Read November 13th’s Pink Plastic Poet Adrian Kresnak’s poem Sonata Pillbox here or at the Pink Plastic Vacation Home at Instagram @pinkplastichouse and the ARCHIVE of Pink Plastic Poets below:
November 6th, 2019
Is it better to speak or die trying / Lauren Saxon
— After Zahir McGhee
Yesterday — I built a house
Layed down each brick, driveway cement caking
my hands & fingernails & throat
Damn shame. I tell you
being a black woman
being the foundation & the walls
the garage & welcome mat
I built this house
carried in the couch & its ottoman
sanded down the dining room table
look how strong I am
I can carry a man.
raise a man
think like one too
is it better to build citadels or families
to protect his ego or your curls
the answer is Nobody.
and ain’t that a bitch?
to build a house yourself & watch them
steal the words your lips are mouthing
But we still try
even when we get nothing in return
even when our house
floods with the first rain
burns down with the first cigarette to the forearm
Yesterday I built a house
knowing damn well nobody wants to be my roof
is that admirable
or ridiculous?
Lauren Saxon is a 21 year old poet and mechanical engineer from Cincinnati Ohio. She attends Vanderbilt University, and relies on poetry when elections, church shootings, and police brutality leaves her speechless. Lauren’s work is featured or forthcoming in Flypaper Magazine, Rhythm & Bones Lit, and Nimrod International Journal. She is on poetry staff at Gigantic Sequins, and spends way too much time on twitter (@Lsax_235).
October 30th, 2019
Gorgon / JD DeHart
I quite mean it when I say
if it wasn’t you, my love, it would
be no one else.
I’ve met too many creatures
of raven hair in this land of giants
and antique stores.
They seem lovely and then
sink in their misunderstandings.
They smile, speaking a
language of the gods, muttering
incantations about social media.
Then they have serpents in their
hair. And I’m not judging, mind you.
A little asp never hurt anyone.
(That’s not strictly true, kids.)
It’s just that I’m afraid I might
become trapped in a maze, and this
is not the kind of story where I find
a sword or magic helmet. I mean, let’s
be realistic here. I can barely operate
my GPS properly.
JD DeHart is a writer and teacher. He blogs at literacyworkandplay.blogspot.com and his second poetry collection, A Five-Year Journey, was released in the fall.
October 23, 2019
Room: Bedroom
What if Diane Arbus had been in this bedroom? / Pavlina Marie Wilkin
Subject
Middle of the frame
His gaze meets yours squarely
Tilted head, curious lips
Best cuts, the loin
Light
Depth of field such that
Silver chest radiates
Lights up this darkroom
And a heart
Shadow
Whisky is a ‘man’s drink’
The taste will linger later
Like the feel of a
5 o’clock shadow
Colour
Black and white
are my favourite films
a dream sequence
for sorting out the head
Background
Meeting in the headlands
Joining in the midlands
Basking next to Turnmills
Walking in the foothills [Repeat]
Focus
An armature grid
Sets the subject free
To hell with the golden ratio/ rule of thirds
The rule book
Holding
It starts in a darkroom
bathed in olives
Skin is paper
sensitive to exposure
Exposure
Salts are an activated
memory of sweat
A suspension of protein
needs to bind
Fixer
Gelatin emulsion or albumen
never both
Results are uncontrollable:
mystifying, unique
This image is solarized:
animal, silver
October 17, 2019
Room: Hallway
Peel / December Lace
Hallways built generations ago creep toward my veins
and newly ringed hands
as if to claim my blood more completely for their own.
The walls smeared in oil paintings
ache for a new shade to color their fixed frowns.
The straining energy, the inner mechanics of a mansion
your name bears title to, but no more than a ghost owns
a possessed body
after drapes are drawn and dark words are whispered
into a raining night sealed off by windows and
mildewing walls,
the cracks in the ceiling spreading accidental lightning,
looking like anatomy if they were to cut me open-
which they still might, if you say the words,
for I am now yours, and a delicate word will send me away.
October 9th, 2019
Room: Garden
New
Plant your feet and be still
Become the grass on a windless night
and relish in your isolated universe
Hear my voice
as it gradually crawls along the spider’s path
rising, then falling
into the darkest hour
and observe the Beauty in a patient designer
Listen to the crickets’ unified symphony
and feel the ants’ dance upon your skin
How giant we must be to them
but still they climb
only to be flicked away
or swept up by a gust of our cold, foul breath
A bird’s wings are inconsequential
without the opposition of gravity
Similarly, true gratitude cannot exist without death
or knowledge of its imminence
So when the breeze washes over you with a gentle push
or sweeps you up into a violent spiral
remember to bend with it
and break, if you must
take what you can
but let the Autumn leaves die
They’re no longer meant for this life
and more will surely flourish
colorful, voluptuous, vibrant
New
just like You.
Stephanie Schubert is a Jewish/Uruguayan poet and multi-media artist born and raised in Anaheim, CA and currently based in Salt Lake City. Her mediums include painting, audio & visual production, event planning, poetry, zine-making, and jewelry-making. Her artwork and poetry have been displayed at Sonder Exhibit in New York City and Viva La Muxer in Los Angeles. Her handmade jewelry has been featured on Remezcla and VoyageLA Magazine. Her poetry can be found in the YANYR Anthology published by Rhythm & Bones Literary Magazine, her self published & curated zine Desamor: An Anthology of Heartbreak, Pink Plastic House: a tiny journal, and Sobotka Literary Magazine. Her forthcoming collaborative zine “Sub Rosa” (co-curated with Ingrid M. Calderon-Collins) is set to be released on November 1st, 2019.
October 2nd, 2019
Elder Orphans / Rachael Ikins
Dawn again, gray, watered-down dawn,
December. Sleep’s oblivion disturbed by arthritis
He rolls from covers. Cat jumps off the bed.
He creaks along the hall to the kitchen
for coffee and toast with his meds, a dream
of flying on his bicycle tracking tears from eyes to mouth.
His hand clutches a crumple of pocketed paper.
The list for every day;
brush teeth,
shave,
feed cat.
His eyes slide past the silent phone.
He tries to count the days
since the last time a real person called.
His mind shies from this.
She wakes at 7:00 a life-long habit, decades of work for the county.
Her bed covers barely wrinkled from her body,
she tucks and pats few lumps.
She smells medium roast as she opens the TV cabinet.
Though the directions say to take her medication with food,
she skips breakfast, worries about fantasy fat layering her scarred belly.
She checks her phone for missed calls.
She will rinse her mug, wash and dress, smoke a cigarette on the porch,
leave the house by 8:30, errands, grocery, pharmacy, and
home in time for an 11:00 talk show.
All the FaceBook posts of people in families.
While she keeps her wall interesting, hers never has pictures
of herself with another person.
Elder Orphans.
Most were married, had kids, grandkids, far away
or uninterested in anything but the will. Holidays come
with anticipation a person can’t help but feel with Christmas
lights, everything green and red, Halloween afternoon.
Once there was bustle, cookies baked, Scouts singing
at the old folks’ home. Countdown til school vacation.
Sneaking into mom’s closet to spy in gift bags.
She shakes herself.
Sees the wrinkled hand
that strokes the cat
purring on her lap.
Husband died 10 years ago,
a miscarriage in ‘98.
No grandkids ever thunder up porch stairs.
She escaped an abusive second marriage.
Nephews helped move her boxes into a one-bedroom,
third floor walk-up.
Never stayed for dinner.
(Waiting for the will)
No room for her at Christmas,
not even the year her mother died.
She chuckles, thinking of a religion,
long ago, a family was told that there
was no room for them either.
She remembers an acquaintance who marked off days
on his calendar, a Sharpied X to keep track.
She used the newspaper.
Wednesday was the Food Section.
If she had to take one of those dementia tests
in the ER where they ask you the date, day and
who is the president,
she isn’t sure she’d pass now.
The orange idiot supposed to be running the country,
haunts her nightmares, but the newspaper is no more.
Expired ketchup collection in her fridge,
the fossilized popsicles he kept moving apartment
to apartment but forgot to eat.
September 25th, 2019
Biology / Judith Kingston
In which we cut and cut but cannot find love inside a heart
We started with a prawn but moved on
to a heart: cutting each open to uncover
the constituent parts, giggling and hoping
for blood, first shuddering at the black curling
excretions and the bristling brush of the prawn’s
moustache, then pawing through chambers,
that tough old muscle looking tired and grey.
After school time I stuck my knife into his
typewritten letters, dissecting them to find hints
of love. I was lost in him, could not find the
way in or out, every corner looked the same,
ventricular, aorta, the labels were missing and
probably irrelevant at this stage, my heart
pumped his blood around my body, I blinked
my eyelids over his eyes and covered him with
my skin. Mr Smith bent his sarcastic smirk over
my drawings of the heart cells I had squeezed
between two glass plates to peer at through my
microscope. He pointed at the double lines, the
gaps in the membranes: “What is going on here?”
I had to rub my sketches out and start again because
the human body can only be drawn with certainty,
with single lines that meet, with confident pencil
marks that keep that treacherous double helix in.
Judith Kingston is a Dutch writer living in the UK. Her poems have been published in various online magazines such as Poets Reading the News, Barren Magazine, VampCat Magazine and Fly on the Wall Webzine. Besides writing, she translates, teaches and narrates audiobooks. Follow her on Twitter: @judithkingston and Instagram: @judith_kingston.
September 18th, 2019
Room: Solarium
Solstice / Bayveen O’Connell
In the Hospice
there’s a small red suitcase
beside the bed
that will go home
without him
before the autumn wakes
It’s a dark thought
for a cloudless afternoon
on the day that clings
to light
beyond all others
Bayveen O’Connell is a Dublin-based writer who loves travel, myth and folklore.
She has had poems, CNF and flash published in Molotov Cocktail, The Cabinet of Heed, Former Cactus, Boyne Berries, Selene Quarterly, Underground Writers and others.
September 11th, 2019
Room: Basement Wet Bar
bad decisions on my mind / vanessa maki
my hands run against these / smooth black counterops / & i know none of this is real / but it’s real enough to me / & there’s no one around to disrupt this / one woman whiskey session / no one to take the bottle from me / no one to force me to follow the rules / & drink from a glass / & make me not think of things / that cut me so fucking deep / while on the outside it never matters / & then it’s back to replaying / bad decisions / that have burned through / the forests of my mind / bad decisions that make catastrophe feel like warmth
Vanessa Maki is a queer writer, artist, & blk feminist. Her work has appeared or will appear in many places. She has self-published a handful of chapbooks & currently has two forthcoming in 2020: sweet like limes (Bone & Ink Press) & the chosen one (Animal Heart Press). Find her on twitter, instagram & visit her site.
September 4th, 2019
Room: Cradle
My Feral Castle / Amanda N. Butler
There, I was a queen –the looming boulder I climbed
from which I could survey
both court and village.
There, I was an empress –
the stone tower
I leapt from in daring escapades
because there, I was a warrior –
a rogue adventurer –
but the sound of my name
sank heartships
as I had to leave
the rock in the backyard
for another homeschooled day.
Amanda N. Butler is the author of chapbooks effercrescent (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), and Tableau Vivant (Dancing Girl Press, 2015), as well as the micro-chapbook “How A Fairy Gets Her Wings” (Origami Poems Project, 2018). Her poetry has been published in rose quartz magazine, Haikuniverse, Hedgerow, and more with work forthcoming. She is the Poet Laureate of Oldsmar, FL. She can be found blogging at amandanbutler.wordpress.com and on Twitter @arsamandica.
August 28th, 2019
Room: Panic Room
Ode to What’s Up by 4 Non Blondes / J.B. Stone
After Linda Perry
Sometimes a bedroom and a panic room are the same room when you’re aware of the world, aware of its potential, but see it wasted like a lost child with removed retinas to watch it spread like a mass grease fire, not even the most experienced line cook could
extinguish. Frankly, you’ve become sickened by the seclusion. You want to fight your inner demons, break out of this grunge and turn your moans into roars, storm the streets, blockade unholy vestibules and shed your battle cry as easily as your tear duct,
bang your war drum as easily as you bleed. Once your bedroom of self loathing cocoons into a beautiful temple of triumph, maybe your song will be one of rebellious grace instead of cumbersome quarters. Fore the angel doesn’t fly if its spirit curdles. It
only soars once hope becomes the soundtrack to another revolution. Another chance to turn one’s tragedy into a victory pose, breaking down the walls of a fabled Babylon and crumble the mountains. Mounted atop footholds like new-age warriors, on the days the world tells us to feel like casualties.
J.B. Stone is a neurodivergent performance poet, reviewer, and writer from Brooklyn, now residing in Buffalo. He is the author of two chapbooks, A Place Between Expired Dreams And Renewed Nightmares (Ghost City Press 2018) and forthcoming, Fireflies & Hand Grenades (Stasia Press 2019). His work has appeared or is forthcoming in BlazeVOX, Occulum, Crack the Spine, Maudlin House, Peach Mag, Five 2 One Magazine, and elsewhere. You can check out more of his work at jaredbenjaminstone.com. He also tweets @JB_StoneTruth.
August 21st, 2019
Room: Basement Wet Bar
Brumation / Preston Smith
I was dressed up with somewhere to go, only I didn’t know speakeasies remained after the age of Prohibition. Eerie auras of gray, onyx and an occasional gold emanate from the bunker that conceals the business: those around me danced, flitted around in gowns and tuxedoes, swayed
to the harmonious jazz filling the space but I yearned for crisp, Georgian air and sweet rum. It had become easier than ever to succumb to nightlife and its seductive version of unity, but I wanted to be a peach tree: seasonal, opulent, and a flavor everyone adored. Instead, I descend into more than just the speakeasy and find myself awaiting spring’s renaissance.
Preston Smith is a senior at Bowling Green State University where he studies English Literature, German, and International Business. Preston has interned with Mid-American Review and is currently the managing editor of Prairie Margins. He can be found on Twitter @psm_writes, tweeting about his cats, Helios and Misty, and his love for the television series Once Upon a Time.
August 14th, 2019
Room: Garage
Cord / JA Pak
Spectacular the ties to our mothers. I nap & dream. In a car. She’s driving. Profoundly emotional, the mother lets all her unhappiness unravel into me. Unusual, her talking in a dream—I rarely dream about my mother, rarely dream long conversations. Awake. Decide I must call my mother. Phone conversation exactly dream conversation, item by item ticking off: family arguments, old age, half a dozen different heartbreaks. And too, she has a bad cold. Strange—my mother directly talking to me about anxieties. Rather, like so many women, she tells tales, personal hurts encased, directing the voices of others: your father thinks, your sister says. Several hours later, I’ve caught her cold. Thousands of miles apart and yet her unhappiness struggles inside my body and I’m back inside a stormy womb.
Bio: J.A. Pak’s writing has been published in a variety of publications, including Entropy, 7×7, Joyland, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Luna Luna, etc. Come visit her at Triple Eight Palace of Dreams & Happiness
Room: Garage
August 7th, 2019
Waltz / Ingrid M. Calderon-Collins
it is with an open hand
that I eat from your forehead.
small sedatives live on your brow
a sullen landscape that invigorates
i am nothing.
i am,
what you are;
and my wonder is full
and pregnant.
—a car ride of stolen goods
that we’ll eventually set free
a corpse of powder
the ignition is idle.
push your foot in, make a beast of it
send currents to its cylinders.
consider hands on leather
and picture your smallness swelling.
i am the pump and romance
a deck of cards reversed
where’s the pressure?
where’s the insane?
a glance
a stance
a thorn kiss in the middle of howls
will you swallow my broken?
will it make us mute?
will our bellies rip with our slang?
our vernacular in cadence with the breathing of trees
a circuit gland that kindles into spines
egg droppings like berry blood on beaks
parched.
etched on tar and lime.
alabaster veil I crack.
with chisel and awl.
sew you back/
annexed to a cooling dive
where pearls and abyssal hills
resemble your heave
your grieve
our reprieve
temporary hush
no crying
breath held like wings in full speed
come to me
I’ll sigh at your gate.
Ingrid M. Calderon-Collins is an immigrant from El Salvador. She studied journalism at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, CA. but failed to finish because she found a job that provided her with good steady income and an apartment with a view of Downtown L.A.
Her work has been featured in Drunk Monkeys, Rabid Oak, Rhythm & Bones Lit, Pussy Magic, Punch Drunk Press, South Broadway Ghost Society, Mojave He[art] Review, Moonchild Magazine, FIVE:2:ONE amid others.
She is also the author of 4 volumes of poetry, ‘Things Outside,’ ‘Wayward,’ ‘Zenith,’ & ‘Ablution.’ Ingrid M. Calderon-Collins lives in Historic Filipinotown, CA with her husband, painter and poet John Collins. For poetry and rants follow her blog at http://notesofadirtyyoungwoman.com and on Instagram @Brujapoetry & Twitter @BrujaLamatepec
Room: Bedroom
August 1st, 2019
Vantalisse / Marisa Silva-Dunbar
Tonight you are trying to forget;
I don’t need to know how.
I wish I were there to hold you—
trace your face with my fingertips,
kiss the center of your forehead,
bite your bicep while trying
to make you laugh.
It’s been two weeks since I’ve seen you;
I would’ve stayed longer if I knew
weather and time would keep us apart.
I miss: your hand over mine—
falling asleep with my feet between
your calves, my head on your chest—
cafuné calms me. I am safe
when I’m with you; vulnerable nerves—
I am armor to protect you. Let me soothe
you and this craving.
Marisa Silva-Dunbar is a New Mexican poet. Her work has been published in work to a calm poetry zine, Amaryllis, Manzano Mountain Review, Bone & Ink Press, and Midnight-Lane Boutique. She graduated from the University of East Anglia with her MA in poetry. Marisa is a contributing writer at Pussy Magic. She has work forthcoming in Dark Marrow, The Charles River Journal, Dear Reader, and Marias At Sampaguitas . Marisa is the founder and EIC of Neon Mariposa Magazine.
Room: Kitchen
July 24th, 2019
A Study in Handpressed Orange Juice / Carly Maria Hubbard
The orange is not a metaphor. It is a fruit in your palm. Slide a cutting board beneath it on the countertop. Your palm knows what it is doing. Poised. Cup as verb as last night scented muscle memory. The knife slips and now there is red and your hiss. Now your tongue slips out, stretches awake, reaches for a drop of coppered tang. Tease. There are so many ways to release, and they are all the same. Say there is no knife. Say your arm extends into metal hook. You trace its skilled tip over the rise of rind in remembrance of my spine. You grow new nerves. Feel me breathe in the citrus of sweat on your neck. The morning that traces the rift and rise of your chest. Prone. Your shirt: a premeditated casualty. You part pith with scrape. Then the squeeze. With the unbloodied fist, though it’s all ichor. Your palm still knows what it’s doing. The tug to your kitchen, to sunlit table, to morning low and bright on your sill. To light the bits of skin tasted sight unseen. The juice isn’t what matters. No. Yes. I lied about the metaphor. You bring me a glass worth bleeding for,
full.
Carly Maria Hubbard earned her BA in Creative Writing from DePaul University. Her poetry has appeared in Crook & Folly, Pentimento, and Hooligan Magazine and her flash fiction in formercactus and Flash Fiction Magazine. She is an accidental one-time winner of the Uptown Poetry Slam and often suspects that the spirit of Lucille Clifton is trying to contact her. Currently, Carly is a poetry reader for Homology Lit. Come play with her on twitter @carly_maria
Room: Bedroom
April 11th, 2019
All Gone / Ricky Rivers, Jr.
She said, “Think of me every time you sleep in your bed.”
I hated that, so I threw the bed out.
Then, I considered the other rooms,
The kitchen floor, the bathroom sink, the couch.
It was time to remodel.
Out went everything with her smell on it,
everything with dead skin and her hair on it,
everything that used to have her underwear on it.
After some time, finally she was gone,
all of her.
I was safe and sound.
At least, I thought as much.
A bit of her lingered,
because of course I hadn’t considered my tongue.
Rickey Rivers Jr was born and raised in Mobile Alabama. He is a writer and cancer survivor. He likes a lot of stuff. You don’t care about the details. He has been previously published in Fabula Argentea, ARTPOST magazine, the anthology Chronos, Enchanted Conversations Magazine, (among other publications). Check out some stuff from him here, https://storiesyoumightlike.wordpress.com/. You may or may not find something you like there and that’s a promise. Twitter.com/storiesyoumight
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Room: Garden
July 18th, 2019
the wounded deer / Justin Karcher
I know this girl
who owns one of Frida Kahlo’s
paintbrushes
who paints
commandments
in the air:
thou shalt not grow false wings
thou shalt not be a capitalist
thou shalt always be avant-garde
trees
growing out of your body
ghostly roots pulling you apart
she’s always telling me
that if a sunflower
stares at you long enough
you’ll get skin cancer
but not the bad kind
that frightens softness
but the kind
that turns your heart
into a wounded deer
running through the woods
running through the fire
running across the moon
your truest body
running toward the buzz
honeybee biceps glistening in the sun
knuckle bubbles
leaving your fists
because the rage is gone
Justin Karcher is a Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, New York. He is the author of several books, including Tailgating at the Gates of Hell(Ghost City Press, 2015). He is also the editor of Ghost City Review and co-editor of the anthology My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry(BlazeVOX [books], 2017). He tweets @Justin_Karcher.
*****************
Room: Swimming Pool
June 20th, 2019
/ Sara Matson
homage to my royal
accomplice of restraint +
shabbiness her
impeccable plumbago blue
eyes purred
below a meadow of soft
gold waters
gingerbread botanical china
neatly stacked like a
nightmare of provincial rooms
+ licked knuckles
spreading wide to
fabled humble grand
gardens at dusk
unforgiving moon flowers
fragrant against a
reflecting pool w/
yellowed water +
overwhelming licorice scent
(ever pragmatic like
a gleeful cistern)
decadent disease flourished
amongst her imperfections
like an enclosed
basketweave (elegant handiwork)
living upon
the cusp of legendary
she ate chips to play
at unpretentiousness
(as if she couldn’t afford it)
her tips for illusiveness :
remain effusively enthusiastic
pretend to be denim
occasionally climb the trellis of the
fragrant herb garden (handmade + flourishing!)
indulge a sequestered life
w/ dedicated suite +
linens that have been languishing
for years
use vintage glamour
as inspiration
as syrupy hope
as heck
as beauty dead + dying
a respectful imprint
as eternal holiday
sara matson’s writing can be found or is forthcoming in The Journal Petra, Dying Dahlia Review, Meow Meow Pow Pow, Rabid Oak, Mannequin Haus, Awkward Mermaid, Soft Cartel, Dream Pop Press, and elsewhere. her chapbook, electric grandma is available for publication. sara lives in Chicago with her rad husband + cats, and tweets as @skeletorwrites

**********
Room: Dollhouse
May 30th, 2019
Vintage Barbie Chest of Drawers Not sure about age think it’s about 20 years old / Matthew Haigh
What I love about videogames with poor graphics is the bitty-ness of them.
I like reality rendered through a diorama, a plywood façade, the dryly domestic reflected in pink plastic.
This is why I preferred playing with Barbie as a boy – her assortment of accessories in miniature: PVC handbags, clamshell compacts, sun hats & cycling helmets.
My grandparents thought it meant I would turn out funny.
But it’s difficult for a 6 year old to articulate how few things are as satisfying as the click of a tiny drawer in a tiny cabinet.
Matthew Haigh lives and works in Cardiff. His first pamphlet, Black Jam, is due from Broken Sleep Books in 2019. The same year will also see the release of his debut full length collection, Death Magazine, published with Salt.
**********
Room: Basement Wet Bar
June 27th, 2019
Grandmothers At Artmore Hotel Bar, Atlanta / Beth Gordon
At the end of the bar, a younger woman speaks
into her phone, a laptop open and buzzing with business, her strawberry
daquiri tells us everything we need to know but if it didn’t, her voice carries over the football game and we learn that she is firing 10 people tomorrow, is coordinating cardboard
boxes to remove their belongings and extra security and Susan could have gotten a larger severance package if that idiot hadn’t hired a lawyer, her blackish eyes
gleaming with the excitement of it all.
We are not drinking white wine, we have transcended
coconut-layered potions with umbrellas, our tongues attuned
to caramel-infused tequila, single malt scotch, overpriced Japanese
whiskey, neat, there is nothing we have not tasted or imagined, knowing that someone
can simply disappear one day, their corpse
found a year later in an abandoned copper mine, knowing that we will be reincarnated as cold
case detectives, knowing that the worse sound we heard was landing
gear, a reminder that we could not stay in flight, we order
another round, knowing absence has a shape, tastes more like bourbon
than gin, it has a name, like a gray-haired
incantation, too dangerous to put onto the page.
Bio: Beth Gordon received her MFA a long time ago and was not heard from again until 2017 when her poems began to appear in numerous journals Her poems have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize; and her chapbook, Particularly Dangerous Situation, is forthcoming from Clare Songbird Publishing House in 2019. She is also poetry editor of Gone Lawn.
***********
Room: Cradle
June 13th, 2019
Viscera on my Catholic Schoolgirl Uniform / Trina Young
On Sundays, I take myself out to the street. I plead, but with my teeth
to the curb the words just bleed into the concrete. I leave
a scene for the churchgoers, so when they exit mass they see the mess of my pink
little girl gums and pray for me. I really want to ham it up, so I force stigmata.
I think about charging to let them stick their fingers into the holes
in my hands, but it would ruin the illusion.
They eat it up. Like a stain of Jesus they build a shrine
to me, leave candles, rosaries, flowers around my body
(though at night they think I don’t see them steal my molars for jewelry)
Soon they’ll walk over me, not noticing the squish of my green
flesh beneath their shined shoes. I’ll rot beautifully
into the sidewalk, basking in their unknown blasphemy.
I used to jab the finger at my parents. What if my father had been
there when I was born, to hear my baby vocal cords
tearing as I screeched for him? Maybe I could communicate with more
than just a closed fist. I could smile without my lips
splitting and tonguing the crevice. If my mother didn’t force
feed me halved promises, fattening me up so my skin
would be grafted to the toilet, maybe I could trust myself
to be a better human. They love me though; how else would they
have picked up on my stillborn heart and tried to bring back the beat?
So then it all boils down to me, trying to find ways to be clean.
My next plan involves a cheese grater and a bottle of bleach,
a baptism of sorts, my body a holey Garden, a home to locusts.
Trina Young is a poet in Chicago. She has been published in Afterimage Online’s Inklight Gallery, Superstition Review, Burning House Press and placed third as a Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award Winner in the Illinois Emerging Writers Competition. Her writing themes often include mental illness and the absurdity of life. She can be found screaming and cackling into the void of Twitter @tcyghoul.
**********
Room: Bedroom
April 4th, 2019
Spider in the Bedroom / Kailey Tedesco
drop your candelabra; blaspheme the flames, the heart
in the box behind the wall
of the nightstand. it is the two of us here & i’ve something
to say with cinnamon-breath, language
of drawing your shawl more closely
to the shoulder –
it’s you & not me & we are one walk-in
soul transference. they will say
you are not you after this moment, after
my body with backwards
feet kisses at your forehead. i’ve never seen
a ghost without its cameo, decapitated
to remind you it is the image of something
dead and gone. hold your crucifix
to create a light-prism. i want you to. it is
always snuffing, always shushing,
always walls waving friendly at
your screaming. the bed is
stuck with gazing, sheeted in a cold
molasses. capture me — i’ve needed
to be home for such a long time.
Kailey Tedesco is the author of She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publishing) and These Ghosts of Mine, Siamese (Dancing Girl Press). She is an associate editor for Luna Luna Magazine and a co-curator of Philly’s A Witch’s Craft reading series. Her manuscript Lizzie,Speak won White Stag Publishing’s full-length poetry prize. You can find her work featured or forthcoming in New South, Fairy Tale Review, fields, Bone Bouquet Journal, and more. For more information, please visit kaileytedesco.com or follow @kaileytedesco.
**********
Room: Kitchen
March 21st, 2019
the food I eat in secret / Rebecca Kokitus
the food I eat in secret—
the disgusting dry mouthed fantasies
of being stoned and hungry
like imagining eating a cake
ingredient by ingredient
I don’t tell anyone about the things
I eat late at night, like an owl
swallowing rodents whole—
slimy meat, plastic cheese,
brown sugar in its wet sand chunks
washed down with half-spoiled dairy
sinful film in my mouth like cum,
like tasting my own breastmilk
and forgive me for the cardinal sin—
fast food, eaten alone in my car,
(never in front of others)
silicone and glistening like
childhood toys, like
the burger and french fry magnets
on my old refrigerator
tasting so deliciously false
like a meal in a dream
I lick my fingers, smell my palms
the way I do after a cigarette
reveling in misbehavior
Rebecca Kokitus is a poet residing in the Philadelphia area. She has had poetry and prose published in almost fifty journals and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2018. She is currently a student at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where she studies English with a concentration in Writing. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram at @rxbxcca_anna, and you can read more of her writing on her website: https://rebeccakokitus.wixsite.com/rebeccakokitus.
*************
Room: Solarium
March 28th, 2019
Two Different Moons / Justin Evans
When you get lost
You come to the moon in the field.
—Frank Stanford
The moon is small
Not like in your dreams
Where it is swollen and bloat
Like the body you found
When you were twelve, and the
Carnival was in town.
When you get lost
The moon constricts to a
Needle point, stitching itself
Along the seams of constellations.
You will never find your home
So long as you keep looking up.
Justin Evans lives in rural Nevada with his wife and sons. His next book is a collection of epistolary poems written with Jeff Newberry (@flaexile). He teaches at the local high school.
************
Room: Kitchen
July 11th, 2019
Cat Called / Jane Fleming
Dirty. Filthy.
Covered in the grease
of your sickly sweet—
deep fried
exercise of freedom of speech.
As if my dress
Could catch
The sex that you’re spewing from
that mouth that knows nothing
but the taste of
Questionable Consent.
But words can’t violate,
Right?
Words can’t penetrate
and make you scream
Like the cream that you’re offering
Between those whisky fingers.
So, yeah,
Dripping Mouth and Bloodshot Eyes,
ask that waitress whose
Ass you’ve been grabbing with
Those empty sockets
If she wants your blue veins
Instead of green cotton to fill her belly today—
Or if the jokes on you
When she frowns like she wants to
And pulls the bills from plastic
Before popping pear hips and watermelon tits
And whispering over that broken table—
Sure I’ll fuck you—
All the way out.
Jane M. Fleming is a Ph.D. student in the Department of English at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Texas at El Paso, where her heart was stolen by the Franklin Mountains. Her poetry and prose has appeared or is forthcoming in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Drunk Monkeys, Anti-Heroin Chic, Pussy Magic Magazine, and Silver Needle Press, among others. Her chapbook Ocotillo Worship is now available at APEP Publications.
**********
ROOM: Bathroom
March 14th, 2019
I Wait For Her … Dirty / Adrian Ernesto Cepeda
Seeing her lingering fingers
wading under water
exploring so many
bubbles, softly she scrubs
soaping towards desire
she loves reigniting
every color splashing
her lips of fire. I can tell
she longs for me, to dive
inside her tub, nakedly,
converse in tongues,
feel her mouth, as
I am on your mind
as much as you are
on mine? She shines
dripping above me,
her thighs around my neck,
tickling waves, hurricane
shudders above me, so much
more than splashes, I love
the way my lips keep licking
up feeding rebirth, I crave
tasting her sweetness on
my gasping mouth, feel
her rippling white skin,
lush hairs curling
the filthiest smiles—
reveals the tide that floods
ripples of skin when her
body blushes hallelujah
she watches me turn
on her steaming handles,
feeling her tremble…softly,
pulsating her faucet lips
delicately overflowing
as she eloquently drips,
billowing deeply, I love
leaving my XO signature,
my lips always stream to
beautify her.
Adrian Ernesto Cepeda is the author of the full-length poetry collection Flashes & Verses… Becoming Attractions from Unsolicited Press and the poetry chapbook So Many Flowers, So Little Time from Red
**********
ROOM: SOLARIUM
March 7th, 2019
No One Ever Really Leaves You / Joanna Valente
I am dead.
I meet a woman
who is not a girl.
In the sky, she sees
a phantom
who has our face.
It looks like us.
*
All of the birds have died
There are no birds
left in Philly.
Every light has been eaten
by things called demons.
I am not afraid of them.
They shine back as a constellation
w/out stars—
an immense stone bath, a reverse vagina
trampled inward.

Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (ELJ Publications, 2016) & Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016), and is the editor of A Shadow Map: Writing by Survivors of Sexual Assault (CCM, 2017). They received their MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College. Joanna is the founder of Yes, Poetry and the managing editor for Civil Coping Mechanisms and Luna Luna Magazine. Some of their writing has appeared in Prelude, BUST, Spork Press, The Feminist Wire, and elsewhere.
