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The Believer by Kristin Garth

She sleepwalks in your washi house in crin-
oline, emaciated mouse weeks you
forget to feed, a nibbler, toenails, skin,
until feet bleed free, soil sheets, bamboo
floor, trafficked hardly anymore except
somnabulistic scarlet toes who
map labyrinths, shake off bedclothes, accept
razored teeth in pale furrows.  Ankle chewed
until, unconscious, she seeks the ground.  Bandage,
next time you come around — rose macaroons
gunpowder tea — into a paper cage
fantasy, unbolted door, girl you freed,
six months ago, believes enough to bleed.

 

Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Best of the Net & Rhysling nominated sonnet stalker. Her sonnets have stalked journals like Glass, Yes, Five:2:One, Luna Luna, and more. She is the author of fourteen books of poetry including Pink Plastic House (Maverick Duck Press), Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir (The Hedgehog Poetry Press), the forthcoming Flutter: Southern Gothic Fever Dream (TwistiT Press), The Meadow (APEP Publications) and Shut Your Eyes, Succubi (Maverick Duck). Follow her on Twitter @lolaandjolie and her website kristingarth.com

Covert art credit: Photo by Aimee Vogelsang on Unsplash

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2 Poems by Jeff Pearson

Sing Me the Song

after John Lyon

When the exiled pioneers stared at the Salt Lake Valley, they drank clean air. A sky framed by Nature’s Bulwark presumed their own. They slept in the open next to trees in the crux of the canyon, and night came. An armistice with ground, as each fire began to smell less and less like Buffalo chips. Crowded by the grid system, I search for a street where I am not spied on by a steeple. Imperfect Zion sleeping in Pioneer Park.

Nor the Sound of pollution voice is heard?

I am the visitor, welcome on the back row with handshake full of grease brought again to sacrament meeting. Ceiling fans spin backward the longer I stare. Hymnodic. I remember as a kid, a deacon, I once put Sprite in the cups for sacrament’s water. Nursery tastes like blessings.

But where shall we find this fairy vale
Where the naked are clothed and the hungry fed Continue reading “2 Poems by Jeff Pearson” →

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Labyrinth Song by Lucy Whitehead

Labyrinth Song

Not everyone enters
their maze on a mission.
Some of us wake one day
curled inside a darkness
that stretches in all directions
for countless miles         caught
in a lacework cage reaching
beyond years.

…………………Ever winding
we wander half blind
through rotting corridors
searching for signs of life
stumbling over pits that beckon
beneath wearied feet
in the yawning velvet dark

wrestling
with dead ends that glint
with knives and chains
slamming shut doors
that open silently
into nothingness

…………………chasing golden
voices not our own over
floors that sharpen suddenly
into spikes         through
mirrored courtyards where
we glimpse our aging faces
catch sad minotaurs
behind our eyes.

We become adept
at surviving         stripped
of all but our existence
at times      weaving
the gleaming edges of pain
into armour and amulets
fortifying our bones Continue reading “Labyrinth Song by Lucy Whitehead” →

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2 Poems by Yuan Changming

Hocus Pocus

This [bread] is no other than

Jesus’ flesh

This [horse’s open mouth] is

Vaisvanara

This [word] has

A magic power

This [fish head] brings

Courage & posterity

This [fluid] cures

All diseases

This [sequence of syllables] drives away

All evils & devils

This [ritual] ensures

Good weather & good harvest

This [hat/hood] guarantees

Purity, loyalty

This [flag] leads right

To paradise

This [man] is Continue reading “2 Poems by Yuan Changming” →

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