Read the featured writers of the week, CALICHE FIELDS, in the featured room, GATE,  here, and then click a room below to read all the Pink Plastic Poets collected in that individual space.

PAVLINA MARIE WILKINS

MELISSA ELEFTHERION

ELIZABETH HORNER TURNER

SARAH HILTON

LUCIA LARSEN

MADISON KALIA

PRESTON SMITH

Nymph

Venus Davis

Juliet Cook & John Compton

YUSUF AKMAN

Read the featured writer of the week, YUSUF AKMAN, in the featured room, GROVE, below and then visit the ARCHIVE for more Pink Plastic Poets.

Bastard’s Villanelle / Yusuf Akman

As for the seeds scattered foolishly,

we’ve come a very short way from building fences where

there are dead gardens. At every corner of this country

some still lead sheep down the primrose path drunkenly

with no sign of shame or regret hovering in the air.  

As for the seeds scattered foolishly,

Persephone’s subarctic heart thaws in a suicide pact annually

through a Stygian demimonde she helped escape, she exclaims: Beware!

There are only dead. Gardens at every corner of this country

are barren and sulfur-bound; the day is always perfect for laundry– 

as she collapses, a shrill puritan woman scrutinizes what she should wear. 

As for the seeds scattered foolishly,

churches should recognize survivors as the patron saints of PTSD.

Yet clergymen not only instigate but also perpetrate; they won’t dare

(to acknowledge) there are dead gardens at every corner of this country.

A glass coffin filled with water is no funeral for a Mangrove tree,

but for him I hear the ferryman singing the hymns of despair;

as for the seeds scattered foolishly, 

this country made a dead garden out of me.

Bio: Yusuf Akman was born in Denizli, Turkey. They are a senior philosophy student at Boğaziçi University whose literary focus revolves around what having a queer identity in Turkey is like. Their works appeared in the online journals Trampset, Raised Brow Press, Resurrection Magazine and Cypress Press.Twitter: @Akman_Yusuf_

S. CEARLEY

Wild Bees’ Combs And Honey

Text of Wild Bees’ Combs And Honey:

He did not cut my name with a pleased smile on his rosewood bureau because I was almost crazy with doing nothing. The knife handle serves as a human. She had formed great hopes of the consequence of his folly. Beside that fact the affair of the loss, which gave his very handsome and attractive person an interest in securing a worthy prize. Let’s be solemn a little to wake up, but blow wise to fix locations in his work far above the stocking-tops. He sent you those words, through a harem. The sun suddenly burst forth from the spot without them, curled up into small pieces, or take you where some house is building and order you to a lonely hollow in the lurch. There are to be ready for any one that wanted to know that there is a tree near here, which is hollow from root to branches, and filled with wild bees’ combs and honey. The “Mama Sez” Girl would like to know how to handle this life within the main outlines of thorny branches. But Grumpy-growly saw her, and now his splendid blue eyes were raised to her blue stripes, and went in. It often takes an unconscionable hell of a century on sun-goddesses. humanity will always be with us, whatever changes may be introduced into our scheme of diction, of revision, and we can but guess how it affected her. 

S Cearley tricked a computer into making poetry while it thinks it is making art. Find more at @generatedpoetry on instagram or http://futureanachronism.com

Picture S. Cearley Used As A Target To Generate Wild Bees’ Combs And Honey:

This is a picture the Dollhouse Architect of the Pink Plastic House posted of her long sailor socks and her book Were Mer as a part of her book and sock photo series. She’s so flattered it was an inspiration to concrete poetry!

SCOTT FERRY

I LIKE A MAN IN BLACK / Sabrina Rourke

Oh Death, my old friend, come to play
I’ll flirt with you over the chessboard
Fondle your bishop and allow you to get close to my queen
You covet her and I wish to forfeit her to you
But I never make my opening gambit
We simply admire each other’s armies
The distance intimate
I long for your icy hand to steal across my body
Take my breath away
Make my heart stop
But I am a creature of fear and guilt
Not for you, never you
But for them
For them, I turn you away
I do not succumb to your heady advances 
Your brother, Pain, entices me 
Spills my blood, more than once
His touch, too, I hide
Explain away to them 
I cut my knee shaving again. 
I feel him and think of you
I have said goodbye to him
He does not bring joy
Nor, I know, do you
Only sorrow for them and, perhaps, my longed-for comfort
So many ways I could let you take me 
But fear stays my hand
For now I will leave you, regard you only with those knowing glances
We both know 
how close I have come to you
I wonder if you want me to

Yvonne Litschel is a writer and artist living in London. Her work has appeared in several poetry magazines as well as been featured in two Sidekick Books anthologies. She has three solo publications, Moth Dust (Sampson Low), Immurement (Broken Sleep Books), and ræfs (Ghost City Press). Most recently she placed second in the Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize for poetry. yvonnelitschel.com @yvlitschel

Sarah Nichols lives and writes in Connecticut. She is the author of eight chapbooks, including She May Be a Saint (Porkbelly Press, 2019) and This is Not a Redemption Story (Dancing Girl Press, 2018.) Her poems and essays have also appeared in Isacoustic, Five:2:One Magazine, Moonchild Magazine, and Drunk Monkeys.

Companion / Peach Delphine

blade knows stone, cutting knows flesh

mango, tomato or left arm

hand knows blade, eye judges angle

by reflection along its length

a thin wire of light, single strand

glittering, honed to effortless motion,

even washed and put away

taste of blood lingers, every pot has a soul,

what of blade,

flesh accepts cutting

swallows up steel, even when empty

blade resides in the hands,

blade sings of the heart,

sly arc of steel, cold seduction,

utility of the instrument

makes it ubiquitous, kitchen counter,

odd drawer, tucked into wainscoting,

closet shelf,

blade is eternal

having tasted of me,

living beneath my tongue,along the curve of my back,

a shadow in my eye,

a glyph carved into my door,

A sharper memory

Than what can never be undone

This swell and ache inside of me will die with me / Kendall Bell

It will not rise through my skin and bore itself
into another host. It will not carry on after
these fingers have exhausted the miles they have
covered over keys that will be melted and fashioned
into something useful. It will remain hidden in
words I have refused to reveal—the bodies they were
meant for, also feeding the earth. What is this need
for legacy, for purpose, when everything and everyone
we love will fade like long dead stars in a sky that
people barely crane their necks to anymore? We don’t
love people. We love the idea of people who will never
live up to what we’ve created in our heads. We will
love and die, love and die, and Earth will spin on
and on, and everyone left, and everyone after those we
knew and loved will know nothing of what burns inside
of us. They will only be able to imagine what a body
looks like after self immolation.

Kendall A. Bell’s poetry has been most recently published in Dark Marrow and Crepe & Penn. He was nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net collection in 2007, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2018. He is the author of two full length collections, “The Roads Don’t Love You” and “the forced hush of quiet”, and 25 chapbooks. He is the publisher/editor of Maverick Duck Press. His chapbooks are available through Maverick Duck Press. He lives in Southern New Jersey.

 

erection for the clinically depressed / annette covrigaru

at the climax of depression i begin caressing corners—

whittled book cases, beaten subway beams

rub my fingers sideways, updown

so i’m two places at once, so i’m on the edge of something.

when surfaces converge i’m a little less dead

& a little more certain of permanence.

Annette Covrigaru is a gay, bigender American-Israeli writer and photographer based in Brooklyn, NY. They were awarded a Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices Nonfiction Fellowship in 2014, a Home School Hudson 2019 Poetry Residency, and earned an M.A. in Holocaust Studies from the University of Haifa. Their nonfiction and poetry have appeared in Entropy, Hobart, Cosmonauts Avenue, and FIVE:2:ONE, among others, and are collected at www.annettecovrigaru.com. Annette’s debut chapbook, Reality, In Bloom, is forthcoming in 2020 with Ursus Americanus Press.

I can’t listen to “I Melt With You” anymore

by Ashley Naftule

The detectives chalk outline the face of Jesus

gazing up from the oil slick staining the driveway.

It was touch and go at first—

first responders on the scene

saw Marlene Dietrich tipping her top hat at them

from within the black swirl.

The victim’s mother saw herself

as a girl,

drinking a Roy Rogers at that steakhouse

her parents used to take her to,

the one up on the mountains with the big wagon wheel outside—

where they’d cut off your necktie when you walked in

and hung it from the rafters overhead.

That night her father’s blue tie had pineapples and cocktail shakers on them—

it was her favorite.

She had spent that whole night sipping Roy Rogers,

trying to outline the shape of the body

encased in her tears

with crayons on her table mat.

It was no use—

the limbs kept evaporating.

All the evidence of her pain fell under the jurisdiction of air.

She was grateful at the time for that weightlessness,

but now she wanted so badly to pin everything to the earth,

to hold her memories

down

until they were as flat and hard as the concrete under her feet—

until they were tangible enough that ants could march across their surface

the way they do on the face of Jesus.

Perhaps then you’d rise solid from the pool of her tears,

Icarus in reverse—

flying back up through your bedroom window,

the broken glass resetting itself in your wake

like a time-lapse jigsaw puzzle.

Taking off your feathers and storing them carefully in your bedside drawer,

you’d crawl back into bed—

wax still clinging to your skin.

And in the morning,

your mother would leave your favorite tie

hanging from the doorknob.

And there would be a cup of coffee steaming

at the bottom of the flight

of stairs,

hot enough to burn the wax seal off of your lips

once you’ve finished humming that Modern English song you love so much

and come down for breakfast.

Gazing into that cup,

you’d see a face in the black that you can’t bear to see again.

The same face that only ever looked beautiful to you

when it was broken into a thousand tiny reflections

on your way down.

The Mer-Fairy / Gail Bello 

With a white pearl encrusted tail the sheen of sea salt,

              And resplendent silver wings agleam with opaline flecks.

                           To see her is a perplexing marvel.

                   She is as beauteous as she is confounding.

      For the contradictions in her mind must be cumbersome.

         Her bottom belonging to the saline drink,

                                                        Her backbone telling her she must fly,

         While also hoping her gills provide wind resistance,

                                                        And that her chitin is as strong as her scales.

               Perhaps one day she will be free of all her netting.

 No trawlers grinding her down into the sand,

                                        No lepidopterists snatching her out of the air.

                          And perhaps she will make it to Neptune

                            Where the zephyr and ichorous meet

                 And she’ll find worth in the symphony of all her parts.

Gail Bello is from Waltham Massachusetts. She is a recent BFA grad who writes poetry and plays and is looking forward to whatever comes next with a positive and hopeful heart. Find her previous publications at https://thaumaturgedramaturge.wordpress.com. She is thrilled and honored to be published in Pink Plastic House. Follow her on Twitter @AquajadeGail

Mother of Sighs / Jennifer MacBain-Stephens

After the 1977 film Suspiria

You must abandon your false mother

and take me inside of you

Susie feels something was
always ___ and missing

Cut the meat out of A and J
letters with a lipstick heart drawn
around them

on a silver wire hanger
building

The animal comes from the cellar
Susie. It spits, bucks, and ____

the costumes look like blood
spray
criss cross over an American body

the feeling presses her belly

Susie is Little Red with one eye

a walk through a private woods
upgrade to VIP and you meet the wolf

Susie, look with your one good eye
your mother is murdered

Run to her kin

cloaked in the Sabbath and ___

this spell, this rain soaked cape

Susie your blond head is cracked and
____ Submit to wet it’s not masculine
or feminine but animal

II

Meanwhile back at the dance school

one girl carries her body parts in a satchel

one girl crashes through a therapist’s window

the therapist is in drag but no one cares

one girl wears white keds

one girl says sleep with me

one girl climbs the wall

the instructors all talk inside their heads
measure body part of policemen

another bomb goes off underground

one girl carries her ballet shoes all the way to Berlin

it’s metal arms and watches strangle her in a closed off studio

A web of girls move and cannot control their jerks and shakes

lithe orange leaves that bend and crack under the weight

of an Eastern breeze

A gaggle of girls cannot burn down the academy

if you are wounded people in pain will find you
the news anchor reports he nods to osmosis
but it’s hidden under black light and code

Susie turns into a summer leaf and looks through
the woods with her one good eye

her knuckles bleed from exposed roots and rocks

Susie didn’t think her limbs could bend that way

she tries not to vomit

Susie says __ to the wall

I need to know you intimately before we can
dance

Susie is Little Red on a good day

black death on a bad one

_____ and still

and still

and

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens lives in Midwest and is the author of four full length poetry collections: “Your Best Asset is a White Lace Dress,” (Yellow Chair Press, 2016) “The Messenger is Already Dead,” (Stalking Horse Press, 2017,) “We’re Going to Need a Higher Fence,” tied for first place in the 2017 Lit Fest Book Competition, and “The Vitamix and the Murder of Crows,” is recently out from Apocalypse Party. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. She is also the author of ten chapbooks. Recent work can be seen at or is forthcoming from The Pinch, Black Lawrence Press, Quiddity, Prelude, Cleaver, Yalobusha Review, Zone 3, and decomp. Visit:http://jennifermacbainstephens.wordpress.com/

Welcome Mat  / Madison McSweeney

People like me shouldn’t meet the neighbours

Loud talkers, heavy metal listeners and late-night walkers

I see you in the elevators

Nice to put a face to the ones I awaken

Bad news comes in sheets of paper

Ominous omens in eight-and-a-half by eleven

Blunt notices of eviction, subtle hints of termites

Leave me alone, I don’t have pests

is something someone with bugs would insist

Come in, I guess

The cockroach is chilling with a beer on the couch

watching some housewife show.

Make yourself home,

I insist.

 

Sarah Lilius is the author of four chapbooks, including GIRL (dancing girl press, 2017), and Thirsty Bones (Blood Pudding Press, 2017). Her work can be found in Luna Luna Magazine, Pithead Chapel, and Fourteen Hills. She lives in Arlington, VA with her husband and two sons. Her website is sarahlilius.com.

 

Beneath The Waters of Liars /Amantine Brodeur

 

Were Avatars freshmen, growing webbed feet for lungs;

in each imprint, a memory,  one cell-thick, gasping

succulent eager admiration. Dismissively articulated,

Alveoli. In the anatomy of disorder, blood coagulates

the gas-blood barrier depleting coefficients; microns

of Truth bled from their arid skin.

Were Persian earthquakes, ancient foreplay; fissures

deeper than knee-deep in azure rock and russet gravel;

of hot desert winds dressing women’s skin in burnt sand

Were their white eternal flames unfamiliar to God and

Poverty, beyond the unsafe addiction of bodies caught

And auctioned by the mouth.

Were predilections the swallowing gasp of dark teen

nails and Goth lipstick, her nubile body to be strode

aside, or over and pegged, like hunted Game, who

could blame this constancy of profanity, entitled as

predation is, to lure and leave a carcass; the ghost of

Her, stolen, many lives later.

___

Amantine Brodeur is a reclusive literary alchemist and explorer of the mundane and ordinary, revealed in the universes hidden within words. A lover of satire and the absurd, she embraces the surrealist irony of contemporary life in blank verse. She describes herself as an occasional transcendental romanticist.

chemsex for a higher purpose™ / Elizabeth Aldrich

Oblivion has been off-limits for a very long time.

I want veins full of black tar heroin, the kind I used to buy from that guy off Saticoy,

the kind he kept in his sock and only gave me once we were in his gated community. Private property. Beige metal gates.

I want to be on top of soft lavender sheets or a raw mattress,

and I want to be fucked, and fucked, and fucked.

I want veins full of heroin*

warm rhythmic cosmic agony

I want to not know who is inside of you–

someone else can be the anonymous whore.

I want every person filling me come to know the name my parents gave me.

too much x too much

arrhythmic, chaotic

eyes wandering the ceiling

I want to not know where I am, who I am, or why I am.

someone

please

just touch me

*or a body filled with cocaine, ketamine, etizolam, Valium,

Percocet, Johnny Walker Black Label, Absolut Apeach

i am the naked wolfbitch/ narco-nymphette. girls like me melt into alumina. girls like me learn to lie. girls like me are knee-weak beneath my teeth. gleaming cumshot-white underneath a trembling spotlight a war like a dance / cathedrals painted black

the grocery list of nightmares, twofold. the eyelid of a day badly lived, night of countless tits and a single bloody mouth. snare my alienated attention, why? with all these immanent earthquakes that rivet my frame and cause my muscles to contract, the stress of having to warp your own gravity, score your own points. the wrenching tedium of landing one foot in front of the other when logic itself is a drawn-out mystery, another joke you’ve only overheard, eavesdropping on telegraphing dreams.

i used to get my metaphysical jollies rubbing up against some architectonic System, but only now i do realize nothing takes the edge of the problem of existing–because that problem has a name, and that name is me, and you can’t take that edge off because baby i’m all edge.

(the monster’s snuggled in the covers, i’m hiding under the bed, all is right with the world.)

there really is no end in sight. it’s true that with death just come new eyes. see same forever. eternity needs a transplant: it’s my body but it’s my call. it’s the same as always. wish my voice out; for something to rise and say, tired, complete! uttered yet fantastic but no we’re slated in the third grade

A Simple Thing / Juliette van der Molen

our hands talk without

needing words, nudging

and reaching, silently tapping

in understanding.

there are sounds as we work

side by side, the crackle snapping

as logs settle in the stone fireplace,

the steady breathing as i find a rhythm

to match the heartbeat slowed

from too much time in the village.

grandmother smooths open handwritten

lists, shaky scrawls thrown out in loop

lines, casting a net for cures, most

desperate and trapped in pain.

most of the secrets of the forest are

not meant to be secrets at all, they

are there for the willing and for those

who wish to see. but somehow beyond

the trees, underneath the bright cloudless

skies, people become blind.

my pestle grinds,

heavy in my hand,

i let it do the work,

turning dried leaves to powder,

crushing hard berry pebbles

to make them more suitable

for human consumption.

they say grandmother is magic,

but she says the world is magic,

i believe her. no secret incantations,

fanciful imaginings of villagers—

a simple thing

to commune with nature,

to let it speak

and let it be.

we fill and tie muslin, funnel tinctures into

glass of cobalt, emerald and amber.

once they are corked, nestled deep in

woven straw, grandmother speaks.

​go with care,

she says as she ties my

red cloak closed, for i

am forever her child—

​outside of the forest, beware.

Forties Girl  / Andrea Quinlan

An old song plays

Is You Is, or Is You Ain’t

It asks a question plainly enough

Whether by accident or design

Those words were written during a war

They are not yours or mine to use

But still, they linger in the air

They sound from a crackling gramophone record

But really it is an iPod

These factors are distractions when the real question is

Contained in that song, after all

I wonder what’s the point of playing it?

When there is the spectre of another in the room

Who is flesh and blood

Whilst I am a ghost

I might be flesh and blood, after all

But a ghost dampens my spirits

Like the river water dampened her skirts as she floated

I will not sink into the depths

I would rather the romance of the song

The kind of spirit I could feel at home with

I would rather throw off those skirts and dance

So the answer to that question is that

No, you are welcome to that solid form

I will slip away underneath the doors

You may hold onto that form

If it turns out that question is mine alone

1

Run away with me / Kendall A. Bell

In the daydream, your lips tasted

like fresh strawberries, and we rode

bicycles down city streets. Your long,

dark hair soaked in the spring’s warm

sun. At midnight, we found each other

again, under teardrop shaped streetlights.

We packed our bags with things like body

butter and Skittles, saved just enough

room for toothbrushes and our favorite

shirts. This time, your kisses tasted

like sea salt and ocean swells. We drive,

blasting our favorite songs as a soundtrack

to a new life. You promise a world turned

to gold. We never sleep. We never try.

Kendall A. Bell’s poetry has been most recently published in Dark Marrow and Crepe & Penn. He was nominated for Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net collection in 2007, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015 and 2018. He is the author of two full length collections, “The Roads Don’t Love You” (2018) and “the forced hush of quiet” (2019), and 26 chapbooks. His next chapbook will be released in June 2020. He is the publisher/editor of Maverick Duck Press and editor and founder of Chantarelle’s Notebook. His chapbooks are available through Maverick Duck Press. He lives in Southern New Jersey.

:

What I’m Going to Do, Sarah Connor / Juleigh Howard Hobson

I’m going to pretend you’re my mother, I

Know you don’t really exist, that you are

Just an actor, that the role is just your

Job. But I’m going to pretend. It’s why

I won’t kill myself with crashing the car

Headlong into the freeway divider

By grabbing the steering wheel when she takes

Me to school. I’ll pretend she’s my foster

Mom, who brings me places, makes me do chores.

I’ll pretend I have to stay with her, make

The best of it while you are away for

Hollywood, that you love me, that I’m yours,

That when you’re back everything will be fixed

Perfect. Meanwhile, I have you on Netflix.

Encircling  /  Sheena Carroll

Follow her crop lines:

She moved to Minnesota

because her cousin offered her a free cabin.

Now she can say she’s a full-time artist

without capitalism in the way.

But something is wrong in the field

behind her home—

yes, right behind her,

purple yellow blue yellow

lights at night

and in the morning,

another mutilated deer.

Not knowing what else to do,

she makes art about it.

Eternal inspiration in the unexplained

but not really, because one

can only go so far before revealing everything,

and the mystery must be maintained

for the piece to contain any lasting value.

 

The Venus Flytrap / Lisa Lermer Weber

The Venus Flytrap snaps shut

as soon as she senses the tentative touch

of her would-be lover—

or devourer.

Her hunger knows no remorse.

Her desire begs no forgiveness.

And why should she regret

acting upon her basic instinct

when her suitors—her predators—

act upon theirs.

After all, they are just inhabitants

in the garden of good and evil—

some reaching for the sun,

others snaking their way

through the dark and tangled undergrowth.

The Venus Flytrap snaps shut,

ending a dangerous liaison

and showing the world

that beauty does not equal weakness,

and an opening is not always an invitation.

VICTOR  /  DANIEL CASEY

When I think of your body

I don’t want to think of only

long socked legs, cheeks, and wide eyes.

But I do, because I don’t

think you mind my idiocy.

I read your words and construe

desires only someone far

away could assume. Leering,

imaginary, it creeps

out of my mind through dreams at dawn

unawake, unasleep some

monster plotting to stitch sheathed

thighs to twisted haunches

hewn from marbled stone supple

in its emergent need to

be free. I would find Venus’

arms, devise, suggest a way

for their elegant gestures.

Perhaps long, satin gloves full

of fresh breath from your new chest.

At your neck, where you already

pull from your heart babied air

speaking your verse in cadences

of rhyme I cannot mimic or find,

I listen. Waiting for your lips to part

so to speak a name into your mouth,

taken from tongue placed on tongue

to be said or unsaid, spat out, or

forgotten. You have always been

before I was, before I made this

image, collage, fantasy made me

this monstrosity. I apologize for

I am nothing to you now or ever.

dear margaret / jameson hampton

tiny, frightened minds say,

there’s a sort of evil out there, something very strange in these old woods

and they can’t discern between all the things

they don’t understand

their fear makes sense to us

because there is fear represented among us

but we didn’t understand loneliness

until we experienced it through

  her

she put words around the cold rushing wind and the whistle of the rustling trees

she was as lonely as we were

and she listened to the parts of silence that other people filled up with their fear

our fear is drawn back, always, to the source of all fear

through the douglas firs and the sycamore trees

there is a place,

a place like us:

a single piece, a single whole

an unpleasant place—even for us—

where the cold wind always rushes;

an impossible place for tiny, frightened minds

Prince in a Tin Foil Crown / Amy Suzanne

Forest girls are found by men

Who come in there to rescue them

Indoor outdoor

Flimsy paper walls

I feel a wild thing bedroom coming on

Malachite trees push up the roof

And I am looking for you

My prince in a tin foil crown

If books tell the truth

I conjured you

And if you climb back in that boat

I’ll eat you up, I’ll love you so

And when you say you don’t remember

I’ll wonder if I needed to be more fierce

Or less ugly, princess toes instead of duck feet

I’ll realize I’m stuck as me

The men who come or leave

Can’t change a thing

Mark Anthony Smith was born in Hull. His writing has appeared in Spelk Fiction and Truly U. Other stories and poems are forthcoming in The Cabinet of Heed and Detritus.

 

THE SEVEN SISTERS / CAITLIN REYNOLDS

It was cold while we stood in your backyard

Looking upwards to the night sky for clarity

For a quiet moment you had your arm around me, my head tucked under your chin

I pointed to a small, twinkling constellation and you said that it was the Seven Sisters

Later I researched it and learned it was formed 100 million years ago

it’s thought that early skywatchers could see more stars in the sky than we do today

Their skies weren’t obstructed by pollution, their eyes not tricked by satellites

The sky didn’t have poison in it yet

and I thought about what it would have been like, to see the sky like that

and then I thought about our hearts as the sky

What would it be like to have a heart not yet corrupted by poison, by disappointments and deceptions

That clarity just came with the territory

The Seven Sisters is 400 light years away

and I thought about how I have felt so far away

from people

People I have loved

People I have trusted

how I couldn’t see any stars because my own sky had become so blurred

Blurred black and blotted out

and I get the feeling you’ve had to look at a sky similar to mine

and I think about how living with the pollution just became second nature

That maybe I didn’t want to see any of those stars

Maybe if I did it would devastate me too much

But I guess when you kissed me I didn’t feel like I was 400 light years away

I could feel my feet on the ground

and we shared a cigarette

I looked back up at the sky and you looked at me

 

Monster / Brigid Hannon

He doesn’t hear me,

or He doesn’t listen.

I’ve yet to determine which, but-

perhaps my line to heaven is down,

perhaps all these rainstorms have washed it away.

My head has monsters that whisper,

scold me still.

Put on your best dress,

comb out your snarled hair,

perfect lipstick,

and go.

Go to this china doll tea party,

with girls playing dress up like their mommies,

cups of tea replaced

by glasses of wine.

I must prove platonic-

superficial schoolgirl that I am.

But I don’t want to play anymore, you see.

I don’t care how young I sound because

this is how old I am.

Still not old enough to know better,

as I only just got used to drinking;

and I still don’t know how to drive.

Twiterpatted and crushy-crushed.

To smush,

To smash,

By definition.

Stupid me is still hoping for stupid you.

God knows I try to forget.

but again,

He either doesn’t hear me,

or He doesn’t care.

I gobble these pills in wee fistfuls,

think about how I don’t think about you-

at least not anymore.

This book is for my curses,

the fluid words that jog my memory

while waiting for sleep, or-

waiting for the little pink pill

to work its magic.

You’re a virus I’ve learned to live with,

eating away at my good cells,

tearing apart my tissue.

You are a nightmare I cannot wake up from.

It’s raining down on my life like fire,

like brimstone.

I wish I was stoned,

to take this edge off.

Drunk to drink it all away.

For days I have been flying,

high as a kite in the sky.

For days I have been playing

at self-medicating…

if I were honest,

I’d be lying.

I never did it all that well.

I have these bruises-

Though not really.

They call them love bites,

but I have never been loved by one who’s bitten.

These are battle scars to me.

The mailman comes,

and this

sends me into a frenzy,

a writer’s wet dream,

but the thoughts don’t reach the fingertips.

Can’t hit the right keys,

drop the pen to the paper,

make me choke on these bitter consonants.

Better than another try at another trial,

I play these words like notes on a piano,

But I can’t control the scales anymore.

You are burned on these bleeding retinas.

You are inside everything that I do.

Why would God let my life go by?

In an instant, over this?

Once again,

always again,

He doesn’t hear me,

or He isn’t listening.

Brigid Hannon is a writer from Buffalo, NY.  Her poetry has been
featured at Ghost City Press Review, Right Hand Pointing, Constellate
Magazine, Night Music Journal, and Madwomen in the Attic.  Her short
fiction has been featured at Soft Cartel and Edify Fiction.  She can
be found online at hamneggs716.wordpress.com and on Twitter
@hamneggs716.

Light Through the Trees / Anthony Lawrence

The trees are outsourcing 
their resident populations 
of nocturnal watchers
& killers: powerful
& boobook owls, tawny 
frogmouth impersonators
& a bird that cries
more than it sings.
This had been the domain
of the cutter shrike
& tarantula hawk
but exotics like the labial
swamp flower & its dark
affiliates the mountain sash
stagger vine, strangler fig
& star wheel have now
established themselves
by leaving symbol-riddled
impressions of the moon’s
phases in strips & wafers 
of red bark. Each day
around one or two degrees
before dark on the ringed
face of a cut stump, light
comes through the trees
& falls into the hand-blown
green chamber of a bottle.
Of all the creatures
who pause before the light
as it flickers & goes out
it is the undertaker snake
that learns how to regulate
its heart rate, & so make
imperceptible it’s approach.
The scene ends with a little
raven call.

The signal is weak here / Pavlina Marie Wilkin

There’s WiFi in the garden

so here I am. The lawn

is shaped by my tendencies

inconstant and indifferent

weeds on a par with the flowers

Writing this in drafts I

have momentarily

forgotten your name

It hasn’t come to me yet

it will. What’s new with you?

I’m much the same. I am

teaching ‘the boy’

there are shades of cold

many ways to describe it

Synonyms will save us

We are not ‘ freezing’

all the time. ‘I feel / it is

chilly/ fresh’.  Discernment

of difference lets the joins

show. Your name is unlike

any other name

‘How did it go yesterday?’

Questions like this are demands

not that they ‘hurt’. They

smart, irritate and annoy

I feel this keenly, a

suggestion of hurt. Your name

comes to mind

Craving / December Lace

I am pink tank tops and animal cartoons

The Need clawing out of me,

sheets too thin to hold

Pull out bed, no shelves for my dolls

a wet carpet ruined

from leaving the door open

I walk the hallways waiting

for you to lift me, pull apart the fabric,

take your hands and fold me

Look down and you can see it

all over my face, the Need hovering-

static over my lips, wrapping you too

moon spell / linda crate

crisp, eerie night
full of mystery
bedazzled in crow song;
you struggling beneath
a burden of the truth—
there is no mirth
laughing in the sunset
only the cold fang of a coming
winter,
and you believe you’re safe;
this is a pretty lie—
beneath the garden is a creature
digging through the soil,
you have long since painted me
the villain;
your truth nothing more than a  masquerade—
the damphyr leaves the coffin behind,
breaking through your burial of me;
you insincere yet charming
will probably convince them that i am
the monster
as if i am the only one—
but you’re the one devouring damsels
until only darkness is left,
i am the spell of moonlight that will
shatter you until only void remains.

The Candle / Z. D. DICKS

The candle flame jumped in my bedroom

as netting was pushed aside     by draught

carrying vanilla and coconut     from open

pores     when spider lace dropped     but

its lines were carried     a ghost print on skin

They danced     as shadows on that thin feather

each curve     gleaned     by flick and caress

of light     armoured in nakedness     wearing

the night as negligée     a woman was

undressed     the closer her cat eyes glowed

At her back     and slumped on the ceiling

she threw off her garter and french knickers

her corset ripped by one step     and as she

leaned forward     the spectres     swirled

on corner posts     but she was warmed

Not by suppressed flicker     an open window

or a duvet flung to floor     but by a man

a phantasm     clothed in black

Z. D. Dicks has appeared in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Fresh Air Poetry, As it Ought to Be, I am not a silent poet, The Hedgehog Poetry Press and described as ‘a gothic Seamus Heaney’ by Anna Saunders.

 

 

Plain White Van / Norb Aikin

You ask me to be descriptive

and cite examples like

you don’t have a window to look through

or a leg to stand on.

You’re driving faster just

before the disaster and I’m

eager to watch it unfold

before my mouth can form the words

“I told you so!”

You want me to be a description

and set an example like

you’re too good to manage on your own

with vices waiting to explode.

You’re just a clipper, clipped,

and ready to drive off the road

while we keep staring transfixed

at an outcome that is greater

than the cost of admission

to the show.

I’m decidedly okay being nondescript

like the examples my life should’ve been

before I knew you were watching

and waiting for me to decide

if I was gonna live or die.

With no thanks to you, I’ll

safely get in the machine

and ride.

On REM’s Automatic for the People / Dean Rhetoric

I Swallow Heart / Effy Winter

Seinfeld / Justin Karcher

I’m scared of

the same thing you are:

modern-day living

Like all these hipster doofuses

uncomfortable at parties

knocking over bookshelves

when they’ve had too much to drink

declaring

at the top of their lungs

“These pretzels are making me

thirsty”

Like wandering through the desert for

40 years

and then the aliens come

so you invite them to coffee

and talk about

humanity’s biggest flaws—

Hand models

breaking apart endangered lobsters

the bisque is to die for

Dingoes eating babies

unemployed pigmen

jumping off buildings

Driverless garbage trucks

roaming the streets

looking for meaningless sex

The panting, the screaming

fake, fake, fake, fake

everyone wants you to fuck up

It’s okay though

I got a great idea for a cologne

“grievance”

sometimes it’s the only thing

getting me out of bed

in the morning

Justin Karcher (Twitter: @justin_karcher, Instagram: the.man.about.town) is a Best of the Net- and Pushcart-nominated poet and playwright born and raised in Buffalo, NY. 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).

I Bet Dale Cooper Doesn’t Feel Body Dysphoria / Ennis Rook Bashe

I’d like to look so good in a suit

that distraught girls slither out of the decades and into my bed,

like to sit in my boxer shorts watching the cold sunrise over the pine trees.

Anyone could

walk into my room with a switchblade or bad news

but now the person in the mirror has too-long scraggly hair and fingernails

and my best interests not at heart.

I’d like to be unwrapped at last, walking out of the lake

with a log-thick body, deep and sturdy voice.

Ennis Rook Bashe is a game designer/poet/grad student located in Brooklyn. Find them on Twitter at @EnnisRookBashe, and check out their poetry chapbook about transgender identity, NOT GIRL BUT KNIFE: https://www.amazon.com/Not-Girl-But-Knife-poetic-ebook/dp/B07PJ1Q7X5/

 

One night I dreamed I carried the ocean /
Sarah Etlinger

in my pocket, and, any time I wanted,
I could pull it out like a shard of glass
to see a starfish
stretching to grasp the sand,
slowly meandering along,
or the flutter of kelp swirling
through curtains of currents.
I could backfloat through it all,
eyes up to the clouds, tracing their outlines
with my arms and lips in breath.

If I needed jewelry, I could reach down
find a shell with my fingers
place it over my eyes
or at the clutch
of my neck, or a sand dollar
over my heart;
its enamel glistening with water
and pearline desire. A fish
would swim by to look at me,
bedazzled by seashells.
Would it think I was another fish,
keeping the ocean as I did?

Maybe I would dive down,
the fish’s fin between my fingers
or maybe I’d twirl among the gulps of waves
mimicking their motions
as water slicked my limbs,
a holy sluice
where I felt the shapeliness of love
amidst the churning water,
graceful as the tide, salt spray
on my tongue.

And then it was dark again,
when the water and the sky
merged into ink black as squid,
and I folded the whole thing up,
put it back in my pocket,
like the gemstone forged from sea glass,
opaque and jagged,
resting in the jar on the windowsill.

Sarah A. Etlinger is an English professor who lives in Milwaukee, WI, with her family. She is the author of Never One for Promises (Kelsay Books, 2018) along with many poems that appear in places such as The Magnolia Review, Brine (where she was the featured poet in September 2018), and many others including anthologies. Hobbies include traveling, cooking, and learning to play the piano.

area code 604 / Michael Chang

. . .

. . .

 

“I will comb it with my own claws,” said the dragon, “for I see that the child has hair the colour of gold, which is the only right colour for hair.”—Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison

 

Ed. Note #1: that dragon is racist as hell

Ed. Note #2: this poem could really be about anything you want

Ed. Note #3: how do you feel about a time-travelling consort finding love in a hopeless place

. . .

. . .

 

A whiteboy asks me to interpret his dreams
Why do I dream about my teeth falling out
I say it means you want me very badly
Another whiteboy heartbreaker asks what I do
I tell him I invented whiskey sours
I’m a sommelier for root vegetables
I run a book club for fans of One Direction
The screenwriter William Goldman said about Hollywood: “Nobody knows nothing”

He meant that even after a hundred-plus years of filmmaking

No one actually knows how to make a successful movie

Sure-things bomb & longshots win big
When it comes to us // nobody knows nothing

. . .

. . .

 

White people know all about the Stanford Prison Experiment

(Innocent) (An aberration) (For science)

But nothing about the Tuskegee Study

Or Wounded Knee

Or Chinese Exclusion

Or Japanese Internment

(Forget them) (They are yellow)

Karr was right to say:plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

(The more things change, the more they stay the same)

. . .

. . .

White people who say they are “comfortable” really mean that they are richer than God

I find in your cabinet of bizarre curios

a delicate vial of four green leaves

Luminous, scalding, teasing, sentient, temperamental
Your lips ring with strange rain
Your tastebuds dance as I put myself on your tongue
My synapses sing like a suspect facing 20-to-life
You make me crumble // with your devastating gaze
Your dominant assertiveness meets my gentle yielding

Our labor of love

. . .

. . .

 

You make me giddy like I’m on horse tranquilizers

mess & quake // sting & salve

feeling my way through a dark theater

There is a house in Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka

designed by Tadao Ando

with no exterior windows

because the owner wanted to feel

“not in Japan”

to compensate for lost light

an interior courtyard was created

In Japan “free size” means one-size-fits-all

Do you like my navy dufflecoat

. . .

. . .

 

Ecclesiastes said there’s nothing new under the sun

but there is always new joy to be felt // new delight to be found

though it’s hard to get excited about tomatoes

I memorized the riddles but not the answers // the tunes but not the words

You plant a flag // it’s one of passion, rigor, ambition, collisions, kinship

Today, Madame President, we’re all Adam and Eve and Steve

. . .

. . .

 

Whiteboy daddy longlegs

turn your face toward me

The face that could take a thousand lives

& murder me a million times

Belt loosened

You’re immortal

You on top & me feeling weightless

Pimp my affections for

your flawed shine

your intelligent design

your pizza-burn sensitivity

your dirt road and no map

your conscious uncoupling

your fecund loins and imagination

your tongue darting around my danger zone

your practiced mouth intimacy
& your massive quiet glory

You watch me swallow, eyes wide open

With a serious expression, you say with absolute sincerity,

Uber but for trust exercises

. . .

. . .

 

 

 

The Antique Dollhouse / Lucy Whitehead

How many small hands

have opened up

the front of this house,

with its latticed tin shutters,

its smudged glass,

breaking apart its neat

Tudor stripes

with a creak, peering

into rooms, rearranging

the lives within?

Today we’ve made

a feast of Fimo

for the people who

have no doors.

With hardboard walls

between them, how

can they escape

their tiny housebound

lives? To reach each other,

do they have to shout?

Or have they stopped

speaking

after all this time?

When no one is looking,

do they bang their heads

against

the wallpapered

night?

Lucy Whitehead writes haiku and poetry. Her haiku have appeared in various international journals and anthologies and her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Amethyst Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, Black Bough Poetry, Burning House Press, Collective Unrest, Electric Moon Magazine, Ghost City Review, Mookychick Magazine, Neon Mariposa Magazine, Pussy Magic, Re-side, and Twist in Time Magazine. You can find her on Twitter @blueirispoetry.

January 8th, 2020

Keychains as Treats / Juliet Cook

I didn’t know what they were made out of.
I thought they were furry toys named after rabbits.
Not real cut off rabbit feet.

Our grandparents gave us rabbit feet as treats.
Our grandparents ate slimy pig feet.
I imagined them eating human feet
that tried to escape from the pen
in which they were planted.

Every leg gets cross-stitched into position
in this factory. You are told to sit still
at the table you’ve been assigned
and either eat what’s right in front of you or be eaten
after your own feet are cut off and hooked to a chain.

Tiny appendages try
to posture their way out of grandma’s eggs,
but get mercilessly flung into soup pans
surrounded by chicken wire.

Juliet Cook is a grotesque glitter witch medusa hybrid brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. She is drawn to poetry, abstract visual art, and other forms of expression. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.

January 1st, 2020

Prunus domestica / J. Summerisle Wilson

plumlike eyes press shapes from blood

& stones make stars of light.

soiled fingers cut the skin in curves

& nails bite through flesh. cute girls

clean their cuticles & dirty

their hair, their lips, their face.

too much like the dead for dolls,

she dresses fruit up in

their place.

little leaves & thorns

are born & rest in shoe box beds.

teazles tower above the flowers

in polyester gowns.

the devil is a prince in here,

among the moss & wood. bottle

caps & idle hands are up to

nothing good.

the devil dotes

on little girls who bruise

up like a peach. & little

girls may build up worlds

& call a curse on each.

Summerisle Wilson currently lives in the East Midlands of England & has appeared in various online journals. Her work has been nominated in 2019 for Best of the Net, and a full list of publications can be found at jenniferwilsonlit.wordpress.com. She may also be found on Twitter @_dead_swans

December 25th, 2019

December 18th, 2019

December 11th, 2019

iPhone Notes From a 3AM Insomniac / Kayla King

I. 3:18 AM

Yes, this is forgetting. I stretch in the center of the bed. No longer do I revolve around you,
chasing your shadow beneath sheets. Now I am my own universe.
I creep into the cold, the place where there are no feet, no person to warm the other side
of the bed; I know I am here. I did not
disappear.

II. 3:59 AM

Remember you said nothing gold could make me stay; I wasn’t willing to disagree.
You moved the world for none but me. And Mother warned me,
yes.

III. 3:32 AM

Have you ever wondered why women walk in darkness with car keys
daggered between finger webs? You’ve never held anything but my hand that way.
Interlocked fingers could not steal the world by its spine, because it had
none.

IV. 3:13 AM

Rusting up ruined; blood flakes when dry. So small, I think, perhaps, I picked a scab in sleep. Flashlight app is useless beneath sheets, but will I find little legs
in light break? Spider dead. Sheets torn from mattress. And it’s a problem.
But it’s not your problem
anymore.

V. 3:47 AM

I’m sure I said something terrible from this place of unsleeping. Tiredness grates
and gropes and grips me to this artificial light like a savior. You were not supposed to save me,
I remind my eight year old self from the photo on the wall. This isn’t the way
to disappear.

Kayla King is a graduate of the Mountainview MFA. She is the author of These Are the Women We Write About, a micro-collection of poetry published by The Poetry Annals. Kayla’s fiction and poetry has been published by or is forthcoming from Plath Poetry Project, Dear Damsels, Figroot Press, Ink In Thirds Magazine, Firewords Magazine, Sobotka Literary Magazine, Fearsome Critters, Barren Magazine, Dear Movies Zine, and Twelve Winters Press, among others. You can follow Kayla’s writing journey over at her website: kaylakingbooks.com or her twitterings @KaylaMKing.

December 4th, 2019

porous / j. dahl

boundaries
I am re-calibrating
as I have
new information
is there anything more insane
than staying the same
when everything is slightly changed
wear your shoes out fast
thin soles dropping
acid in google glass
instructional holograms
guide me home
cranking brake-less on icy
asphalt you’re in my head
climbing stairs over sweaty
boys looking for a quiet landing
miming a smoke
on future devices
future vices
we enjoy the speculation
sprawled on a baroque sofa in a tunnel
underground
among the houseplants
milling around nocturnal
walking in the sleet
orange juice no list
no threat no stress
red turtleneck
bring your eyes
out royalty
rung double swept
library roof scraped knees
tailbone
atop my composite
technical knit
hold your face
up to the falling
space
phase radiation
she’s drawing on the walls
not saying a word

November 27th, 2019

DEMISE OF A PIPPI LANGSTRUMPF DOLL / MARGARET ROYALL

Where once Pippi’s face from the toy box smiled down
Her blue eyes now squint through the dust-sheeted gloom
Lithe-limbed pale mannequins sprawl across the room
Suitcases brim-full with puppets and clowns

Sepia albums, ancestors long gone,
Chipped tea-set, music box, lost teddy bear
All now abandoned, nobody to care
For objects, which once oozed with family fun

Doll’s rocking chair where Pippi once sat
Listening to tales full of young dolly dreams,
Outfits now faded and pulled at the seams
Consigned to the porch for the family’s cat

Golf clubs and rackets once keen to compete
Doll’s pram and cot now in bits on the floor
Birdcage with stuffed owl obstructing the door
Art box with contents spilled over the seats

A whole life defined here, consigned to this space
Where now she’s abandoned, grown tired and thin
For without any warning, new children moved in….
Rejection now saddens the doll’s ageing face

Margaret’s fascination for landscape poetry, myth, legend and Celtic spirituality have been enhanced by annual writing retreats on the beautiful island of Iona, painting in Crete and periods of writing in her beloved France. Her work has featured in six anthologies by Hedgehog Poetry Press, plus entries in “Word”and “Pictures Launched a Thousand Words”. She was short-listed in 2018 for the Crowvus and the Bangor Poetry Prizes. She is a regular performer at open mic nights and leads poetry workshops in Nottinghamshire.

November 20th, 2019



Concrete Jungle / Mark McConville

You tell me to run
And not to look back
Tears are for cowards you say
But I weep endlessly anyway
Waterlogged eyes try to see through the smog
Of a City marred by murderous themes and broken luck.

I can’t think smoothly or speak softly
I scream and my lungs hurt and my ribcage nearly breaks
My skin is youthful but my insides are festering
On the cusp of dancing with death
I pull through, and try to forget about perforated organs.

I am saddened by her message of discontent
A mother like figure who once tended to grazes
I woman of magnitude, a wife and maid,
A grafter, a chancer, a frightened rabbit.

Today my life is in shreds, my future is irrelevant,
No one listens, my pleas are empty,
She told me to run and create wonders,
To send shivers down a perfect lovers back
To flutter my eyelashes when times are heavy and meagre.

I can’t lift my spirits,
I’m inhaling the smoke from countless cigarettes
In these houses of disillusionment
They forget there’s wars unfolding outside these paper-thin walls.
The nights are the worst,
The Black Death seems to cover my room
Sending signals that I’m next
I’m petrified and conveying this through works
Of writing, unpublishable but honest.

I can’t see a burning horizon or a utopia
A glittering wonderland or rapture,
My gaze is set on a underwhelming,
Tarnished, bloated, concrete jungle.

And you told me to run.

Mark McConville is a freelance music journalist. His work has appeared online and in print. He also loves to write cathartic fiction.

November 13th, 2019

Pillbox Sonata / A.S. Kresnak

The illness leaves blank spaces everywhere.
I can’t remember what has caused me pain,
or whether I’ve had my doses for the day.
I tie a bow around the bottle, to remind me.

Prescribed
one that will work.
I’ll take the pills by dose,
by day, and someday soon I will
be well.

Be well. It’s the kind of blessing we don’t say anymore,
but we imply it, checking up on each other at the signs of distress.
It was all I wanted when I asked to be prescribed the pills
I knew would work: the ones that make sure I’m not
crying angry about the big things, the little things, the things
I remember nothing about but that they hurt —

Progression isn’t linear. Our history is full of blank spaces
because we don’t take action to remember them. Older people talk
like modern life makes us weaker. On the contrary: we have the pills,
the vaccines, the means to keep alive those who would have died
in the older days. I am sick. I could have died; but I am here,
and I am well.

The illness leaves blank spaces everywhere.
I can’t remember what has caused me pain,
or whether I’ve had my doses for the day.
I tie a bow around the bottle, to remind me.

Prescribed
one that will work.
I’ll take the pills by dose,
by day, and someday soon I will
be well.

A.S. Kresnak is a mixed-race college student currently exploring their new state. They can be found on Twitter @askresnak.

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

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

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:  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 11^th, 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.

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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



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                                **********

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

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.

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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.

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                                  ************

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.

 

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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

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