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POETRY

bildungsroman

by Liwa Sun
 
I slice myself into a thousand wafers,
each one scorned by a land. In my second 
life I inhabit a panopticon. Sample different 
 
sets of humiliations, trying to decide if 
democracy is worth this fight. A lump of 
sadness explodes, a drenched 
 
spectacle.
 
My forbearance shrugged at, my
skin burnt. Garish sun besieges me, 
impaling lids. Oriental lids. I grin 
 
and my teeth melt so as to avoid 
the real questions. If I will have to go 
back, what good does it do me to revel 
 
now? 
 
I am a 
baby
thrown out of the bath water.


AUTHOR
Liwa Sun is a Chinese writer, poet, and a game-theorist-wannabe. Her works are forthcoming in The Bare Life Review and elsewhere. She lets poetry contaminate her memory, in which she rejoices. She lives in Philadelphia with a small couch and mountains of books.

So Slight and pale

by Daniel Bishop

She says, 
         I am a minority now,
which is to say that once she was not 
         had not yet become
or what she had been has ceased to be

and the spirit of the past follows you
the spirit too 
of where you are headed
      but you do not know it 
    
                                  haunting you like 
Georgia O'Keefe's voice on the radio
      like cactus needles 
      sticking in your socks --

pale and thin as your grandfather 
      or his beard, 
                    and ubiquitous 
as the mess he left on the sink 
   after a shave
         — pricking now at your toes

                         so slight and pale
                    so nearly translucent
               you cannot find them all 
                 or remove just enough

it seems a shame 
to discard a decent pair of socks 
        a shame too 
        to bury them deep in your dresser 
        to be found 
on some other October night 
when the last thing you’ll want 
         is to remember. 


AUTHOR
Daniel Bishop is a writer of prose, poetry, and music. He is a member of the Albuquerque Writer’s Workshop. His work has been featured on NPR’s Songs We Love and in Prometheus Dreaming. He lives in Corrales, NM, where he gets his hands dirty working with semi-precious stones and silver.

the mystery files of michael pulichino

by Michael Chang

 
i put these secrets into skin      fry them till they are golden brown
 
drizzle plum sauce on them     sweet and savory
 
that is how they want me to write
 
instead                                     i write about timothée chalamet 
 
*
 
some days i wake up and think i am nat wolff             or a little pig named wilbur
 
my governing principle is optimism     possibility loud and clear
 
why are other people so dark so traumatic so sad        their poems be like
 
abandoned trailer teeth claws death rape grease jet fuel blood gasoline walmart train tracks bodies animals coyotes ravaged etc
 
my poems be like         
 
1990 dom perignon corn chowder lobster thermidor montauk dunes beach reads oliver peoples two hands coffee decaf is hell etc
 
if i have to read about your hoof again            or how he let her flirt when you were right there
 
we will have a problem                       words will be exchanged                     i will hurt your feelings
 
after all                        i haven’t forgotten       that time you read my work
 
and asked                     did amy tan write this
 
*
 
when you told me you were one of the deplorables     i thought          ugh      it’s always the cute ones
 
and pushed your head down some more
 

*

AUTHOR

MICHAEL CHANG hopes to win the New Jersey Blueberry Princess pageant one day.  Michael strongly suspects that they were born in the wrong decade.  A recovering vegan, their favorite ice cream flavor was almost renamed due to scandal.

The land of opportunity

by Kevin Hogg

His hopeless eyes plead with mine
From the dirt beside the sidewalk
Worldly possessions fill a garbage bag
Home: a cardboard mess, a heat grate
 
Her tiny eyes gaze into passing cars

Violence defines her neighborhood
Bored on the doorstep of low-rent housing  

But to explore today is to jeopardize tomorrow
 
His tired eyes seek freedom from this reality
An unwashed, unshaven face,
A paper cup and sign:
Why lie? I need money for beer.



AUTHOR
Kevin Hogg is a husband, father, high school teacher, and Chicago Cubs fan. He holds a Master of Arts degree in English Literature and has published poetry with inner art journal, Foliate Oak, and Mouse Tales Press. This poem features memories of people in Washington DC, Baltimore, and San Diego, who may not remember him, but he can never forget.

She's black

by Amber Moss

There’s more to him than his cadaverous skin.

He eats steak with no seasoning,
but sandwiches with hot sauce.

He curses with his parents as they speak their dialogue, and I can’t imagine speaking 
to my mother with lines filled with that much color.

When we walk on the beach,
it’s just us two.

The midnight sky collides with the lamps
eluding from the beach houses behind us,
and there’s no one to tell us to come home.

But when we do go home
to his home
to eyes different from mine,

It is 1960 again.

AUTHOR

Amber Moss is a writer in New York City. She earned her bachelor's degree from the University of South Florida in professional writing with a minor in creative writing. Her poetry has been published in Bewildering Stories. She has also contributed articles to NYGal and 87 Magazine.

Original sin

by James W. Gaynor

Outside on the playground
Eisenhower was president
and the seven-year-olds compared sins
getting ready for our first confession
although transgressions tended
towards the venal.


Outside on the playground
I decided on a different approach
and in the dark booth confessed
to having committed adultery
knowing only that it sounded grown-up
and happened at cocktail parties.


Outside on the playground
I was a hero
having received serious penance
for lying in my First Confession and
spent considerable time in theory praying
but in truth looking forward to adultery.


​
AUTHOR
James W. Gaynor been writing poetry since I was 12 — somehow, still here, post- Stonewall, the Vietnam war and the AIDS epidemic, and still writing. And still examining what it means to observe, to record his experience of the world from his evolving, now 70-year-old, queer perspective. He's the author of Everything Becomes a Poem and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in 61 Haiku.

sro

by Gale Acuff

There's no one I love more than Jesus but
Satan maybe, I confess that I like
to sin and I bet that everyone else
does, too, and it can be good clean fun or
damn-near and surely God in His infi
-nite mercy won't send me to Hell be
-cause didn't He give His only begot
-ten Son to die in my place, die for my
sins so when I actually do, die
that is, I actually won't, I'll live
--not only live but dwell--in Heaven for
-ever? Sometimes I think that if Jesus
is Who they say he is then He won't mind
a little transgressing, that's a fancy 
word for sin that Miss Hooker used in Sun
-day School but last week and I'm only 10 but
I kind of cornered her after class, that's
a figure of speech, cornered her, not class
I mean but then I've got more to learn be
-fore I die and go to Heaven or Hell
and I'm getting way ahead of myself 
 
but like I say, after class I told her
that everybody sins and she told me
that yes she knows and that's in the Bible
that everyone sins, not that Miss Hooker
knows, and didn't she point that passage out
a couple of weeks ago, All have sinned 
and come short of the glory of God and
I said Yes ma'am, I remember, which I
don't and so I guess I lied and lying's
a sin as sure as you're born but if God
sent everyone to Hell for only one
sin then there would be Standing Room Only down
there and I even told Miss Hooker that
but she didn't crack a smile, she takes her
religion seriously but any
-way I told her that even Jesus must
have come pretty close to it, sinning that
 
is, grazed it at least, because didn't He
worry Mary and Joseph by hanging
out at the temple and confabbing with
the older folks there and astonishing
them with what He knew about the Torah                                           
or whatever it's called, may God
forgive me, and astonishing, now there's
a word and I think it means turn to stone
but anyway didn't Jesus come right
close to sinning by worrying His folks
is what I asked her although it wasn't
really a question but a statement, for
-get I couldn't make a question mark with
anything but my voice on the page of
the air, speaking of figures of speech a
-gain and you could've knocked me over with
a cherub's wing, do cherubs have wings, when
Miss Hooker exploded and I don't mean
merely burst into tears so I had to
 
help her into her chair, her face was flood
-ed with tears and she couldn't see to see
so I lent her my only handkerchief
and she messed it up pretty good or is
that well or is that bad or is that bad
-ly but when she passed it back to me I
took it and wrapped it in a paper towel
which I'd gotten out of the machine, it's
a dispenser is what it is and stuck
it in my left coat-pocket and I guess
I'd better fish it out of there before
I go back to Sunday School, I wonder
if I've sinned again but anyway then
Miss Hooker smiled but I could tell that she
was embarrassed so I told her One day
we're going to be married, goodbye, see
 
you next week and I left without taking
any more care of her, what could I do
but come back on another Sunday and
try to help her atone, I don't know if
it's in the Bible somewhere but
maybe a Sunday School teacher losing
it in front of a repeat-third-grade student
is a sin, maybe even one that cuts
both ways, I'm in on it, too, praise the Lord
and like that. By the honeymoon I'll know.

AUTHOR

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in several countries and is the author of three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine.

callie

by Miranda Holt

They say it’s better to love and lose
Than to never love at all
Even though the love she felt
Was within a heart so small
It will always be unconditional 
Forever pure and true
Never be tainted, never be scorned
Never be angry at you
She will never be scarred, never be hurt
Never be broke by the world
She may now be one of God’s angels
But forever, she’s your baby girl.

AUTHOR
Miranda Holt is
A ChristianA yogi
A nursery teacher
An unpublished, aspiring writer
A wife and “mother” to a bunny and puppy 
A cheese addict


call me marianne

by Paige Foster
​9/9/19


yesterday i cried 
when my lover left
on a sunny thursday

i replayed scenes
of former loves repeating yes
                yes
of course i still love you

the tape always cuts out just
in time to leave room
for that thing with feathers, and

your city
and all its exports are
forevermore
yours

watching old lovers
with new lives and new homes
talking and crying

from the comfort of my bed
i came across that familiar tightening
of the heart, that mark of kinship with 
anna karenina or 
marianne dashwood--

that specific and universal thing--
the yes of course i still love you
murmured over a tequila shot
or train tracks

or more likely never spoken
after all, it is not my business
to speak it


AUTHOR
Paige is a Californian writer and photographer based in Paris, France. She holds an MA in sociolinguistics from the Sorbonne Nouvelle and has previously been published by One Sentence Poems. When not writing, she enjoys cooking with too much garlic and taking photos of everything she finds beautiful or interesting.

of fond union

by Mandeep Kaur
8/26/19

A splash of blitheness
Clad in softer shade causing
Shrieks in red petals
With glide so gentle
Letting the pieces fall
Painting colors in his thumping heart

How beautiful and rare she was
And how special to him!
Inching closer to her in enraptured fancy
Sinking in her thoughts while she indwells
That un-dwelt space of heart where no one else has ever been
The innocent glee in her eyes
Giving him million thinks
So filled of her, every inch of him
And the resultant radiant glow beams.

That maddening passion
Soaking the soft moonlight
Not letting the feelings fade
Not Certain
The heart beating for her or he is beating for the heart
To hug the one, he was always thinking of perhaps!
 
Can’t grasp the world anymore
As her thoughts walk wild on his numb brain  

Spreading his waiting arms
Dying to catch her while the dew rides the pink petals
Sheer magic oozing out of her full moist lips
His heart enmeshed in her thoughts in the quick passing soft hours
Sighing for that hold so rapturous

Holding  the stars in her smile
Gleaming in glow with the blush so rare
Apple-kissed creamy cheeks
Waiting for his panting rhythms of love

Everything he craved for rests in her eyes
Where love runs untamed, he dreams
Million ways he would touch her
Sinking in her bottomless inner chambers

Here dawns that night
Flowing beyond measures
Her heart laid bare
His wandering lips
Sneaking into her tender inner recesses
Their bodies lay entwined with curved elegance
Strokes of passionate affection
Trickling the petals of her soul into his being
Their one world and the beatific moonlight
Even the stars envied
Their bond strong.


AUTHOR
Kaur is working as an Assistant Professor. She teaches courses on Victorian literature, African literature, British Drama, genetics in literature and film, and contemporary American literature at the graduate and post graduate level. With her vivid academic interests, she wants to explore everything and anything that stimulates her intellect. Her research work is mostly in the form of papers, poetry and articles published in multiple journals.

here she is

by Susanna Saracco

Here she is
The person you have known
Here she is 
The person who believed
Here she is
The person who was faithful
Here she is
The emotional person
Here she is
The person who flew
Here she is
The person who wakes up at dawn smiling
Here she is 
The generous person
Here she is
The person who believes
Here she is
She sits alone in the train
She is choosing a gift for herself
Now she sees

AUTHOR

Susanna Saracco got an MA in ancient philosophy from the University of Turin, Italy. She studied in Vancouver, Canada and got a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Sydney, Australia. As an academic author she has published the book Plato and Intellectual Development: A New Theoretical Framework Emphasising the Higher-Order Pedagogy of the Platonic Dialogues, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017 and several articles. This is her first work in poetry.

dear God America

by Kahelia Smellie

​How many more times shall black bodies be laid out side by side?

Like human cargo on incoming ships?
How many more coloured tears shall fall
To baptize the pain of fallen men?


Do you want lifeless bodies filling the earth for future flowers to pick?
Death reserved for a few in a society when all should be equal
Ships carrying black bodies
Whips cracking aching to caress glistening skin
Trees rooted bear strange fruit hanging from the popular trees
Guns target practice for men unarmed.


Dear God America:

How many times shall a little black girl cry?
Weeping for the death of her father
Angry for the death of her brother
Worried that she too will cry for her unborn child
Steeped in pain and grief of skin that will never change.


How many cigarettes is worth a black life?
1? 2? 5? Or even 10?
How many cd's is worth a bullet to the head?
Shall I raise hands in defense when I know I will be dead?


Dear God America:

Equal rights for all in your constitution
Men have the right to bear arms
But slaves still picked in cotton fields when the ink dried
And only privileged  whites can carry  concealed to protect.


Dear God America:

When will this end?
I would able to send my son down the street for skittles with his hoodie on?
Will he come back into the safety of my arms?
Will I able to hold the hands with my white brothers and sisters?
Break meal together
Pray together
Live, laugh and love
To sing joyously in the sun as I dance to the freedom which I have been given?


Maybe it won't happen in my lifetime or years to come
Maybe many will have to die for freedom to pass
But as I sit here and look through my window
Two children play on blood pavements
One white and one black
Laugh joyously for hope tomorrow.

AUTHOR:
Kahelia Smellie is a recent a undergraduate from Barry University where she was awarded an Honorable Mention in Poetry by the Sigma Tau Delta International English Honor Society of May 2017 and a Category Honorable Mention for  Best Writing Single Feature Story- "Barry Students from Shit*hole Countries" by the 2019 Catholic Press Association. She has also received several other awards either based on academic performance or as a Staff Writer at the Barry University's newspaper The Buccaneer.  In her downtime she  spends her free time on sipping glasses of wine enjoying either the company of girlfriends or sinking into  juicy novel.

ELLE CAMINO DE SANTIAGO

by Catina Noble

The courage I started with on the journey
has nearly been exhausted and the mental 
 
Stamina I pulled out of my suitcase 
on day one, exhaled and suffocating. 
 
Close to collapsing, but can’t let anyone
see or else they will pull me, off the trail, 
 
I never asked before and so I hold my
breath and scribble a few words on a postcard.
 
Asking for guidance – not sure I could 
continue and left the message under a rock- 
 
Next twenty-four hours challenged me but
I believed in you and somehow two days later
 
Santiago wrapped it’s arms around me, 
I wept with joy inside and out-Elle.

AUTHOR

Catina Noble is a Canadian resident. Her poetry and prose have been published in a variety of places including, Canadian Newcomer Magazine, Chicken Soup for the Soul, YTravel Blog, Bywords, In/Words, Steel Chisel, Jam Jar Words, Woman's World Magazine, The Prairie Journal and many others. She currently has one book of poetry out and six novels. Learn more at http://catinanoble.wordpress.com.

sea of flotsam

by Kevin Casey

This was a fishbowl shaped like a giant brandy snifter,
furnished with crystal stones, a plastic plant, and a betta fish
that remained largely motionless in its stylized bonsai pond.
 
For the woman who set it on the receptionist’s counter,
it was a testament to her caprice, her sole challenge
to tedium, an oasis of color to brighten her day.

On the morning she arrived to find the cobalt drapery
of its fins hanging slack, she poured the fish’s lustreless remains
into the loo, committing them to the city’s waterworks.

But she returned the fishbowl to the desk, now holding nothing  
but its glossy glass lozenges, high and dried of any meaning. 
And when she pulled up anchor for another job, the fishbowl

remained in that same place for years, one of countless artifacts 
we abandon and throw overboard in this sea of flotsam,
emptied of significance, knocking and bobbing in our wake.

AUTHOR
Kevin Casey is the author of Ways to Make a Halo (Aldrich Press, 2018) and American Lotus, winner of the 2017 Kithara Prize (Glass Lyre Press, 2018). And Waking... was published by Bottom Dog Press in 2016. His poems have appeared in Rust+Moth, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Connotation Press, Pretty Owl Poetry, Poet Lore and Ted Kooser's syndicated column ‘American Life in Poetry.’ For more, visit andwaking.com.

That dream

by Sophie Laing

When I walk home I imagine I’m gay
feels like a lighter step.

When I’m baking in the kitchen I imagine I’m gay
and I don’t feel as hungry for everything I make.

When I’m out of the shower and getting ready to sleep 
I imagine I’m gay, picturing who might be beside me
thinking about what we will talk about
how there would be some little laughs in between
the few parts of our days we didn’t already talk about.
 
When I’m on a run, I imagine I’m gay
perhaps have a running partner or a biking partner
or am walking hand in hand to a sweet little neighborhood café.
 
When I’m out getting coffee, I imagine I’m gay
I think about what I’m wearing, I think about what my partner might be wearing
I think about how people might look at us.
I stare too long at the queer couples in the coffeeshop.
 
But I also smile to myself, my past self, my future self
and imagine that there’s a lot that can change in a year.

AUTHOR
Sophie Laing is an upstate New Yorker who has been writing poetry since she was a kid. Her work has also appeared in Shards. 

WRONG
​
7/26/2019
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By Richard LeDue

​Alone and shirtless again,
whisky my only friend with advice;
ice cubes cracked long after I was.


Each sip whispers, “Call her,
even if it's midnight, tell her
you'll make coffee in the morning,


joke how only her fingernails
can scratch your hairy back,
that you'll moan like a walrus,


yet beg her to look into your eyes
as you kiss, so she knows how serious
this all is- that she is worthy of poems.”


But my fingers misremember her number,
and I talk to Debbie for half an hour,
she had hip surgery last Tuesday.


AUTHOR
Richard LeDue currently lives in Norway House, Manitoba. His work has been published by the Tower Poetry Society, in Adelaide Literary Magazine, and the Eunoia Review.
FOR THE WALKING BOYS FROM SUDAN WHO FINALLY ARRIVED IN MINNESOTA
​
7/24/2019
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By Leslie Dianne

 
Where you came from 
a  neighbor
who used to be your friend
shot at your face
and ripped the happy away
 
A man who used to give you candy
gave your mother 
a shove into the woods
while you waited
with lollipop tears 
 
A boy you went to school with
showed you how hard he could 
smash your face with the
barrel of a gun 
because he remembered you
as the smart one 
 
Those stupid boys with the 
borrowed grown up swagger
and boom boom guns
stretched their humanity
until it snapped 
back at them 
 
A friend tells you that 
one of them slit his brother’s throat
and danced in the moonlight 
until the wolves brought him home


AUTHOR
Leslie Dianne is a poet,  novelist, screenwriter, playwright and performer whose work has been acclaimed internationally in places such as the Harrogate Fringe Festival in Great Britain, The International Arts Festival in Tuscany, Italy and at La Mama, ETC in New York City. Her stage plays have been produced in NYC at The American Theater of Actors, The Raw Space, The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and The Lamb's Theater.  Her poems have appeared or currently appear in Night Picnic Press, About Place Journal, Passaic / Völuspá,  The Moon Magazine and The Lake and are  forthcoming in Medusa’s Laugh Press and Hawai’i Review.

PIECES OF EIGHT
7/22/2019
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By Marc Carver
​

We went into the tropic garden
butterflies everywhere 
I put my hands out hoping one would land on me
but none did.
Then half way round a big one came down and sat on her shoulder
like a parrot 
I thought it would fly off but it stayed with her all the way round.
When we got to the exit she looked at me
If we take it out there it will die I said
So eventually I got it off and it just sat on a leaf.
Of course all it wanted was to die
I see that now


AUTHOR
Marc Carver has published some ten volumes of poetry and performed around the world but the most important thing to him is that people get something from his work.
IN PRAISE OF DANGEROUS WOMEN
7/19/2019
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By James Hannon


 
Long raven hair like Spanish 
moss grabs a runaway slave 
in a Louisiana swamp--
bound fast to the mast for 
his siren song, like a horn 
through the fog of a bayou bog 
where Morgan Le Fay rises 
again from the mist of 
his boyhood dreams.
                                    
Somehow he pulls free but 
his head is shorn--
like a nameless prison inmate
or a tonsured monk reborn 
with a safer and holy name.
In the numinous light 
of the piney woods,
nel mezzo del cammin 
(as he understood)  
he follows the trail, 
like a well-bred hound,
of the sanguinous scent drifting 
toward the ground.
 
When he gets to the crossroads
he tosses his bones 
and to no one’s surprise
those single point dice 
stare up at him like the Siamese eyes 
that called him out with a smoky smile--
“Some go that way and some go this.”  
He tastes her again when he bites his lip.
 
He had laughed years before at a bright-eyed man 
who pulled his coat with a trembling hand 
and rolled out a story of the horrible toll 
of a triple Scorpio who stole his soul.
The broken man had sighed and let 
his calling card reply—Blake’s etching 
of hell and an experienced verse: 
the road of excess (may first make things worse 
but it) leads to the palace of wisdom.                                                                                     
 
Stare at the sun.
Stare at a woman 
who knows what she’s done 
and hasn’t a single regret.
Reach behind your back
for something to throw 
through those black mirrored eyes.                            
Hear the blood rush in your ears.
Feel your feet tingle. 
Feel your arms shake.
Scream ‘til the rafters 
threaten to break.
 
Breathe.
Breathe again.
Open your hands.
Laugh at yourself.                                  
Begin.
 
AUTHOR

James Hannon is a psychotherapist in Massachusetts.  His poems have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Soundings East, Zetetic and other journals and in Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets.  His collection, The Year I Learned The Backstroke, was published by Aldrich Press.
MY MOTHER AND I
by Jocelyn Hittle 
7/17/2019




 My mother and I
have similar styles.
She dons courage,
as a shield-
radiating off of her in waves, 
And I am learning to be that way. 


My mother and I share clothing: 
alike in temperament and size. 
I buy my shirts in large,
wearing the bagginess as my shield-
false fortification to my lacking fortitude. 


My mother buys her shirts in medium, 
refusing to over or under-sell her image- 


I tend to believe 
this has come to be 
because 
My mother knows how to fit into this world, 
and still, 
I do not. 

Author

Jocelyn Hittle is a 15-year-old amateur author from Pennsylvania. She cultivates her poetry on Instagram as well in her pioneered, Poetry-out-loud club. She enjoys writing poetry so eccentric that most people, and on occasion, even her, cannot understand it. 

BROWNSVILLE
By John Grey
7/15/2019

 
That’s where she was from.
Down near the Rio Grande, the Mexican border.
Poorest place on earth, she told me.
She had the window seat of the bus.
I rode shotgun in the aisle.
She was a stranger who talked and listened.
And I was a traveler who did the same.
 
She was her way to Dallas 
in the heat of summer
to see a friend.
I was passing through 
on my way to Florida.
 
Through the glass,
I could see the shimmer of 
everyone of those hundred plus degrees.
She shrugged her shoulders, said
“You get used to it.”
 
Her accent drawled
as plain as the plains we crossed.
But her face was fetching
even if her mouth took up more of her jaw
that I was used to.
Her eyes were where
I mostly took her measure.
They were a pale but expressive green 
like the little that grew thereabouts.
 
She gave me the inside dope
on roping steers.
I told her what it was like
to sit in a room half the day
and write.
We had nothing in common
but for a willingness
to talk up our differences.                                      
 
She was shapely
but in a modest way.
And wiry.
For all my writer’s wrist workout,
she’d have had me easy in an arm wrestle.
But we didn’t touch,
at least no more than bus riders do
when jerked sideways around a corner.
 
But there was a connection there.
forced by circumstance perhaps
but the underlying humanity in people
has this flair for finding itself in others,
even if she’d never been inside a theater
and I hadn’t once stood at the base of an oil derrick.
 
We talked for hours 
as that vehicle rolled across Texas.
Her tongue gift-wrapped her life story.
Mine was easily as honest.
We ate together 
in a cheap but filling bus stop restaurant then parted.  
She gave me a number to call
if I was ever in Brownsville.
 
I never did go there
but I looked the place up in a book once.
I still must have that number somewhere.
Like I have everything that’s happened to me somewhere.
Maybe it’s with Portland, Maine
and Ann Arbor, Michigan 
and a one-horse town in New Mexico.
 
I recall that every one of those places
sent their envoy to greet me on my travels
and they were, in each case, female.
Brownsville wore her hair brown,
like the city’s name.
And long, like how long ago it’s been.

 
AUTHOR
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in
That, Muse, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming
in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Hawaii Review and the Dunes
Review. 

​

reapers

7/12/2019
By Delvon T. Mattingly 

Another academic survey 
suggests that I seek medical 
attention, or even that I call
 
a lifeline, both of which won’t 
pay for my books, my rent, or
sustenance. Both of which won’t
 
help me obtain my medicine, as 
compensation from the surveys do,
as it is easier to selective report
 
and claim that I’m not suicidal 
and my depression is manageable 
on little income and no resolve.


Author
Delvon T. Mattingly, who also goes by D.T. Mattingly, is a writer from Louisville, Kentucky and a PhD student in epidemiology at the University of Michigan. He currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his two cats, Liam and Tsuki. Learn more about his work at http://delvonmattingly.com/.
The Seduction Theory 
7/10/2019
By Annie Blake

​/ flowers are arrangements like music / and the convent approved my work / conventional morality and living like a body made up of closed boxes or rooms/ i wasn’t allowed to repeat 
the same music / devoid and defloration / the bass and the treble clef and middle c / 
/ so we stopped to dive into the shore / for my body has crossed over / there were eggs in warm sand / and when the summer was over / and the wind lifted and the shift of the sand / i played so my virginity / and my body a river like smoke curls when i blow out the candle / relocate its path when i hook it with my little finger / but when my shadow man comes / i notice he’s not dialing a phone / there is just the palm of my hand / so i reached out for the latch behind him / jammed my hand until it bled / there is a door and then there is love like a rosarium / and i pushed my body against him and he opened it /
/ when my mother came to my wedding / the bride and groom / the bridal march would not play and the singer could barely sing / toy soldiers and how we can never walk away from war / my father / my god / his brass band and our drum / 
/ so i didn’t let her take my rugs from under me / hand-knotted the persian rug my own way / for   if the hunter took out her heart / sown her snow right under her toes / 
/ fleshy petals / warm as bodies / hothouse / virginity in the convent / like a florist and exorbitantly priced / it should be beautiful / but i can barely walk through / so many clocks stop working in antique shops / for i have felt a body and a spirit / warm vapor / pour of salt from my father / and how he taught me to kneel down and close my eyes / if i should die before i wake / i pray the lord my soul to take 1/
/ when i think of her / of how i barely knew her / if she ever stood a chance in hell / it’s easier to say my mind is sick /  
/subtle smell of a cemetery / the convent always smelt disinfected / where i used to pray because that was what my mother wanted / festal days / taking up the offertory like a bunch of flowers / and i led the procession / because my parents died in marriage / her wooden spanking spoon and my father’s spoon was made out of bone /
/ my mother’s arm and hand / limbs of thought / turn over the crank of its body / spider black / they ate of me / my navel / their curricular dish / husbands whose bodies are made up of his own bones and how she understands circular economy / then she will bear her children and for her tear / off their own back /                                                                              / take back their skin /
 
 
 
 
 
1.     Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep (Christian Bedtime Prayer)


Author
Annie Blake enjoys semiotics and exploring the surreal and phantasmagorical nature of unconscious material. Her work is best understood when interpreting them like dreams. She is a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne.

WHITE ELEPHANT4/21/2019
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unfamiliar sidewalk 
a crowd, but calm 
the routine anxiety is absent 
consonants you faintly recognize travel to your ear
you try to make out the tongue, 
the place; 
but think it rude to ask 
in your white skin, your white face 


you remember the time you asked the ethnically 
ambiguous boy at the rec center "what are you?" 
noticing his first and last names
were not a typical combination 

now you feel a sunburn of embarrassment 
because surely ahmad what's-his-name 
didn't know that white girl 
was just trying to say


hello
i'm a swirl too
i'm just like you 
but too naive to know 
the hegemony of my history 
that words like these don't just roll off 
white girls' tongues without consequence, 
without scars 
and damage done 


so I don't ask 
even when I hear my father's tongue 
and my heart cries joy at the familiar 
even though ahmad what's-his-name probably 
forgot my inquiry many moons ago 


i don't ask, 
i walk on by, 
my short shorts screaming invisibility 
in one and a half languages 
i tug at my golden necklace 
i try to tan 
i mouth to myself what I would have said 
if i had the decency 
to wear a scarf 
and pants


AUTHOR
Summer Awad is a playwright, spoken word artist, and a case manager at Bridge Refugee Services. Her work centers around diaspora, biculturalism, and feminism. Her play, WALLS: A Play for Palestine, played at the 2016 New York International Fringe Festival and earned her the Artist of Change Award from Community Shares Tennessee. ​​
SHE MIGHT BE GOD
​
4/19/2019
She might be a ballerina in her old denim
floating or perhaps an apprentice Amazon
fighting or giggling with little friends in dresses
laughing or moaning with the hurt of a scrape.

She could be everything dreams made her to
be or again learning her trade with the quill
become or change as she walks and slowly
turns or stay in a pose puzzling to even space.

She would guess a journey to continue on
always or maybe imagine in her heavy boots
never or per chance to fly on the back of a steed
some time or at last to travel in her breast to infinity.

She is in truth with her wand more than a friend
apparition or dawn she guides strings, winds, and
percussion or she writes on eternal walls a code of her
creation or making worlds she exhales lives in a mere sigh.

She might be God as she glides into another day
in elegance or a glowing robe refreshing to the stars
with her scent or everlasting births given to angels
inside the palace or a shack, she might be God after all.
​AUTHOR
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, Little Rose and many other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications. 
​
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