family

Womannotated – Oh The Places You Will Work Bitch And Not Be Free

Oh The Places You’ll Work Bitch

And Not Be Free

for Britney

For Disney, Pepsi, Bela Karolyi

(who USA gymnastics cut ties with

in pedophile controversy at the

remote training space, national forest

woods), Star Search, Broadway, Rolling Stone

(at seventeen in push-up bra, baby

blue velveteen rabbit inside her own

small town bedroom.), the 24, maybe

more, varietals of perfume; Sbarro,

Nabisco, HBO (Emmy wins for

concert docu shows), and their fathers, though,

even if estranged, legalities restore

a golden gosling to its violent cage

without telephone, medicated rage.

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December 13, 2020 0

Three Poems and Three Images: Anna Saunders and Robynne Limoges

Silk Robe Spectres

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July 29, 2019 0

Before Sunday Dinner – A Poem by Niall M. Oliver

Before Sunday Dinner

My brother scrubs hard
the yellow

from his two smoking fingers
until they blush

like mortified teenagers
who scream, don’t look at us!

Niall M Oliver @NMOliverPoetry is an Irish born writer who lives in London with his wife and two boys. He takes inspiration from his roots and everyday life, and has previously been published in The Lake Poetry, as well as a couple of anthologies but has yet to meet anyone who claims to have read them.

Banner Image “Siblings” by Robert Frede Kenter. Tweets at @frede_kenter.

July 27, 2019 0

Conflation — A Poem by Jack Bedell

Conflation

Yesterday at the riverfront, the water
            rose so high a man washed
his socks from the rubble placed along the bank
            to guard the walking path. His socks
were filthy from slogging through the Quarter
            during the morning’s flood. As hot
as it was, those socks must have felt
            divine on his feet, like a river of cool breeze
carrying him to his next shady spot. He did not
            rush the washing. He had no need
to leave any of the river behind.

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July 25, 2019 0

Rare Treats, a Flash Fiction by Angelo Lorenzo

Rare Treats

When my grandfather asked me to buy cigarettes at a local convenience store in front of our house one Saturday afternoon, I remembered what Teacher Gladys taught us in school that week.

She said cigarette smoking is bad – for the health and for the environment. I was eight when I couldn’t weigh which was worse. I didn’t want anything bad happening to my family, most especially to my grandparents.

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July 24, 2019 0

Three Poems by Jill Jones

The Doll and Me

I hate the doll, its plumpy head,
its brunette swirls, its itsy cheeks,
its pout, its lashes, the uptight clothes,
marrowless arms, nerveless teeth,
its squeaking, the mess
it makes on the floor.
I want to detach the twee wee feet
and hammer it to the fence, drown it,
skewer it to the door, to say ‘this is what
has become of us’. Even naked
it makes me angry and afraid.

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July 24, 2019 0

Attesting To Your Mother’s Hypocrisy, a poem by Visar (Rabiu Temidayo)

Attesting To Your Mother’s Hypocrisy

Demons invoked in the house by
sneezing — we’d call the electrician.

He’d know the psalms to be sung for it,
and the white costumes to wear.

Floating in white across the fields
of morning glories and corn, swinging

an incense burning, and a keg full
of salt water.

—

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July 24, 2019 0

Three Poems by Jaclyn Piudik

Mirages

A house is not a terrapin
or a sailboat
or a maelstrom

The sunstorm that swindles
at midweek
sycamore green embossed on the heart
like sequins or worlds

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July 23, 2019 0

Two Poems by Andres Rojas

A Childless Father Speaks to Himself

“Let us make man in our own image…”

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July 22, 2019 1

Three Poems by Alina Stefanescu

The Poem, Afraid

Some dog’s ghost
glares from the
attic window.

I know the door
to a nuclear plant
with his teeth

captioned above it:
Some mammal was
here and such.

When our youngest
walked in on us
last night,

I was coming.
She was scared
because she heard

someone crying.
I kiss the bruise
a bad dream leaves

in her head
& keep an eye
on the lonely ghost.

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July 16, 2019 1

Four Poems by Leslie Tate

Their child is doing voices

‘All of us have a primitive prompter or commentator within, who from earliest years has been advising us, telling us what the real world is’ – Saul Bellow.

It is hot. Outside on the landing his parents
are in readiness, hushed for the show.
Hear him now, stirring.
The whiteness of his mind, at peace, a planet,
is studio enough
where, ice-still in echoes like a deepfreeze mariner,
he inhales to begin.

To preacher-perfect O’s mimicking the next doors.
And now the imperatives to weepy Olive Oyl,
hot talk, transmissions, dogfights and now,
waspish, with accent, lisping Daffy Duck,
scolding her charges in squeaky ’78.

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