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Two Poems by Kate Dlugosz

Cherry Pit

 

My mouth is a bowl full of pitted cherries. My stomach the bucket for all the swallowed bloody pits. Every word tastes sweet and dark and tart on my tongue, rolling against my blushing cheeks. And when I smile, red love dribbles down my chin.

When I speak, I am tempted to sing like the way the bright pink blossoms burst into bloom in the springtime. The air is fragrant with love and sweetness and honeybees. But at the lightest breeze, fragrant with daffodils and shadows, my flowers fall

in clusters trembling, and I remember the splinters in the black bark of the cherry tree, the amber sap dripping down the exposed inner rings. The long weeping, the unfurling of flowers. And while the axe is out of sight I fear for other trees, and my branches still shake hearing lightning Continue reading “Two Poems by Kate Dlugosz” →

Photographs of New Orleans by Julia Skop

Julia Skop 1

Julia Skop 2

Julia Skop 3 Continue reading “Photographs of New Orleans by Julia Skop” →

Bear off a Leash by Stephen Lightbown

I’m out with Bear on Victoria Street

who pads on all fours beside my wheelchair.

Slaloms his way through the soil rain that falls

from freshly watered hanging-baskets perched

like floral eagles on London’s lampposts.

Cranes observe from above as they deliver skips

to third floors without lifts and walls.

Wet nose to the ground, tension stretches

his sinews. His fur bristles. Always moments

from mayhem. The street is a treadmill in reverse,

every third door a Pret, repetition everywhere.

Step step Pret. Step step Pret. Step step Pret.

Tourists and commuters momentarily forget their handhelds.

It’s clear we don’t belong here.

I am wary of Bear. I want to get to the station

without incident. A wheelie suitcase here. Double pram there.

Sideways glances. Unseen fury from Bear.

Bubbles of rage fight for release.

Bear explodes. Chaos.

Now on two legs he claws at a man on a bike

for hire. Interloper on the pavement, briefcase

and Metro in the basket. He has spun too close

to our tension in his race

for AOB at 9am. Bear scratches

at the fact we are different. That in this city

of a million faces we stand out below eye level.

The commuter cyclist is collateral damage. An accident.

Like we once were.

Lava eyes ignore sense. He’s too strong for me.

I grasp at the space where moments ago he was.

Bear stop, what are you doing? Let it go. I plead.

Bear replies: Say he deserved it.

Bear is lost in the woods. Redwoods loom,

their branches retreat, unable to contain contempt.

You’re pathetic, stand up for yourself. Say I was right.

Bear is a dot. Lost to me.

No good ever comes when he is like this. I know what he thinks.

If people want to stare, give them a show.

Take me out from the trees, put me in a Big Top.

Silence and shame will deliver us to the station.

But Bear is right.

Can’t you control your bear? Pedals the victim. Continue reading “Bear off a Leash by Stephen Lightbown” →

A Catalogue of Small Shatterings by Makensi Ceriani

I have always had a fascination with transformation. With taking incongruent parts to make a whole. With cutting and stripping and building up from the bottom and the artist as self-portrait. I could easily be found in childhood obsessing over the arrangement of furniture and décor of my Laura Ashley doll house. Today this is a dining room with a red velvet tablecloth and a chandelier light that chimes a segment from the Four Seasons because my Polly Pocket is the queen and she’s having the tour group Bratz over for tea. Tomorrow it is a miniature of my family’s dining room with boxes and old paint chips and no tablecloth and striped walls that look like silk and show damage easily.

Most of my toys were dolls, the easiest to buy for a girl, the easiest to buy for a child who liked to imagine new worlds. I remember the Betty Spaghetti dolls with neon bodies and plastic hair whose arms and torsos and heads could pop out to be interchangeable. To be made anew. How many times did I snap and unshape the forms of girls to get the end result I wanted. How many times did I teach myself what is, is not always. I remember the What’s Her Face dolls with smooth, blank complexions I could stamp their expressions on. This one is surprised. This one is happy. This one has stars for eyes and an eye for a mouth. The stars were permanent marker, the eye easily removed. My mother did not buy me anymore of those dolls after that. She would tell me not to cut Barbie’s hair because it did not grow back; I could not understand her anger when I cut my own bangs with clunky construction paper scissors. I thought we both knew it would grow back. It must have been the shock, of my swift reveal from one face to another. She must not have recognized me. I was not allowed to cut my hair again. Continue reading “A Catalogue of Small Shatterings by Makensi Ceriani” →

Baroclinic Instability by katillac tweed

this song makes your kisses so wet

pull the moon out just to watch me win again

cover me in sleep and ticket stubs

and message sent

i was better when my haircut was so tom petty ‘89

i knew all i needed from open pages on your floor

remember sketchbook boy with the nice lips

when intentions only tried to find us

the overestimation that

we weren’t dumb enough to return

again & again & again

a cement truck tipped off on your street

centripetal forces and spells broken

 

i’m so loose after that fever left

pull the moon out to see my shower filled with wristbands and beer cans

this trajectory doesn’t promise much but when i glance up i receive enough vindication to continue

and enough light to see my name on endless married middle-aged women full of regret or curiosity or boredom or

 

sometimes i’m sitting in front of a horizon 5pm to 7pm lovingly watching a water skier all poised all shore to shore like it’s the most natural thing and i ask my soul if she would still know smoke signals even if neither she nor anyone else at a reasonable distance could possibly decipher them

 

Continue reading “Baroclinic Instability by katillac tweed” →

genesis by Clark Chatlain

out of the gray afternoon it might begin—the creation of the world. in the sound of a snow shovel scraping on ice and in the slush that remains a kind of ex nihilo is generated. from nothing. certainly from nothing. in the birthing of worlds there are no principles only the appearance of that which did not exist before and that now is. that now irrefutably is. where once the cosmos was simply gray expanse and the waters then below, or even the gathering of all things in one small, great magnitude, there is now the gray afternoon. no diving for worlds in the great sea. no trickster. nothing. a flock of dying geese crosses the new sky in a v that tapers to oblivion. a dog howls to no answer in the distance. his leg is broken and he is looking for a culvert to hide in. surely, they have come. in this world the names are stripped one by one and a first and last lonesome forked creature with twelve fingers and no face ticks off the forgotten. ah, yes. this swirling mass of creation, this pool of dim color that rises in the deep of the gray and seems to nod to the cracked moon above—this is genesis. the names fall off each and each wanders to their glory in a desert of rock and gray sun. a world. a new world.

 

Continue reading “genesis by Clark Chatlain” →

Two Pieces by Erin Calabria

Ten Sentences

 

I. Rowing

I am setting out on this water not to drift but to row, since this not loving you has drawn from me almost as much as loving you once did, and nothing is as full as a boat by itself in a sea that does not end.

 

II. Barn Ruin

We found it at the edge of the woods that August you wouldn’t touch me, just a skeleton of walls and poison ivy climbing all the way to the caved-in roof, triple leaves bigger than hands and glossed to the point of dripping, and it was almost pretty, all those edges hooked against each other, baring back a tessellated light, just as long as we didn’t come close.

 

III. Tide

I was not afraid you would hurt me, but that you never would, that you would never even peer between these ribs I’ve hinged apart for you, until the wind will do to me what it does to all soft creatures left behind by the tide, and the only sound my throat can make will be the sound of robin nests unraveled in a storm.

Continue reading “Two Pieces by Erin Calabria” →

Jack by Gene Farmer

It was for Joanna Newsom that I left my wife and children, all of whom I adored more than anything in that world which I left behind and to which I will never go back. My defence is sound, you’ll see.

I’d checked myself into the hospital, just like they tell you to if you’re experiencing difficulties in breathing, have a tight chest and your head is spinning. I passed swiftly through triage and onto a bed where they wired me to an ECG, took blood and then abandoned me to crisp blue curtains and the metronomic beep of an ignored monitor. Continue reading “Jack by Gene Farmer” →

7yrs bad luck by Richard Biddle

this splintered

self, always

 

there and not

there—all ways

fragments

 

too close

to truth

 

his

portrait

 

ear-splitting

hairline cracks

 

eyes—iced-over

puddles

stepped

into, smashed

 

nose, broken

punched in

like a code

 

pupils;

dead flies

captured by

misshapen webs

 

frown thrown

off guard

 

skull-shatter

piece by piece

 

within his

lashes

 

a universe

on the blink
Continue reading “7yrs bad luck by Richard Biddle” →

Two Poems by Anna Wall

Of the sea

 

I was not formed from earth:

A dirty rib, used and scratching.

His name wasn’t on the birth certificate.

 

A womb of one’s own, forged in a locked room—

Nourished by sadness and

the shame they made her feel.

 

The sea always felt like home,

wind born waves held me.

Rocked me to sleep in a salted cradle.

 

Sometimes the monsters would come—

Emerging from beneath,

threatening to take my legs.

 

They never could, and I floated

eyes skyward.

Wishing I could row.

 

Continue reading “Two Poems by Anna Wall” →

When Food Goes Bad by Kelly Froh

My younger brother just scheduled bariatric surgery.

They will reduce his stomach to the size of a banana.

He said he can’t go another decade being heavy.

He asked me to remember when our parents got divorced, when he was 10 and I was 15 and I said, “See ya later!” as he filled time and loneliness with dry cereal and Swiss cake rolls.

I tried to commiserate, even though I knew I risked insulting him, since his weight issues have always been much greater than mine — said we both snacked way too much, and paired it with convenience eating:

Hamburger Helper on the countertop was mom telling us what’s for dinner

And award systems:

1 visit to church on Sunday = 1 sausage biscuit with egg at the drive-thru

We fell into negative routines: Dad yelled at me, I yelled at my brother, and then we nursed our wounds together with salt, sweet, repeat. Continue reading “When Food Goes Bad by Kelly Froh” →

Photographs of Bristol & a Poem by Jason Jackson

Jason Jackson 1

 

Someone is whispering

 

Someone, somewhere is whispering,

blue thoughts to the sharpened night,

leaving words born of the bottle

to shrivel under sleep’s new weight.

 

Thin syllables drip from bitten lips

moist with gin and clumsy kisses,

and a tongue lolls, slug-like, slurring,

while only the sliced moon listens

 

to the promises and prayers the night

drags from that full, unguarded heart.

There! Someone is whispering

and your new, cold day has yet to start.

Continue reading “Photographs of Bristol & a Poem by Jason Jackson” →

Sing a Song of Ever Changing Perception by Michelle Diaz

There was the time she posed as a proper person,

up at seven with organised eyes,

spinning the wheel of coffee heart and computer clack,

a life in neat multi-coloured folders.

 

An alarm went off in her pocket—

and now the world stank of Boots’ perfume and cigarettes

she spoke in fluent Bacardi Breezer

knew every bar in South East London

flew through the day to get to the pub on the other side

until life became a barman that would no longer serve her.

Men with magnet mouths waited for her to exceed her limit

found ways to climb inside.

 

Now she sits like a stale buttered scone

who nobody wants  to pick up or eat

or even look at that way.

 

She thinks this is delicious and funny at the same time.

Continue reading “Sing a Song of Ever Changing Perception by Michelle Diaz” →

Three Poems by Samuel J Fox

Bubble-Wrap Boy

 

I fall in love with every girl I float by next to on the street. I was born to die, and, though everyone is, God must hate me. My skin is made of the thinnest material. It resembles bubble-wrap. I’m bumpy: a translucent boy opaque, cloudy, with lust. I’ve been punctured before. All my hot air, all my inner workings, pour out like confessions. I’m absurd and yet I want what everyone else wants. I had a date the other night with a girl with eyes like needles. She probed my life and found nothing but wrinkles. She hasn’t called. If I ever feel the pressure of a pair of lips, the fingers dangerous along my malleable spine, the soft, rose quiet of pleasure and the death at its end, I think I might die anyway. I can’t hold scissors and run. I can’t hold anything too beautiful for too long because I know, if I trace its edges, I can die; then again, I feel this should be a common thing. People might consider the way it changes us, if more people were murdered by the sharpness of beauty.

Continue reading “Three Poems by Samuel J Fox” →

The Transformation by Emma McKervey

When I track the narrow paths which hide behind fences

where elder and trolleys and abandoned bins live

I know that this is cusp, this is a finding of a way for life

to rise from old potato peelings and discarded toys which gather there,

anticipate their transformation into something more,

but never quite catch the moment, though sometimes I glimpse

the heaving of a sigh beneath their own broken weight.

If a stag were to lose himself here he would turn golden,

summon me, and I would follow until he and I were one,

the hunter and the prey, follow where there are no fixed paths

through death, through grief.  I reminded my father of a time

a stag bounded in front of his car at dusk, but he wasn’t sure

if that had been my dream or if it had belonged to him.

 

Continue reading “The Transformation by Emma McKervey” →

Stealing Sleipnir by Alison Lock

In Nordic mythology Sleipnir is Odin’s steed, the foal of Loki and Svaðilfari

 

I am fastened to the skim-race of a sly night.

Shadows fall, tin pots clank, slab-roofs trill.

My eyelids stutter. A silhouette before me – equine-like,

up-folded wings, serrations of fine spine-feathers.

A shadow-foal, a rider with a ghost-drawn face, lines

ploughed by a brazen sun or a blistering frost.

 

There’s the fit-fickle thunder-hiss of a merciless wind: all clinker,

the slag of irradiated soil, metal shards, eyelets, pinions,

grease, the multifarious detritus of battle. Odin seeks his revenge.

 

I run from the ankle-snatch of tumbleweed. Weightless. Slipping

through a crack of light, I cross the threshold

in a screech, as if all nesting owls have been released.

Continue reading “Stealing Sleipnir by Alison Lock” →

Two Poems by Kate Garrett

When you converted to vampirism

 

you took me with you like a schoolgirl crush

and renamed me in her image. You carried your

 

halo well—a wisp of cloudlight through the pub

window when you told me I belong in the chapel

 

of bones, that making a pilgrimage to the town

built on death would suit my medieval fixations.

 

But with ink held under our tongues like cyanide

– Camus, Pessoa – we hadn’t grown up. Your voice

 

was a needle skip around a pistol grip, while I cider-

drenched wraiths only I could see. We based ourselves

 

on bloodstains, never let on we’d sunbleached them to dust;

we never let on these winding sheets were lifted

 

from a well-mannered airing cupboard, the emperor’s

new shrouds – hiding inside them with hearts that still beat.

  Continue reading “Two Poems by Kate Garrett” →

Invitation To Move On by Jonathan Humble

I am small in the sea, pushed around

by waves that care not for any grain of sand

or stuff that floats in old men’s heads.

 

Arms held wide and high, that reach and cling

like a child to a parent when things get rough,

when routines fail and muscles waste.

 

I hesitate, recoil, cower; skin so thin

these cold water blades could spill these guts

for waiting gulls and wash away this name.

 

I am caught like the sun, falling

and hoping to rise again, the horizon watched

from a base of arched feet, soft soles and toes

 

exposed to the hidden sharpness of shadows.

And though these whispered sea breezes,

with caresses would show the way,

 

for that bastard time waits not for me,

until I learn to surrender, immerse this body,

allow these legs to float and lay back this head,

 

could I ever take in the whole of the sky?

 

Continue reading “Invitation To Move On by Jonathan Humble” →

How to Tell Men Apart by Breslin White

If it’s a backflip, then it’s Star

Wars. If it’s a front flip, then

it’s swimming. The exception is

when Luke pulls out his green light

saber from nowhere. If the only

swimmer you know is Michael Phelps,

then you may be guilty of watching

the morning news, as well as

breaking your swimmer’s diet on

Thanksgiving. “Only a few days

left until New Years resolutions,”

you say. But I need a tell, a

safety valve. A promise to keep

the athlete fit. When we can’t tell,

then I feel constrained, lost. My

gills subside in these shallow waters.

 

Continue reading “How to Tell Men Apart by Breslin White” →

What Else Can I Do? by Rob True

Working while the madness allows. On and off. As little as possible, to tell the truth. It’s fuckin killing me. Shattered image of me in desolate dream mirror and somewhere outside me, floating. Holding it together and holding it down, best as I can. Opioid void of nowhere droid.

Tramadol, Morphine, Temgesic relief. Stolen from medicine cupboards and begged off anyone with a bad back, or broken bones. Prescribed for shoulder injury, used for cracked mind. Takes the edge off. Keeps the shadows from closing in. Stops the terrible doom feeling it’s all going to come crashing down around me. Everything I’ve tried hard to create as a better life. An illusion of peace and sanity. All removed by madness. Deleted. Love too? Without the love, I’d disappear. Dissolve into background of blue blur fuzz. Leave only eyeballs floating in air against blue backdrop. Continue reading “What Else Can I Do? by Rob True” →

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