Poetry

Amanda Boyanowski-Morin

Just a Bomb

Algal water undulates, overflowing with Koi
scrambling for puffed rice confetti thrown by children 
into mouths marigold colored

 
Scent of bitter flesh, clay dust, tiger balm,
Sunsilk on warmed scalp and spittle on mango.
Trickster monkey gods lure tourists past prayer flags
while AK47’s pull me off busses to check papers
It is 2004 and the Maoists run the hillsides

 
Water and electricity turn off at eight
as the penny sized frogs turn the rice paddies 
into a drum to awaken the limbic system 
of the goddesses

 
Wrapped bodies on pyres burn at creation temples
while skeletons still flesh and breath
wash in the brown silt river

 
praying next to goats tethered
as knives are ceremoniously sharpened 
before their sacrificial blood meets churning river 

 
It is here I decide to envelop myself in crimson 
sari and red wedding bindi at eighteen,
marry the boy from my host family
whose name still chokes my tongue

 
I consent to suffocate on Nepalese Christianity 
and disappear into the anonymous life of a missionary.
Dreaming of a hopeful freefall off the water tank
on the top of the three-story concrete roof

 
I sit below him when we are in groups,
walk half a pace behind him. I begin to find 
my vocal cords sore from whispering and tremble 
when his arrival is announced by motorbike. 

 
Months pass. 
I send messages to friends from
Internet cafes telling them it isn’t that bad. 
I describe the potter’s mounds, the festivals,
the paper kites trailing behind rickshaws
in the crowded streets.
I do not use his name.

 
During the third week of a lock down strike 
while handwashing clothes in a plastic basin
there was a displacement of air, a sucking thunder,
a crumbled storefront. 

 
The monsoon rain loosened early.
A bomb.
It’s just a bomb, the boy said
as the sari and the spell 
unwound themselves.

Amanda Boyanowski-Morin is a writer, homeschooling parent, disabled person and can be found in the vernal pools of her area or knitting on a tree stump, imagining she can watch the mushrooms grow.

Mark Helm

Kaddish

—For Stephen Dunn

My father asks me what I’m writing.
His voice is threadbare, careful air

hands placid in pajama sleeves.
It’s a fairy tale, I whisper

about a craftsman who makes
tiny birds from scavenged tin.

Satisfied, he roams the borderlands.
He does not want to miss his death.

The sparrow perched upon his shoulder
appears to be building her nest

in his hair. It’s the least ridiculous
thing that’s happening here by far

even though my brother in his grief
is pacing up and down the hall outside

the door with a ukulele. He is singing 
Marty Robbins' My Isle of Golden Dreams.

It is our father’s favorite 
song. Half-way through

the sparrow starts to sing 
along, and when the song is done

it is so quiet in our house
I can hear the waves break

on the shore half a mile away.
I open up a window, let in the night 

and smell the salt-air breeze. A memory
of taffy. Atlantic City. Hey, Pop

I say, just not loud enough to wake him
Remember that crazy diving horse?

He is silent, but I can see
the makings of a grin blossoming

across his weathered mug. He sees
it now: a girl astride an Appaloosa

flying off a platform, a fast forty
feet down into a shallow pool. 

Good Lord, that water’s dark.
My father coughs, the sparrow chirps.

My brother wears the carpet bare.
He refuses to come in and sit. 

He knows it won’t be too much longer
now. I go back to writing. My tinsmith’s

working on a silver starling no bigger
than a thimble. He shapes its wings

with care, then tests them, tossing
his creation high into the evening.

It flies out of my father’s mouth.

Mark Helm teaches English and creative writing at a community college in Nashville, Tennessee. In their spare time, they play and repair steel guitars—you know, like the kind you hear in Hank Williams songs. It’s been a while, but their poems have popped up in various places, including Poetry Northwest and the old New Virginia Review. Their translations of the renowned (and, sadly, late) Israeli poet Moshe Dor appear in his selected poems in English, Crossing the River. Mark Helm received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the American University and an M.A. in English from Drew University. They like to explore territories like addiction, animal cruelty, family, and gender--although the shape and sound of language is often paramount in their work.

Ceri Savage

Once A Whale

I know how that feels – 
water breaking on an orca’s back;
the fall of the ocean 
as it makes space for me – 
oily, waxed,
wind on my humpback. 
Sure, I’ve surfaced as a woman, 
but not fin-first, 
never arched like that – 
graceful, huge, 
slight manoeuvres of my tail.
If I was never a whale 
tell me this – 
how do I know to listen 
for the call of an echo,
crooning that nameless part of me,
telling it where to go next?

Ceri Savage is a British, Berlin-based writer with a BA in English Literature from the University of Exeter. Her writing is published in The FU Review, Tether’s End, and ASP Literary Journal. She is the founder of Savage Edits, an editing business that provides self-publishing services to indie authors. Follow Ceri's writing @cerisavagewrites on Instagram and @cerisavagewrite on Twitter.

Shanley McConnell

A still-life in bitter herbs, salt, parsley, lamb and korech

Before 

 
my mother rises, 
dusts the kitchen surface with one
teaspoon of flour. 

 
the distance between 
Israel and Palestine 
is a rolling pin. 

 
her arm-strokes split dough 
the way Hashem split Egypt 
with a dead sea.

 
During 

 
my father wraps 
the Matzoh in a shroud, 
buries it under wasabi amounts

 
of horseradish and salt. 
broken, it bears the shape
of a promised land.

 
Lechem Oni, he weeps, 
the bread of affliction 
is bitter and sweet.

Shanley McConnell is a poet, essayist and interdisciplinary artist. Her work received acclaim in the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Fall Competition (2019), the SaveAs International Poetry Competition (2019) and the Oxford Review of Books Short Fiction Prize (2020). Her latest poems appear in The Napkin Poetry Review and eris & eros, and she has recently completed a full-length, lyrical narrative titled Selah Arcadia. Shanley is also the co-founder of Refuge, an online literary journal that partners submission fees with support for NGOs in crisis areas around the world.

Fia Montero

Crow

1983.  i see a jet black crow lying in the dry
summer grass.  it's dead
like the grass, but completely intact.  i pick it up, 
spread then shut 
its limp wings.  my fingers trace the silken feathers, 
anoint each spindly foot.  i want to know
how a crow works.  
the babysitter sees me, yells.  i'm dirty, she says.
curiosity killed the cat, she says.  i wonder where 
she's keeping this dead cat.  i want to touch it, too.

Fia Montero is an autistic writer based in Des Moines, Iowa. She holds a BFA in art and design from Iowa State University, and a BSHS in pre-medical studies from Mercy College of Health Sciences. Her poetry has been published, or is forthcoming, in West Trestle Review and Literary Mama. Reach her at fmonw@gmail.com.

Esther Sadoff

2nd Grade

My favorite outfit was a white t-shirt
and matching shorts pitted with tiny 
watermelon seeds, pink wedges doing 
cartwheels, worn on Wednesdays. 

 
All my jeans were ripped from cantering 
on the trampoline, a half-broken mare 
spooked by the slightest touch.

 
I loved the minty green protuberations
of my hands, veins that popped and swiveled, 
a small freckle on the heel of my palm,
the threaded hill of a long lifeline.

 
At school, the teacher mounted a paddle on the wall.
One lucky student got to pet her stockinged feet.  
On my favorite day, we churned butter.
Made a stew of slow-cooked squirrel.

 
My mother came in with her unbreakable 
smile, helped the kids at the horseshoe table, 
books balanced stiffly on their knees. 

 
When a boy kept lifting my sister's skirt, 
whispering dirty things in her ear, 
my mother taught him to read too.

Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. Her poems have been featured or are forthcoming in South Florida Poetry Journal, Drunk Monkeys, Wingless Dreamer, Free State Review, Parhelion Literary Magazine, Passengers Journal, SWWIM, and many other publications.

Matthew Duffus

A Recollection

The summer she followed the boys 
with plastic M-16 in one hand,

 
rhinestone purse in the other,
her father arrived home faced 

 
with the neighbor girl screaming, 
she’s going to kill me. Moments 

 
later, his daughter charged 
around the garage, waving 

 
a Wiffleball bat like a broadsword 
from the Conan the Barbarian

 
movie the boys watched on repeat. 
The father, secretly pleased—

 
the neighbor a prissy pain 
in the ass—sent the girl home, his 

 
daughter to her room, while the boys 
army-crawled through burnt grass, 

 
rifles cradled in spindly arms, 
stalking a prey no one else could see.

Matthew Duffus is the author of the novel Swapping Purples for Yellows, the story collection Dunbar's Folly, and the poetry
chapbook Problems of the Soul and Otherwise. Recent work has appeared in The Smart Set, Craft Literary, and Twin Bill. He can be found online at matthewduffus.com and on Twitter at @DuffusMatthew.

Anna Lowe Weber

Eight is the Anniversary

for unspoken words, passive aggressive art,
a bramble of hair clogging the shower drain
and a half-eaten apple going mealy in the fridge. 
It is all things grainy and unwanted—a greeting card 
full of cursive script you can’t decipher. A dream’s 
strained attempt to focus on unreadable words. 
It’s a blur.  On the eighth year, give a handshake laced 
with dirty linen; a tooth unearthed from bloody gums, 
then cast in bronze.  It’s forever.  Homespun.  Give 
a bowl of cherries on the brink of rot.  Give an apron, 
rickrack, a secret message of all the years’ disappointments 
thus far.  A locked cedar box.  An empty body cavity’s 
swan song.  A cherished pet, sleek and eager to please: 
lapping up cream in a blue bone china bowl
(also, of course, a gift).

Originally from Louisiana, Anna Lowe Weber currently lives in Huntsville, Alabama, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Nimrod, the South Carolina Review, Poet Lore, the Del Sol Review, and Fiddlehead, among other journals. She is on instagram at @loweanna, and her email address is anna.weber@uah.edu

Lorrie Ness

Bait & Blame

                           The first time I porn
            I am eleven. Squeezing
my legs closed against a thin finger 
of pee. Wiggling outside the locked door. 
From the toilet, she shouts
                Use the one downstairs!    

 
                            That first time, 
            I porn by accident.
Following the scent of mildew & strobing light 
to the basement. Beyond the bathroom, 
a tv plays. A woman on VHS
            says, Come here

 
                          & I obey,
             kneeling down
in front of the screen.  She’s on her knees
by a lamppost. Flickering. Flicking 
tongue in an open mouth.
            My jaw gapes.

                        
                 When I porn
             the blonde gets slapped 
& mascara runs.  Closing her eyes 
before the piss hits her face & a man
fucks her between cars 
                with metal bumpers.
            .                       
                        She’s vintage porn,
            all pubes & purple eyeshadow. 
Her knees sear on the chrome. Her palms blister
on the hood.  He handles her cool hips. 
grunts all her names in sequence.
            Cunt  |  Slut  |  Bitch         

                        
                        First  |  Middle  |  Last
            like a scolded child.
He slaps her ass red & walks away. 
I stand up, cheeks red. In the bathroom
the pee won’t flow. I flush anyway.
            Covering my tracks

 
                        after I porn.
            Stephanie’s father 
corners me on the stairs. Grabs my wrist
& drags my hand across his lips. Inhales me like an animal
& says Your fingers are still wet. I feel hot pee
            release down my leg at last.

Lorrie Ness is a poet working in Virginia. Her work is heavily influenced by the natural world, but also her work as a psychologist examining the human experience. Her writing can be found at Palette Poetry, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Typishly and various other journals. She was recently a featured poet at Turtle Island Quarterly and she has twice been nominated for Best of the Net by Sky Island Journal. Her chapbook, Anatomy of a Wound is published by Flowstone Press. More about her work, including contact information, can be found at www.nesspoetry.com

Virginia Laurie

College Town

Remember the time we raised the dead in the back of the pizza shop? My fingers still black from 
the wood-fire oven as I scattered the ashes, you lit something, and we all mumbled prayers in 
different languages. Behind the Coke machine and the card punch, we installed our altar, the core 
of our magic. Offerings: a straw wrapper tied into a bow, the piece of translucent sea glass 
still floating in your pocket, the ticket stub to Book of Mormon. That one was better than chicken 
bone. We locked eyes, nodded then proceeded to give our limbs to the pile. I placed my pinky 
next to her leg and your arm, limp and cold there. Dispassionately, we wrapped our wounds and 
watched the one we made in the fabric of things. Like heat waves, everything around it
shimmered. It was all guesswork and coaxing our fear into a gas, something with which to fill 
the room, perfume it. Our disregard for safety was its very own incense, and it lured strangers to 
us. The strangers became part of the fabric, and we tore them to shreds. Our hands were smoking 
by the time the sun came up, and the light did not want us anymore. We stayed there all day 
beside the pit. Those who disturbed our vigil became tinder. We turned onlookers into stags then
shot them with our eyes. Anything that did not bow, we broke. Anything that could not burn was 
useless to us. Anything that broke the steady death of the sun became worth our Friday Night.

Virginia Laurie is an English major at Washington and Lee University whose work has been published/is forthcoming in Apricity, LandLocked, Phantom Kangaroo, Cathexis Northwest Press and more. https://virginialaurie.com/

Emma Ferguson

A Drinking Poem

I drink             you drink         my father        definitely drinks too much 
my mother                   well you know                        her mother too

 
These are not the loud night’s drinking songs
                                                               these are cold damp shoulders 
          / a coded switch        vulnerable voice invalid / volar volver          
                                                            cut the vowels rounder, a portal to a tongue 
                           I’ll teach you                           a dirty word:
I drink alone                speaking Spanish to the walls             practicing syllables in my chair

 
Don’t let this be a show          of hands
          Oma said:        don't marry     beneath you
her wigs of short curls                        the clink of vodka tumblers    
          she’d drink most nights                      and maybe days          alone 

 
We spread       her ashes        at Cascade Pass           same as Opa’s ashes
generations of hard feminine              hands scooped her     from clear plastic
          letting wind     take her                      over blueberries and heather

 
She’d lean heavy        on her cane                  spilling over her edges and sharp regrets
          she’d instruct us          correct our posture                  point out our flaws 
          never admitting                      the weight                   
                    of the bottles                           in the bag 

 
Summer again             unraveling the year’s             knotted verbs  to their root                
            I still swap silbar with soplar             you can laugh without knowing
but they both move     air like my lips move liquid               

 
Today I walked           alone               through sun-splashed ferns    
          and soft lichen floss    to where glitter            and rays           
                                    dance on leaves           stones and river
the bottom buried                                under hard light at the surface
a salmon flickers          the air hums with wet blackberries    no voice in my throat

 
I’ll stand on the bank and drink it all until the light drops down—
          the quench before I go home              to see what is beneath, 
          and what is above                   the flick of tilted glass 

Emma Ferguson writes poetry, translations, and teaches Spanish in Seattle. She has been a scholarship recipient at Bread Loaf Translators' Conference and a recent participant in AWP's mentorship program. Her original poems have appeared at The Bookends Review, River Heron Review, and are forthcoming from Rock & Sling. Her translated poetry has appeared at Columbia Journal, The Los Angeles Review, The Offing, and is forthcoming from The Common. She is a former professional flamenco dancer and an obsessive front yard vegetable farmer.

Alys Willman

The doctor offers

Here, he says, let me take that for you
like my coat at a party. They are always 
wanting to take it for you, always one 
hand on the small of your back, 
the other holding the door. 

 
A wealthy Upper West Side couple 
once offered $50,000 for my eggs,
five grand to poke needles in my stomach til it fizzed like 
a bath bomb. When they do it to fish, 
it’s called stripping. I paid off  the car loan.
There are twins at Harvard Law with my eyes.
My friend hiked the Appalachian Trail. He said out there, 
nobody tries to sell you anything.  Two years later, 
he gave his kidney to a brother. Sometimes 
he dreams it’s dancing with beautiful women, 
sliding up against their legs, pushing up their skirts. 
Sometimes he wants it back.  

 
I heard Thoreau’s mom came over every day with dinner and tidied up the cabin.

 
I heard doctors get paid by the uterus.
After they take it, there’s a grand buffet, 
Steaming, gleaming piles of them,
pulsing, 
red,
wet. 

Alys Willman is a poet and singer/songwriter in Athens, Georgia. Poetry and music do not pay the bills, so she is also an international development economist. And just in case money becomes irrelevant one day, she and her partner and two sons manage an urban homestead where they keep bees, raise chickens and grow vegetables. Alys’ poetry has appeared in Rat’s Ass Review District Lit, Tempered Runes, and Salt Hill Journal, and she has published a chapbook, Even the Dress is Smoke. Her songs have featured in compilations including the Voces en Pandemia project (2020) and on an album with her band After the Flood (2016). As part of her international development career, Alys is the co-author of several non-fiction books including: Violence in the City (World Bank 2011), Societal Dynamics and Fragility (World Bank 2012), Sex Work Matters (Zed Books 2013) and Pathways for Peace (United Nations and World Bank 2018).

Rebecca Kaiser Gibson

Sibling Differentiation

She upsets the apple cart 
before the horse, tumbling 
ripe disasters, 
before a bridle
guides the beast.                        

Why does she barrel down
every option, in a cart 
without reins, past now 
into catastrophe?

I would soar above
each orchard, shiny in late fall.

She wears the globe
around her neck, as a pendent

swinging toward disaster.
Here, she says,

is where a tsunami may strike,
and here, how far the wave will flood.

Imagining the wave’s fortissimo, she reads 
of turtles’ struggles to land. 

The effort, she sighs, of evolution:
and how can we, with our blasé bliss,

if we don’t address

the dire signs.

I scallop edges like the goldfinch, 
whose swooping flight a praise
of day, disdains the shade,
ignores the mourning cloak 
that drapes a crow,
so lavish in its gloss.

A scarlet parrot perched 
on a painted bar, takes nuts, persimmons, 
turkey bits, right from her lips.  
She keeps him tethered 
by a silken strand, 
clips pinion feathers,
scaly claws, mimics
his heart-stopping shrieks–

Neither can she dream of flight.

Rebecca Kaiser Gibson’s poetry collections are Girl as Birch, (forthcoming 2022), and OPINEL (2015) from Bauhan Publishing. Her poems appear in Agni, Barrow Street, (forthcoming), Field, Green Mountains Review, Greensboro Review, Harvard Review, Massachusetts Review, Ocean State Review, Salamander, Slate, Tupelo Quarterly, and VerseDaily among others. She’s received fellowships from MacDowell, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and was a Fulbright Scholar teaching poetry in India. After teaching poetry at Tufts University for 23 years, she founded The Loom, Poetry in Harrisville, a poetry reading series. Rebecca’s email address is Rebeccagibson55@gmail.com. (www.rebeccakaisergibson.com)

Kara Pernicano

Apology

dad,

 
i yelled
at you, “leave me
            the fuck
                        alone.”
i’m sorry.
i didn’t mean it.

 
you called me some name.
i don’t remember what.

 
i slammed my bedroom door
and i never do that.
            i’d never
            used
            that word
in the house.

 
two months before,
a boy pushed his way
into my four walls.

 
i did not yell
            at him
            to leave
            me
            the fuck
            alone.

 
he would not
            go away.

 
i’m not sorry.
i want you
to know.

Kara Laurene Pernicano (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist and poet-critic, routinely working in erasure, collage, comics, improv dictation and poetic monologue. Through art, she seeks to awaken an interpersonal approach to trauma, grief, talk therapy and mental wellness. Kara has a MFA from Queens College and a MA from the University of Cincinnati. She has performed for New York Theatre Workshop, Poetic Theater Productions and the Poetry Society of New York. Her work has been included in various literary magazines and gallery exhibitions, including Snapdragon, Waccamaw, Full Stop, the winnow magazine, ang(st), Passengers Journal, the Whitney Staff Art Show and LIC Artists’ Plaxall Gallery. She teaches at CUNY and curates a creative series Why Open Pandora’s Box. When not writing or drawing, Kara serves as a Voice Actor for Passengers Journal and Experimental Editor for Patchwork Lit Mag.

Amber Wozniak

Albie

I took the dog to the 24-hour animal hospital. 
Drove 40 in the 25s, 80 in the 60s
—all the while cursing the ornery 
nylon chunk that lodged itself in his stomach. 
I said I wouldn’t leave you 

 
with all the burden this time 
around. You don’t give me
a hard time, but because of that 
I want to make good on my promise. 
For once. It feels wrong 

 
to be worried about him, asleep in the back 
seat and dreaming through the near death 
he does not know he is experiencing. It feels wrong 
to worry when despite his cherub face 
all I can think is thank god 

 
it is the puppy and not the baby. Knock on wood, 
of course. Earlier tonight she took a chunk 
out of a clementine, masticating dappled peel 
and all. I forced myself to laugh over 
the scolding. All I do now is scold. I have a toddler, 

 
I say by way of apology when he accuses
How did this happen? The vet rolls his eyes
over the phone, explains they’ll induce vomiting, 
get all that bad stuff out. Maybe 
we could have handled it at home, but you 
tell me not to worry about that. Better 
safe than sorry. For once

 
we did not argue. We divided 
responsibilities and parceled no blame. I took 
one and you took 
the other, though dog and baby each begged 
to keep by my side. This singular need touches 
both you and I in different, wounded places. 

 
Still, I’m failing. The dead air is a pact 
never to speak of
what we both must be thinking 
as we discuss moving money to cover 
this visit to the clinic. We love them, 
we need them, but still. 
Afterall, $345 really isn’t all that much to ask for 

 
medically induced fresh starts.

Amber Wozniak is, above all things, an eldest child. Her other works have appeared on The Keeping Room and Litro, as well as in The Raw Art Review. Amber can be found at www.amberwozniak.com or @AmberLWozniak on Instagram.

Kaleigh O'Keefe

WHERE DO MEMORIES GO TO DIE?

some we take out to the back yard 
— when the kids aren’t home —

 
put them out of their misery 
with a muddy shovel

 
some — in their old age — 
escape and crawl 

 
under the front porch 
to die and rot in peace

 
some are burned alive. most
get carelessly squished in a napkin,

 
tossed in the nearest trash bin.
when I listen for them

 
my ears swell shut, 
stuffed with shredded paper.

 
when I open my mouth to speak them
moths swarm out instead

 
they cover all the windows 
in my bedroom.

 
I sit in the dark among your letters
and pluck wings from my teeth

 
I search the veins
and ink for meaning.

 
even when I hate you I still crave 
the stories you never told me

 
the same stories I will never tell 
my never children.

Kaleigh O’Keefe (they/them) is a gender outlaw and proud union member living in Dorchester, Massachusetts. Their poetry has appeared in Breaking the Chains: a Socialist Perspective on Women’s Liberation, Slamfind, Flypaper Lit, Kissing Dynamite, and is featured on indie music legend Ceschi’s album Sans Soleil. Kaleigh is a contributor and editor for Liberation News, co-founder of Game Over Books, and hosts the First Fridays Youth Open Mic in Jamaica Plain. You can find them at www.kaleighokeefe.com and on social media @KaleighOKeefeOK

Jessica L. Walsh

And the Pearly Gates are Made of Teeth

Whiskey-wrecked in a Kansas City bar
where an Irish punk band played
I shoved a skinhead with both hands
and yelled whatever you’d yell 
if you were 19, drunk, and pissed off.

 
The fire alarm shrieked a second later
sending everyone into the quiet cold
of separate nights. 
The way my friend tells it
the alarm was an act of God
but God, I want to finish it still. 

 
I want to lose some teeth 
but take more of his, to crack
a knuckle on his fragile temple. I was ready
to sacrifice, God. I believe 
I am owed a debt of bones.

Jessica L. Walsh is the author of two poetry collections, The List of Last Tries and How to Break My Neck. Her work has appeared in RHINO, Tinderbox, Whale Road Review, Glass: A Poetry Journal, and more. She teaches at a community college outside of Chicago but is originally from rural Michigan. Find her on Twitter: @JessicaLWalsh1; Facebook: Jessica Walsh; Instagram: @jessicawalshpoet

Christina Erichsen

Exit Sign

yes, I will marry you! hollowed by thy name-
guide me off this mundane highway, where rest is undone-
lead me out of the chambers of darkness, unlock your chains, so I may push 
my way out into fresh air- a break from the cooking, laundry, daily bread-
invite me out of my isolation tank- where I have only myself to forgive-
your blinking light excites me- go this way- pouring glasses of pinot noir-
like rain on my throat with the company of the darkest chocolate 
smeared tastefully across my lips- deliver me in melty tubs filled
to the sky with lavender bubbles-on earth as it is in heaven-
Lead me into temptation.

Christina Erichsen graduated from Columbia with a degree in Theatre. She has been an actress, a psychiatric technician, a bartender, a real estate developer, and a homeschool mother of two children, Luna and River. She began writing poetry on her shag blue carpet in the 80's. Since then, she has done many open mics, but has just started this week submitting to publishing journals. She is currently working on her first manuscript, Showing up with Broken Pieces.

Benjamin Clancy

the decline of western unpopular culture

Marx is lonely on a rainy afternoon.
he sits by the telephone in his parlor.

 
these days, 
no one will call him 
by name.

 
            it's like that Destiny’s Child song,
            Marx wallows. (he still tries to keep up
            with the culture.)
 

*

the sky over the highway
features four sections of clouds
that quarter the sun
like four horses of justice.

 
de Beauvoir leaves a bookstore 
on a day when nothing disappoints 
more than a disappointing bookstore.

 
she is in space and time
but she doesn’t feel it. watch her:       aloft, 

 
            moving in spasms, navigating the net
            of the world of language
            while craving, still, those savory,
            sensory impressions found 
grounded 
in the world of bodies.

 
she goes home and kisses 
a person on the lips
.
this person has a shine that eats
a hole in the room. love burns

 
and eats a hold in the room. 
de Beauvoir falls 

 
through the hole
and into a study where 
all of the words promptly
fall from her mouth.

 
*

 
in this room, Kierkegaard
sits alone at a table, writing 
the word bitch on a bar napkin
over and over and over.

 
his face beads 
with the labor of repetition.
 

*

 
Marx gets bored thinking
so he takes a walk down 
Great Windmill Street past the old Red Lion,
which he can still almost recognize through 
the new name and face the capitalists gave it.

            
the London wet hasn’t changed. 
it still loves to illustrate 
the material nature of suffering.      

 
Marx moves inch-by-inch, now,
watching his feet as he walks. 
took a bad fall back in '89. 
been just a touch nervous ever since.

*

 
de Beauvoir wakes up
back in her bedroom
next to the shine of her lover, subdued in sleep.

 
she stands in the bathroom mirror
and feels the word love twitch inside of her body. 

 
she knows it's in there, somewhere.
it nags at her organs like a diamond tumor.
she watches the surface of her skin for its movements:

 
            a tiny room 
            filled with tiny people,
            waiting without breath
            to surprise her.

Benjamin Clancy is a writer, musician, multimedia artist, and academic, living in Chicago with their partner, child, and a riot of other lifeforms. Clancy is an alum of the Vermont Studio Center poetry residency and their poems have appeared in publications like Shabby Dollhouse and Everyday Genius. Clancy’s one-act play, A # @ THE DOOR, premiered as part of the Swain Studio 6 Performance Series at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Under the name Sea Brain, they have released an album of lyrically-centered, musical experiments named Redoubt with the Austin, Texas label Hard Fun. Clancy is currently a PhD candidate at UNC in the Department of Communication, researching the relationship between technology, politics, and art. You can visit their website at www.bclancy.com.

Eva Heisler

Shift Work

I had a union job and heirlooms
but snacked anxiously 
on bread-and-butter pickles.  Years
converting loneliness into lists. 
But I have always wanted to live
where the blues will not be catalogued. 
It’s a question of feigning indifference
and dotting the i’s 
beneath cross-hatched skies.  At seventeen 
I thought “the atrocity of sunsets” 
was affectation.  Bangs and lipstick pout—
that was Sylvia Plath.  It was not until 
the age of twenty-nine I knew she was real.  
In maternity clothes and a bandanna, 
she sat on my couch knitting booties
and talking about her sex life.  
I’ve been told I’m a good listener 
but I knew if I practiced 
I’d eventually have something to say.

Eva Heisler has published two books of poetry: Reading Emily Dickinson in Icelandic (Kore Press, 2013) and Drawing Water (Noctuary Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in many journals, including BOMB, Bellingham Review, Crazyhorse, Poetry Northwest, Rhino, and Sporklet. Honors include the Poetry Society of America's Emily Dickinson Award and fellowships at MacDowell and Millay Arts.