country road
matted in goose grass, stinging nettles,
watching the cows stumble along in all directions,
waiting for the nod from the farmer.
Mark Todd was born and raised in Northern Ireland and currently lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast where he first studied creative writing. He has since lived and worked in many different countries, including England, France, Switzerland, and South Korea, and now teaches for Saint Paul Public Schools. His work has recently appeared in The Nasiona.
Marceline White
in which a young bull in Baltimore is actually a bull
the bull escaped the slaughterhouse, leapt the wire fence on
Pennsylvania Avenue/ galloped along North Avenue, past the 12
O’Clock boys popping wheelies on their dirt bikes, past bow-tied men
from the Nation of Islam selling bean pies on the median strip/darted from
art students carrying stretched
canvasses to class, dashed down Charles, bolted by the restaurant
selling Lake Trout and a chicken box/ raced for freedom/ for the feel of the wind at his
back/
for a view beyond the pen/his time was running out, so what was left to lose/ that wasn’t
already lost?
Police gave chase through Midtown/ fired 8 rounds/he fell,
dead in the street/ onlookers stood stunned/last week sage
burned to honor the city’s 227th homicide victim on this spot where
today,
a pool of red grows wider.
the bull escaped the slaughterhouse, leapt the wire fence on
Pennsylvania Avenue/ galloped along North Avenue, past the 12
O’Clock boys popping wheelies on their dirt bikes, past bow-tied men
from the Nation of Islam selling bean pies on the median strip/darted from
art students carrying stretched
canvasses to class, dashed down Charles, bolted by the restaurant
selling Lake Trout and a chicken box/ raced for freedom/ for the feel of the wind at his
back/
for a view beyond the pen/his time was running out, so what was left to lose/ that wasn’t
already lost?
Police gave chase through Midtown/ fired 8 rounds/he fell,
dead in the street/ onlookers stood stunned/last week sage
burned to honor the city’s 227th homicide victim on this spot where
today,
a pool of red grows wider.
Marceline White is a Baltimore-based writer and activist. Marceline’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Ekphrastic Review, trampset, Prime Number, The Orchard Review, The Indianapolis Review, Atticus Review, and others. Fellowships and conferences include Aspen Words, Tupelo Truchas. A 2022 and 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee, when not writing, Marceline can be found serving her two cats and telling her son to text her when he arrives at the party. Read more at www.marcelinewhitewrites.com.
David Earl Williams
DEAR MR.-MRS. UNNATURAL,
when you say— Mystic
it always makes me think of―
Connecticut
and Connecticut makes me think of―
Julia Roberts— who is from Georgia―
and Sounds like it
what was she doing in Connecticut?
well, making a movie/ she’s a movie star’s / sister
which is a kind of business
like politics
or priesting
Anyway,
all that’s old, Old News now
except
i was a bowl of soapy water ONCE
and YOU you were a beard, believe it or not,
DEAR MYTHICAL- UNNATURAL
MYSTICAL READER-LISTENER
and like it or not, we are related, just so
cousins, once removed
by way of razor strap and straight razor
and, you will recall,
we were all of us working then
for the mirror ( just as we do today… )
it was a family operation
and Julia Roberts
well, she was the mirror’s sister
and them’s the breaks, kids
as usual,for someone somewhere
it’s all magic, n for you n me— ? well, we’re something else
a something that, admired or not, just keeps shaving the differences
and maintaining the accounts, like living banks— or libraries
with arms and legs… magic or not
when you say— Mystic
it always makes me think of―
Connecticut
and Connecticut makes me think of―
Julia Roberts— who is from Georgia―
and Sounds like it
what was she doing in Connecticut?
well, making a movie/ she’s a movie star’s / sister
which is a kind of business
like politics
or priesting
Anyway,
all that’s old, Old News now
except
i was a bowl of soapy water ONCE
and YOU you were a beard, believe it or not,
DEAR MYTHICAL- UNNATURAL
MYSTICAL READER-LISTENER
and like it or not, we are related, just so
cousins, once removed
by way of razor strap and straight razor
and, you will recall,
we were all of us working then
for the mirror ( just as we do today… )
it was a family operation
and Julia Roberts
well, she was the mirror’s sister
and them’s the breaks, kids
as usual,for someone somewhere
it’s all magic, n for you n me— ? well, we’re something else
a something that, admired or not, just keeps shaving the differences
and maintaining the accounts, like living banks— or libraries
with arms and legs… magic or not
David Earl Williams, The Absurdilachian, writer of absurdist anti-dada dadaist poetry, is a grandson of Newton Fyffe, a 1920s graduate of Leavenworth @ Kansas with federal degrees in Moonshining and Poverty Studies―which might be why come D'Earl to inherit the habit of courting "the spirits" and peddling derangements. Earl's chapbook: EVERYBODY LIVES HERE ONE NIGHT AT A TIME, Hillbilly DaDa Poetry ( for sure as hell rollin in the aisles, barkin at the moon DaDa-Dogmatic times... ) is @ https://wetcementpress.com
Robert Wilson
Tug
The Eastermoon crosses the intercostal waterway between Don Pedro Island and the mainland at Panama Street. Painters dressed like white historians and roofers drinking from plastic bottles of Propel ride in cargo vans each morning to the island, shuttle back at 4:00 o’clock. Cable grease stains the crew’s green florescent safety vests, and diesel exhaust lifts like onyx smoke black on every trip. Eight people stayed on Don Pedro during Hurricane Ian, nine if you count the homeless walk-on. Her body was her closet where she wore all her clothes, night gowns and scarfs, a purple knit hat and black leggings. She squeezed her lit cigarette between a set of knuckles in the chain link fence surrounding the auxiliary fuel tanks, a gift to the spirits asking for kindness, before she disembarked. I watched from my pilot house the size of a confessional. She was in no hurry. She knew to run when the Shrieks are over the big water, not when they are on top of you. She was my last passenger of the day, and tomorrow would be the first one to discover our new planet, liquid earth As she stepped off the gangway across the sunsalt and into the mangrove forest, plumes of cirrus frozen in the sky, I marked her as STL—stateless-on the manifest that was rolled inside a repurposed PVC pneumatic tube. Regulations prohibit the release of personal information to the public in ships’ manifests. If she died the Coast Guard would know where, but not who, she was. I’d like to think someone would find her floating on an inland spillway, her clothes spread out like Ophelia, but instead of flowers, holding solitary ground bees she rescued from certain death. |
Robert Wilson lives beside the ocean in Cape Haze, Florida, where much of his poetry is inspired. His latest chapbook, Too Much of Water, was released by Bottlecap Press this spring.
Alexander Lazarus Wolff
|
After You Left
I put the engagement ring in the drawer next to the condoms. Then, I went to JR’s Bar when the residue of the day had drained away and the night was deep enough to swim in, yet not deep enough to drown. The weak leakage of the moon dripped down the skyscrapers and the thud of the techno music seemed to bend time, blared louder as I got closer and went inside. I downed a shot of vodka. But then, a glance of my sullen reflection in a window brought me back to that night when you crammed all the boxes in your car, kissed me, and said I love you in a voice so quiet I still can’t hear it. The city was near silent for once, only a train’s lone horn miles away, the heat of our bodies, the scent of your hair as we hugged, and me saying I love you back… But then, I came back to the feeling of a new guy’s hands on my waist, to lights bending off the walls, and the song saying How did it end up like this? I let the guy buy me a shot, leaned into him, let him grab my hand, guide me out. Vertical Divider
|
Ars Poetica
Gold splinters the sky, haloes the clouds. I waste hours staring at a page, trying to craft a line that encompasses both the gold in the sky and the loss of it. If I can string together letters well enough, I can almost justify laboring over which or that, which is to say that I’ve compressed my life to such minutiae it’s barely there, a pinprick in the tapestry of the mind. Light filters through the city, drains away and the sky becomes a pool of ink from which no words can escape. On the sidewalk, a group of doctors go home, perhaps having saved a life today. Meanwhile, I think of synonyms for dissatisfaction, a metonym for the abstraction of misery, or whether it’s best to end a line with a verb, propelling the reader forward. Outside, the world glides by: stars puncture the night; wisps of clouds hang threadbare; people turn over in bed. Tomorrow’s light will rush in, and I’ll have had only a night where I’ve weighed each word, crafted a scene to the rhythm of three semicolons and thirteen couplets. My problem still stands: I can know gold, but I still can’t find a better word than dissatisfaction to make my misery poetic. If a line could set my mind right like a broken arm in a splint, I still haven’t found it. And though the best similes come from surprise, I’m not surprised that I’m still lingering on each letter, on how even the best poems seem to end where they started: with gold, with fading. |
Alexander Lazarus Wolff's writing appears online in The Best American Poetry website and Poets.org, and in the North American Review, Pithead Chapel, and elsewhere. A recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, he teaches and studies at the University of Houston, where he holds the Inprint MD Anderson Foundation Fellowship and is on the editorial board for Gulf Coast. He lives in Houston, Texas. You can read more of his work at www.alexanderlazaruswolff.com.