Poetry

Robert Américo Esnard 

La Vuelta Guantanamera

South of the Sierra Cristal, behind the cactus curtain, 
there is a McDonald’s in the Guantanamo Bay naval base.
In the states my mother worked late-night shifts and ran up orders for
her staff and her family so at least tomorrow there would be dinner,

there would be McDonald’s. In the Guantanamo Bay naval base
there is also a gift shop. I (cannot) imagine what they sell: dog collars,
Cuban chains. I (cannot) see the store in my head: a glass prism, moldy carpet,
drag of oily handprints, the feeble A/C battling the humidity: a delusion.

In this state my mother worked late-night shifts and took orders to climb up. 
She fried her hair for a chance, cleaned the ketchup from her cuticles and went 
smiling and sleepless and smelling of onion to every morning interview.
Billions and billions following orders: prisoners, soldiers, my mother,

her staff and her family. But at least tomorrow there will be dinner,
at least if we are Americans we can always go to McDonald’s.
In Guantanamo, instead of a PlayPlace there’s a hollow scaffolding
like broken ribs, golden arches, and a blood red sign that reads
Billions and billions served and honor bound to defend freedom.

Robert Américo Esnard was born and raised in the Bronx, NY. He studied Linguistics and Cognitive Science at Dartmouth College. His work has been published by Alternating Current Press / The Coil, Alternative Field, Cutbank, Glass, Lunch Ticket, and several anthologies.

Clare Chu

Debi and Elvis

The day she decides to marry Elvis is the day her mother says,
Debi, you’ll never amount to anything. She is fifteen. Elvis is gone,
but Kevin, the local Elvis impersonator, is killing it every third
Saturday down at the Hog and Pound. 

If she lowers her eyelids, if she stares at her reflection long enough
through heavy black mascara, Debi is Priscilla. She takes a
weekend job washing hair at Molly’s Salon. Elvis is always on her
mind. Debi persuades Molly to give her a beehive to die for, one
that none of the other Priscillas at the Hog and Pound can possibly
match — taller, more intricate, glossy with spray, immovable. 

Debi tells Molly she’s leaving early, she scours Goodwill for a
dress, a purse, shoes, an outfit that shouts Graceland. That evening
she pushes past the other Priscillas, elbows her way to the front.
Debi is a living doll. She prays that Elvis will notice her, look into
her eyes, croon Love Me Tender, Love Me True, to her, only her. 

As long as she lives, Debi will never forget their first kiss by the
trash cans after the show, the taste of beer and cigarettes, their
mouths clamped together, the line of second-rate Priscillas tapping
their feet, waiting impatiently behind her for their turn with Elvis.

Debi looks radiant the day she marries Kevin. Decked out in a long
white-silk gown and a three-foot tulle-veil topped with a
rhinestone crown — all made by her mother — she stands a good
inch taller than Kevin, despite his black leather cowboy boots,
shipped over from Texas. 

The back room of the pub is still hopping as they leave for the
airport, Manchester to Memphis via London and Atlanta. The Elvis
suite at the Heartbreak Hotel is magical. After Lisa Marie is born
Debi stays home and wonders, is Kevin still killing it down at the
Hog and Pound? Every third Saturday she puts on her pajamas and
goes to bed early, so as not to see the lipstick on his collar, when he
comes home after midnight, drunk on fame and swaying ever so
slightly.

Clare Chu was raised in Malta and England, and has adopted Palm Springs, CA. as her home. She is an art curator, dealer, lecturer and writer who has authored and published twelve books and numerous academic articles on Asian art. Her poetry is featured in a continuing collaboration with Hong Kong-based calligraphic and landscape painter, the Master of the Water, Pine and Stone Retreat, in which poet and artist challenge and expand traditional media boundaries. Her poetry is published in The Perch, The Comstock Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal and the Raw Art Review amongst others. Clare's debut collection, The Sand Dune Teacher, was published by UnCollected Press in June, 2020. She is a 2021 Pushcart nominee. She can be reached by email clarechu27@gmail.com and on Instagram @therealclarechu for inquiries.

Wendell Hawken

Power-Wash

Power-washing the front porch floor, 
a half-inch slip of wrist, 
the tiniest

inattention, and as the water rips 
my skin I seem to linger in 
an academic register of

pain before moving –
in a dirge’s slow time—
the nozzle’s aim off my left foot. 

Not because I like hurt. 
I live life in its avoidance. 
I have never cut myself to heal. 

The thought is all. 
My slowness loath to interrupt 
the back and forth, almost

done, as bloody water 
sloshes my moccasin and pain 
blooms on the foot. But until 

I remove my sock and look, 
I am not cut. Like until I take the test
I am not pregnant. 

Blizzard

The old pony whinnies, 
snowbound where she stands: 
blind, arthritic, almost toothless, 
icicles fringe her coat. 
Her skin is blue. 
Climbing drifts, 
beating her a path, I lead her 
to a stall where she walks 
into its walls. 
         To walk 
in childhood’s snow-globe 
beside white-flocked evergreens, 
flakes swirl as if the world is shaken. 
Which it is. 
        Classroom chalk 
clapped from blackboard erasers—
such a fine snow. 
Another white word 
out there in languages 
I do not know. 
           Week on week, 
we stood to speak under God, 
indivisible. 
       Cat tracks 
in the snow, an almost straight line.
Before the feature came the March of Time:
rows of sepia soldiers, the same 
deep voice-over.
  Sunset is a pink eraser 
at the bottom of a gray-smudged page. 

It has been a while but I think 
the under God got taken out. 
Or maybe the indivisible. 

Wendell Hawken lives on a grass farm in the northern Shenandoah Valley. Her work often reflects a rural sensibility where the weather means more than what clothes to wear, where the I in AI means Insemination. Coming to poetry late in life, Hawken earned an MFA in Poetry at Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers, decades after a BA in English literature. Publications include three chapbooks plus two full collections, The Luck of Being (2008) and White Bird (2017) a sequence about her husband’s battle with cancer. This book was honored by the Library of Virginia in 2018. Read more on WendellHawken.com or reach out by email to whawken@hughes.net

Cyndie Randall

Dissociation

Y u     cut     the     c rd     blunt

with     y ur     p cket     knife.     I     m ved     n thing

while     y u     sawed.     Said    n thing

as     the     r  m     filled     with     bl  d.     Felt     n thing

when     y u     f lded     the     blade     d wn

and     fed     it     to    me     wh le.

Y u     wiped     my     m uth     and     smiled.

I     smiled. 

(Content warning: sexual assault/trafficking)

Chapel

In the motel room, Fathers pray
between my legs.

If I stiffen to cast them out,
Fathers feel held.

When I open my mouth to plead,
Fathers hear singing.

Fathers moan the names of God
and fall prostrate in my temple.

Fathers leave offerings
on bedside altars.

They buckle their belts.
They drive to little league.

Cyndie Randall’s poems appear or are forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, DIAGRAM, Crab Creek Review, Longleaf Review, Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, Pithead Chapel, The Pinch, and others. She works as a therapist in a small town near Lake Michigan and is also a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine. Find her on Twitter @CyndieRandall or at cyndierandall.com.

Benjamin Faro

Missing

You

vagrant, 

billowy

gong,

you 

hourglass of

nothing

and velvet

tack, like a

tooth under

my mattress 

on

the floor, when

I sleep, 

awake,

that 

no fairy

wants to take.

Always here, 

in

the form of

Mom

Dad

Friends' faces,

laughter gummy 

in the drain, 

while I wash 

myself with 

time.

Hairline

recedes, turning

not-a-color.

Friend bought a

house, had a

baby. Dad 

lost his job, 

and Mom 

didn't.

Brother, whom 

I 

forgot 

to mention, isn't 

part of this story.

He is

missing, but not

for lack of love.

One time,

He and I 

rode our bikes 

on 

cobblestones. 

Rock bit rim.

Bent wheel sent

Brother 

flying.

I remember him 

there, airborne

upside-twisted

'round. 

Mouth

hit 

ground,

and Brother,

grainy, 

grinning

red, picked 

his 

teeth up 

from the sand.

Benjamin Faro is a writer living in Asunción, Paraguay. His work appears or is forthcoming in Invisible City and STORGY, among other literary outlets. See more of his work on www.benjaminfaro.com and contact him on Instagram @may_your_problems_end

McLeod Logue

Signs from God

There’s a golden ratio to the backwoods,
a house for every Dollar Tree, for every church.
I wonder if the self I was denied lived
in churches with signs that read “Live Stream Jesus.” 
God didn’t speak to me through bushes 
or the bible. He did not tell me to love him 
like he did everyone else, so I didn’t.

The backwoods are more inviting than the church.
The trees whispered, but they did not tell
others their secrets, and they did not tell me.

I was told to drive through the backwoods,
so I did. I drove by the houses that stood alone 
and wondered how you could love 
your neighbor as yourself if there was no one 
there to love. The neighbors were the deer heads
that hung on their living room walls
and it's hard to tell if they loved or idolized them
or if they just wanted them dead. 

I moved on to the next religion with a link. 
“Stop Drop and Roll Doesn’t Work in Hell.”
My soul would be in the third row in cowboy boots,
Sunday’s best. It would pray for rainy days
and exposed wires to watch a shower
of sparks in the evening. It would work for instant 
mix love and validation from country karaoke. 

The backroads twisted like an echo chamber
bouncing my soul between the walls. Here,
my soul stands barefoot and laughs
through stained glass. It tears
out pages from the bible and nibbles
at the corners for good luck. It is content
to be alone in a room full of believers,
knowing it had more to gain from them than God. 

God, who did not ask me to believe in him, so I did
not. He sat in my passenger seat, my soul 
lying flat in the trunk. I told him I would drop
him at the next person we saw, and turned up
Billy Joel. “Only the Good Die Young.”
We watched the golden ratio. The deer 
bowed their heads as the car passed.

Cheesecake Therapy

I medicated sweet for a life of existing empty. 
Smirking back mouthfuls of cheesecake, 
holes bored in the hollow of my cheek. 
Granulated sugar down, down, down— 
and up again to taste a moment more. My parents 
wrung about the eating, about the not eating, 
about the way I could taste without a swallow. 
They exchanged money for therapy 
to teach me how to say thank you.
And here I am, grateful for fructose corn syrup,
frothy mountains of white hot chocolate, 
and the inside secret. I am grateful 
for sugar’s simple sorrow and the opportunity 
to be alone, filling myself. Therapy taught me to quit 
saying thank you, that gratitude was 
misplaced if I didn’t say it with powdered sugar 
in my breath. I ate cheesecake in the driveway, 
spoonfuls of thick cream and strawberry bleeding from the sides.
I feel safe in a room full of bleach, fingers dancing 
against saliva, cheesecake missing the toilet, and gratitude 
for the next sour breath that tasted nothing like sweet.

McLeod Logue is a creative writing MFA candidate and poet at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama, her work is influenced by her family’s fine art, southern roots, and an attachment to location.

Raphael Jenkins

Take Me Back To 2008 and I’ll Vote This Time

votes being dandelion seeds
floating toward fire aside,
I couldn’t set a man up for his death.
there was no convincing me some bigot with
hot-link neckrolls wasn’t gonna try
to blow holes into hope—
committing what he considered to be God’s work—
the God of this land being one
who wouldn’t dare call a man Mr. President,
when he could also be called nigger—
or even nigger-lover.
White men have been made faceless
for insinuating niggers are people.
How could I elect his wife into
mourning? I didn’t want her dress crimsoned
from holding pieces of lover in her hands,
couldn’t bear the wails of his girls.
I stuck a lie on my lapel cuz I couldn’t paint
a blood-portrait of what I’d seen in my nightmares
without Uncle Tom becoming my name.
Every leader of the free world has to scratch
behind the gnarled ears of flea-ridden mutts
or fall victim to mauling,
but when his skin hums closer to
the timbre of our Nation’s truest
instead of their rapists,
the man becomes more a
muzzled bitch’s hot pink
than President.
The shame I wear for my country is a poncho
made of steel wool, Christmas lights and fear
of what’ll happen to powerful people of color
holding the oppressed’s cries in their mouths—
because those holding the key to the
kleenex box also hold
the key to the gun closet.

Raphael prefers to go by Ralph, as he feels it suits him better and he’s heard every Ninja Turtle joke ever uttered. He is a native of Detroit, Michigan currently residing in Kentucky with his Boo-thang and their four-year-old boy. He is a chef by day and an essayist, poet, screenwriter in his dreams. He, like Issa Rae, is rooting for everybody Black. His work has been featured (or is forthcoming) on his mama’s fridge, his close friends’ inboxes, Hobart (after dark), 3 Elements Review, HASH Journal, Frontier Poetry, Flypaper Lit, and All Guts No Glory. Follow him on Twitter: @RALPHEEBOI

Michelle McMillan-Holifield

The Women We Always Imagined

I. Age Eight

The honeybees are an undulant country 
in the backyard. I watch from my window
and scratch chicken pox popping up across my body. 
The bees’ flurry—or my scratching—makes me 
violently ill. The tea I drank lands in a pond
beside my feet, food bits arranged into strange hieroglyphics.
You are there: a country unto yourself. Continuous motion in 
and out of the room. In my semi-conscious state, you, dressed
like a bellboy, carry vague things in and out: a copper brooch
you pin to my gown, a cottonwood tree you plant
in my toy box that blooms into drapes you hang 
over the windows so the light goes deaf and the sound dark
so all the movement inside and outside—fevered creatures 
pocketing honey inside their nacreous mazes, the inexorable scuffing 
against those combs, the relentless needling of nails 
against stubs on my skin—all that stops. I drop 
into an abyss: inexplicable dreams
where you are the grandmother you always imagined. 

II. Ten

The lawns along the shopping square are polished 
in snowsoft dogwood petals. Although it’s spring, 
all the cars are jeweled with this same crest
the colors of chalcedony and winter. You are a shopper, 
a busy in-and-outer, a craftsman skilled 
at the poetry of bustle, the rustling of exchange 
for things you want. You say, “I hate stillness,” 
and I have witnessed this as far back as I can remember. 
In one of the shops, beads congregate in chambers 
under the honey-lit counter. I pick out my favorites: 
petite globes marbled like a conch’s belly; semi-precious 
agates, carnelians, and hematites; lampwork glass beads 
prismed with flowers; silver and copper orbs. I will slide 
these disparate pieces onto a gold strand and wear them all year long. 
We stroll through all the shops.  You buy everything I ask for. 

III. Thirteen

Since his stroke my grandfather, your ex, 
can nod and laugh and smoke cigarettes
but can not form words or sentences.
His tongue sounds swollen, as if stubbed 
with stones, that muscle divorced 
from his brain. His nurse tells you he’s improving
and you shake her off with a mawkish wave, 
an “I don’t care.” I believe you. You sit 
on the public bench outside his nursing home. 
Truck engines inject their clamor into our awkward
exchange. Your words are tusks; they shuck and hull me. 
Your tongue is the butterfly that causes 
a thousand tons of ash to fall 
on an unsuspecting country, the bee
whose nuzzling against the comb
shudders the earth a thousand miles away. 
How are you the same woman who catered to me 
in my chicken pox sickness, your buzzing bustle
a balm over my sores? 

IV. Seventeen

Your hands, flecked with age, squirm like sea monsters 
so I drive. You ask to shop; I oblige. You ask to sightsee; 
I take you to the overlook where your small frame is backlit 
by the copper sun, your shawl a diaphanous glove 
around your shoulders. You ask me to take you 
to visit a friend you haven’t seen in many years; I clutch 
the steering wheel—mawkish—exhausted.
I don’t want to get on this cross-country train of yours—
I tell you, “Next time,” and you busy yourself with nods
and silence and powerlessness, your eyes hooded. I realize
we have sister eyes, lids obscured by similar platforms of skin
under our brows. This and our downturned mouths 
make us look angry (unhappy) all the time. In two weeks, I learn
your friend has died. I outline myself in chalk—
her death: my burial. I drop into an abyss: inexplicable dreams
where I am the granddaughter you always imagined.

V. Forty Three

My mother is 71 when a brother appears—
like a strange dream—wearing someone else’s name. 
He is a replica of you—same hooded eyes
swathed in something indefinable. 
You and everyone who would know anything about this
are long dead; there are no answers. Only theories
trespassing like fractious waves in an untamable ocean. 
He was born after the war; you worked for the railroad:
perhaps his father a soldier passing through,
your love affair creating blindfolds that never came undone.
Until now. And just like that, you are a volcano 
erupting, re-sculpting our landscapes; we are bodies spun to dust
and in the aftermath, we busy ourselves 
like bees in catacombs honeycombs. 
It takes a while to find everything and everyone you misplaced.

Michelle McMillan-Holifield is a recent Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee. She studied poetry at Delta State University in the Mississippi Delta and recently completed a writer’s residency at Wild Acres Retreat in North Carolina. Her work has been included in Boxcar Poetry Review, Nelle, Sleet Magazine, Stirring, The Collagist, Whale Road Review, and Windhover, among others. She hopes you one day find her poetry tacked to a tree somewhere in the Alaskan Wild.

Shawn Jones

After Our Pit Died on the Porch in My Husband’s Arms

My husband sawed apart the chaise
where Scarlet used to sleep.

Fought against wood 
and blade. Sawed until his palm

turned red and numb. 
Dissembled each piece 

with hammer, chisel, 
pliers. Didn’t ask for help.

There was something different
about his grief. Downstairs 

every piece of furniture missing 
backs or limbs. I wondered 

if he would grieve 
as deeply for me,

but didn’t ask. That night
we dined at half a table, 

and I licked everywhere 
crumbs had fallen.

I Was Going to Name You Oni

Hand over hand I pulled
from womb that would not

let go all at once. I mourned ruby
chunks dangling over porcelain

before they dropped away from me.
I cradled ruddy nugget hands,

smeared cherry fingertips
with index finger and thumb,

wrote your would-be name on tile
with what was left of you.

Shawn R. Jones is a writer from South Jersey and co-owner of Tailored Tutoring LLC and Kumbaya Academy. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Womb Rain (Finishing Line Press 2008) and A Hole to Breathe (Finishing Line Press 2015).  Her work has also appeared in Essence, River Heron Review, Guesthouse, Peregrine, Typehouse, and Obelus Journal. She also has work forthcoming from New Ohio Review.  She holds an MFA from Rutgers-Camden and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. For more information, please feel free to contact her on Twitter @shawnrjones1 or Facebook @https://www.facebook.com/srj.writer.

Rebecca Evans

A Soft Food Diet Doesn’t Always Heal the Heart

Mother’s brittle stones, rotted 
from the inside. Her gums blackened, 
decaying roots as she learned 
to live on Jello and mashed 
KFC and things she could swallow 

whole. Later, she’d place her fake grin
in cloudy Polident waters. Her smile
reached half-way and only on the right 
side. When I saw it, I knew to best
maintain silence, bleed worry into my belly.

I can’t remember her voice, if she laughed 
out loud or at all, but I do know, still today, 
the smell of her breath, like hot
tar, as if something within her seared.

If I unclench my teeth, I’ll scream,
afraid I won’t stop, rattling my insides, 
quaking my memory of Mother 
watching daddy shake on top of me, 
hollowing me into numbness 
only the decayed can understand.

Rebecca Evans is an Ashkenazi Jew who has hosted and co-produced Our Voice and Idaho Living television shows, advocating personal stories, and now mentors teens in the juvenile system. She is the co-host of Writer to Writer radio show on Radio Boise. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Rumpus, Entropy Literary Magazine, War, Literature & the Arts, 34th Parallel, The Blue Mountain Review, Survival Lit, and Collateral Journal, among others. With an MFA in creative nonfiction, Evans is finishing a second MFA in poetry at Sierra Nevada University. She’s currently edited her essay collection, Body Language, and just completed her memoir, Navigation. She has served on the editorial staff of the Sierra Nevada Review and lives in Idaho with her three sons. You can find her on social media on Instagram @rebeccawrites33 or on Facebook at rebeccawrites. For inquiries regarding her work: revanswrites@gmail.com.

Roy Bently

Appalachian Love Story

My mother had a story about my father bringing me
home after visitation. Back to her house in Kettering.

It was summer, Ohio—she knew it was their love story.
She’d start telling it. Have to remove a shoe and reveal

how that once, and in self-defense, she had weaponized 
her sandal. I was old enough to know he shouldn’t have

brought me back with new-wife Colleen in the front seat
where Mother could reach her. It started with my mother

getting a handful of Colleen’s lacquered hair. Calling her 
Whore. He never laid a hand on my mother. Ever. Though 

he took blows to both arms. At some point, Mother took off 
her shoe for a murderous slap to his cheek. Which reddened 

and then blistered. After they remarried, she’d tell the story,
saying, I guess that got his attention. It’s true I don’t know 

how they managed a kiss, why he’d touch his face and say 
that he was indeed lucky to have been loved like that once.

Roy Bentley, a finalist for the Miller Williams prize for Walking with Eve in the Loved City, has published eight books; including American Loneliness from Lost Horse Press, who recently issued a new & selected collection entitled My Mother’s Red Ford. Roy is the recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and Ohio Arts Council. Poems have appeared in Evening Street Review, The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and Shenandoah among others. Hillbilly Guilt, his newest, won the 2019 Hidden River Arts / Willow Run Poetry Book Award.

Jeremy Ford

We Come to Worship

In the morning we all go to worship.
It is our duty.

The church itself commands attention. You see it from a hundred yards ways.

.223 caliber shells make up the facade, placed vertically, one next to the other. 
Our architrave is a mosaic of specials, magnums, and hollow points.

Our steeples are the finest .50 caliber
cartridges, all full metal jacket. 
Muskets buttress our outer walls and a large brass door welcomes the congregation.
In the nave,
a human spine leads to an altar with tremendous stopping power,
crafted with donations from our dear friends Eliphalet, John, Samuel, Smith & Wesson. Its beauty almost causes hydrostatic shock.
We find a pew and sit in the middle atop 
a double-barreled shotgun.
Father LaPierre gave a wonderful sermon that day.

Harvester

Harvester of the live months.
Pruner of orchard blood.
Nomadic desert provider in Steinbeck's salad bowl.

An unnamed and undocumented,
who stumbled over cacti, under high shadows,
whose children drowned for biscuit lard.
Toiled fingertips
despoiled of daughter's touch.

They raided, collared, and shipped
a house-ful with no home.
And now the peach fuzz raises in dust and starts to rot.

I say, Breathe this ancestral air,
unnamed and undocumented air.
It is as much yours as mine.

Because I am America!
Sleep in my womb.
I will save a bed for your tired, sun-soaked heart.

Jeremy S. Ford's work has appeared in La Piccioletta Barca, The Duck Lake Journal, and the River River Journal, among other places. He lives in New Orleans and can be reached via email at ford.jeremy7@gmail.com.

Shutta Crum

Lavender Doe

—cold case closed, Kilgore, TX

Twelve years ago
the townsfolk gave her
what they could—
a sweet name
and a gravestone.
No simple Jane Doe.

Lavender Doe,
for the very little that remained—
a bit of lavender shirt,
perfect teeth and $40 in her jeans.

I like to think that her grave
lies far from oil derricks.
That it overlooks a river
or a pasture full of cows.
That she rests in the rustling music
from cottonwood trees. 

I like to think that some in town
bring flowers once a year.
And that those perfect teeth
want to smile.
I like to think that someone misses her.

Assaulted, murdered, partially burned—
twelve years she lay unclaimed
until he struck again.

At last, her name returned: Dana.

Dana Lynn Dodd, age 21.
Lavender shirt. Perfect teeth.
A sister who misses her.

And the $40?
“Because,” her killer said,
“she earned it.”

Shutta Crum’s poems have appeared in ArtAscent, Blue Mountain Review, Typehouse, Stoneboat, Orchards Poetry Journal, Better Than Starbucks, Nostos, and the Southern Poetry Review. She has forthcoming poems in Main Street Rag, Beyond Words, and Pink Panther. Her first chapbook When You Get Here (Kelsay Books, 2020) won a gold Royal Palm Literary Award. She was nominated in 2020 for a Pushcart Prize by Typehouse Literary Magazine. She is also a well-published children’s book writer with her books on many state reading lists and reviewed by the NY Times. She is an oft-requested speaker and workshop leader. For more info: www.shutta.com.

Chelsea Jackson

I grew up

in a candy-cane house
with carpets the color of burnt oatmeal
and a Christmas tree growing in the front yard.

Confession: It was not a candy-cane house so much as a red and white trailer.

A moss fortress, its wood stove smoke
straining toward transient glory days passed
grumbling at the deadweight wheels sunken 
into swampland and mosquito larvae.

Confession: The Christmas tree in the front yard was the first of my parent’s marriage.

The American flag strung up outside and around 
our throats, cradling us in lullabies of sacrifice. 
Orders and uniforms stuffed behind headboards; buried 
under the kitchen’s peeling linoleum.

Confession: My father was the smoke. My father was the flag.

The laces of combat boots hung the tree
upside down. Drained it like the deer dangling 
in the garage, whose eyes soon overlooked 
an empty marriage bed.

Confession: Long since ripped out by new owners, today my mother admits the tree is the only thing from her marriage she wanted to keep.

Black and blue, red and white all over 
our family just died. Flatlined. 
Another casualty numbers cannot climb to; 
no flag big enough to cover the casket.

Confession: Years later, still reeking of smoke and dripping with larvae, I visit the trailer once again.

Remove the bars from the windows
so as not to keep the ghosts hostage. 

Carve a grave into the swamp-sponge, whisper 
to the moss-encased mausoleum, sorry for the bloodstains. 

Detach the wheels, my inheritance.
Tuck them in my back pocket.

Awestruck by creativity’s power to challenge and comfort, Chelsea’s poetry asks hard questions, interrogates inherited social narratives, and explores what it means to be human. Chelsea is published in Avalon, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, and the Platform Review, and was a finalist in the 2020 Driftwood Press In-House Poetry Contest. She has her MFA in Poetry from Drew University, and regularly teaches poetry workshops. Originally from Southeastern, Virginia, she now lives in Philadelphia with her partner, and their grumpy cat and cuddly pit bull. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @sea_c_j.