Category: Poetry

“what we’ve been doin while we wait” by Anthony Kelly

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been earnin these blisters on our fingertips
with sweat in our dad’s wool socks

been stackin up these antlers – these elbows –
all this driftwood in the front yard.

been huskin our lungs out thinkin about tomorrow
after they’ve all dried out in the sun

how we’ll just steep em in gasoline –
toss in our big cigs to light em all up.

that’s one big fire ya got there!
neighbors comin in from all around
been just sittin here really, warmin whiskey
bottles in the embers – watchin their labels rust. 

 

—
Anthony Kelly is a writer living and working outside of Toronto. His work has appeared in various publications, the most recent being BARNHOUSE Journal. He is the co-founder and co-editor of Jam & Sand Journal.

2 Poems by Aaron Adkins

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Living for Two
For someone who doesn’t believe
In god, I ask about you a lot
Always hoping I might be wrong
And get an answer

I tell myself the lie:
There’s no way I could’ve known–
But maybe I did

In the way you walked
Head hung low, weighed
Down into the Earth

I just didn’t know how to help

You couldn’t bear it,
Now I’m gonna carry that weight

 

↑↓

 

Greenery
The hint of a spark
Hungering to burn
This forest of palms
To ash, to Dust
In the waste bin of heaven

The smoke
Caressing me like a child
In a blanket

Take a minute
To lay in the grass,
And flow in the wind,
Like fish
in a stream

We don’t have to go back.

 

—

Aaron Adkins is a senior at the University of North Florida. He is an English Major with a minor in Film Studies. His poetry is forthcoming in Badlands Literary Journal. For more follow him on twitter @MikeyIsAaron.

2 Poems by William Bortz

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TONIGHT NOTHING’S WORSE THAN THIS PAIN IN MY HEART: FOR MARTY ROBBINS

I move pretty quickly when I am giving distance / between myself and the man with the gun / he who is giving more value to the ground he stands upon than I do / that man being anything that doesn’t have a definable face / a people, a tremble, a machine / I can keep everything I know to be holy in my mouth / names, fingers, stray strands of chocolate hair / my life exists in their thin and frail shadow / and I open my eyes each morning / only to kneel in wake of their breath / if you sculpt a monument from sand / that too / I will revere and call to be moist and tame beneath my tongue / if you call me to be, I will flow outward / and become a river—a terribly raging thing / almost always a pair of starving hands cannot finish what they wished to begin / almost always something is left half-alive and writhing / almost always / I once cowered within danger’s shadow as it stood, rapping at my door / but now I have become that which knocks / I called distance to be a sea / and drank an entire ocean / I have become that faceless thing guarding hallowed ground / I imagine a bullet is fired each time I take a breath / and it is hard to believe there is enough dirt to cover and fill every hole a pair of healthy lungs creates / in the same way, that could be said about loneliness / that there aren’t enough hands for everyone to keep / but even just the idea of the drawers between our fingers overflowing / is enough to decorate one’s self with holes / just as the sound of igniting gunpowder can drown out an entire religion / the shriek of air splitting / to make way for me will take back the name / I have ever given to any god  / and I never knew dying would call me to move the quickest / in its direction

 

 

♦◊

 

LITTLE CLOUD

that first person who saw the / Andromeda Galaxy / referred to it as / ‘little cloud’ / little cloud / breathing somewhere in infinity / orbiting around its own beating / so far off one could not spot the rivers / painting gullies in the palm of the night sky / grief / is observed in this same way / given a name that defines it as small / as something with the potential of being / both beautiful and fit to sustain life / fantastical & gleaming / an entire atlas of constellations / a gravitational pull driving to the center / a spectacle a race / buried too deep in wonder to ever become an idea / the opulent comfort of visiting from a safe distance / must one feel to know / simply by seeing I am / we do not remember the name of the person who first saw this / little cloud / only that, in the cool air of twilight / they could not turn their gaze upward / stare passed the atmosphere / and feel nothing any longer

 

—
William Bortz is a husband, poet, and editor living in Des Moines, IA. His work appears or is forthcoming in Okay Donkey, Oxidant Engine, Empty Mirror, honey & lime lit, Turnpike Magazine, Unvael Journal, the Lyrical Iowa Anthology, and more.

twitter: @william_bortz

“My Cat Is a Stress Guru” by Lannie Stabile

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Outside, stress grows fat and noisy in
my stomach. A moment’s distraction, 

I watch my cat gnaw on rangy blades of
crabgrass. Experts say animals do this to

aid in digestion. Soon, she hacks violently,
her long body spasming like a tube of 

shaky toothpaste. In a moment, she
unrolls her rough tongue to reveal a green

fibrous glob, courtesy of the enzymes
that refuse to build within her. The cat 

resumes her al fresco supper. I too wish
I could settle my nerves with teeth.

—

Lannie Stabile (she/her), a queer Detroiter, often says while some write like a turtleneck sweater, she writes like a Hawaiian shirt. A finalist for the 2019/2020 Glass Chapbook Series and semifinalist for the Button Poetry 2018 Chapbook Contest, she is usually working on new chapbook ideas, or, when desperate, on her neglected YA novel. Works can be found, or are forthcoming, in Glass Poetry, 8 Poems, Kissing Dynamite, Monstering, Okay Donkey, Honey & Lime, and more. Lannie currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Barren Magazine and is a member of the MMPR Collective. She was also recently nominated for Best of the Net 2019.

Twitter: @LannieStabile

2 Poems by Kyle Kirshbom

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Deer Friends

Killed a deer
driving Home
drunk Feet
spread out
clawing a lumberjack blanket

The air

conditioner on Feeling
better
I’ve killed
and forgot

My car’s
hot
tires treaded by
parts
of a carcass across
the dry heated
pavement

His antlers scraped
the road Standing over him
I pointed at his temple
with a squirt gun Washing
him because
blood was getting in his eyes

Drunk on the mattress
alone No sleep Thinking
what I’d do if I ever killed a deer

 

 ♦

 

Blaise

The party in my basement was a hooked fish
             struggling to jump
             ship

—

Kyle Kirshbom lives in San Marcos. His poetry can be found at Silent Auctions and Sybil, as well as the forthcoming issue of SCAB. Currently working on a collection.

Instagram: kushbom420

“A Poem in Response to the Act of Watching Paint Dry” by Nick Wort

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I have been skipping meals lately
(I know it doesn’t look that way,
bear with me)

just to feel those little rodents
circle inside my stomach —

a little centrifuge, a little
child I could have had.

You remind me, sometimes, of a mirror —
(I’m sorry, I’m too afraid to continue
that thought)

I don’t think hell is coming but
I don’t think this can be solved.

*

I want to talk about something
else now, this isn’t fun anymore.

It’s always love and money
and bodies with me, isn’t it?

Let me look at a parking lot
and see a bed of roses.

—
Nick Wort is feral and stupid and lonely. Follow him on Twitter @DollarTreeVegan

“As The Crow Flies North” by Aqeel Parvez

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licking desperate dreamscapes picking at
a homeless man’s head with dandruff
flaking into dust a crushed life like ecstasy
in paper trials of white it is my second 9-5
commute through the city centre and this
surely homeless fella is asleep outside
maccies with his head on top of a Tesco
bag for life and he looks so peaceful like a
full bellied baby with a thumb in its mouth I
wander zombified onwards in a daze of
water bills and gas bills and electric
meters and torn shoes and clothes pegs
and wonder why he looks so much more
content than me. have I not suffered more,
I figure I did less wrong and he less right
as I take the second coffee of the day and
go cross eyed typing web chats to sick
customers. I think about the young
homeless fella his Tesco bag for life pillow
and I close my eyes I am him so free and
wonderful homeless jobless routine-less
and someone lays a £1 saver menu
chicken burger on my chest with the most
delicate intimacy.

—

Aqeel Parvez writes and makes collages. He lives in Leeds, UK. He is the author of the
chapbook The Streetlights Are Beckoning Nirvana (Analog Submission Press). His work has been published in 16 Pages Press, Sludge Lit, Horror Sleaze Trash, Back Patio Press,
Saturday Night Bombers & Expat Press.

instagram: @ap.writer
twitter: @aqeelparvez

“The Spire Has Fallen” by Nick Wort

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I.

We used to name the spiders
on your porch after characters
from movies I’ve
never seen.

Watch them crawl into
the siding of your house
and laugh at the idea
of them winding up
in your bed. 

And it was all so nice
as long as we didn’t think it through. 

II.

It really is okay, dear
you do not have to worry about me

Just put it in your mouth. 

Let it sit on the wet under-
neath your tongue
and wait for it to melt. 

III.

Art turns on the last call lights
that run along the ceiling
— a little row of teeth, a little string of
rosary beads 

I give him my card but
I do not have to pay.

(I never have to pay)

And suddenly I am in front
of my house
and it feels so
pornographic, to step
out of your car,
feel the gravel waltz under-
neath your feet

and simply laugh.

IV.

You can watch Paris burn from the
comfort of your home.

Isn’t it lovely?

V.

We swayed across that nicotine
yellow floor at what felt like
one-hundred-and-twenty-six
miles-per-hour, but really only
one-hundred-and-forty-two
beats-per-minute.

(it’s beautiful)

Those beads of sweat
pooled into the cotton of
my shirt, painting it green under-
neath my arms

(there’s beauty in that, too)

And who would have imagined
the patters our shifting feet
would draw, like a child
clutching an Etch-a-Sketch™

Why were we there in the first place?

(it’s less beautiful to remember)

VI.

You could sing one-hundred-
and-twenty-nine songs
about my inadequacies
and it would be okay

— I am too stupid
to understand what 

you really mean.

VII.

(redacted)

[Did you really think I would just
say it?]

VIII.

I need help understanding your
opinion of me

but there are too many metrics—
you know that I am bad with numbers.

Hold out your hand, count
the folds that sleep under-
neath, on the back side of,
your knuckles.

Is the answer more than ten?

If you are able to, if it is not too much
trouble, imagine me bringing you
a Coca-Cola™

(full-flavor, not diet)

Is it in a can or a bottle?

IX.

You ask me where
my blanket is
and I tell you it has been under-
neath your head

this whole time.

X.

Today I am a child again
knocking on your door.
I can hear your mother’s red
high heels clicking on the tile behind that
white washed wood

There is no answer.

I leave, sit beneath
the tree in my old backyard
feel the sticks plead under-
neath my weight

I know that there is
not much time left.

I tried to sing, but

there was only silence.

3 Poems by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois

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Marquez

We’ve lost
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
to Alzheimer’s and Death

I sit on the sidewalk
against the high wall
of his Cartagena compound
pink stucco hot against my back
my way of saying
I love you, man
I’m sorry

Down the street are the old dungeons
and the Palace of the Inquisition
A woman with a platter of fruit on her head
walks by and kicks me with her sharp toe
I can tell she did it on purpose

I walk into an antique store
full of heavy colonial furniture
I see an old water meter
with Spanish writing on it
pick it up and run out of the store
but it must weigh a hundred pounds
and the young man whose mother is the proprietor
easily catches up with me
I am already soaked with sweat\
breathing like an asthmatic

He is gentle as he pries the meter from my grasp
sets me down on the sidewalk
uses his cell phone to call the police

The police take me away and put me in a cell
I try to call my wife to get me out
but then realize that we were separated
then divorced
then she was hospitalized
then she died
so there are four walls between us
as thick as the walls around
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s compound
but they let me out anyway

I return to Boca Raton
to my mother’s house
find a hatchet
the same one I used to destroy the hard drive
of my father’s computer
so no one could steal his identity
even though he was dead

I take the hatchet
and split my skull open
insert my copy of A Hundred Years of Solitude
signed by the author:
to Mitchell Krochmalnik Grabois
Best of luck 

Old ladies on the street complain about the blood
from my head running onto the sidewalk
Fuck ‘em
If they’re not complaining about that
they’re complaining about something else 

My head absorbs Gabriel’s deathless prose
then repairs itself quickly

I walk down to the community pool with a big smile on my face
get into the hot tub
set at 125 degrees
Two old ladies smile at me
lift out of the water to show me
they are topless

I ejaculate seeds of
magic realism into the frothing tub
and a jungle of flowers blooms
A parrot shrieks

♦♦♦

 

PTSD

 

Her overmedicated, glassy blue eyes
are a perfect match for the faded denim shirt
that hangs on her bony shoulders

There’s too much in her face
for me to wake up to
Those eyes are windows to
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
She had to raise her own parents
she had to suckle them at her breast
It was too much for her

She was too much for me
I had to put on a life jacket
and jump from the second-floor window
into the flood

I floated by a rowboat
and pointed with my thumb
to where she waited for rescue

♦♦♦

Free Use

 

We have an apartment in Paris
in a building
that was a carriage stop
in the eighteenth century
Horses entered under the arch
and stomped their feet
on the cobblestones

Our apartment looks out on the rail yard
Trains enter and leave all day
and night
cause the earth to rumble
shake the building
My wife is unable to distinguish
between external stimuli
and internal stimuli
a symptom of her mental illness
so she is unable to sleep
or concentrate 

She begs me to take her away from this wretched place
but the apartment is free
and we have it for an unlimited time

The owner
doesn’t even know we are here
She is renovating a houseboat in Germany
(or actually, having it renovated
by a troupe of former barmaids
who have started a construction corporation)
and is not expected back
any time during this century

So I insist:
This is where we are
and this is where we’ll be

My wife builds a rough crucifix
in the middle of the living room
and with the assistance of some
local meth heads
ties herself to it
This is so derivative, I say
I am taking you back to the asylum

Fine, she says
Anywhere is better than being here
with you

 

—
Work by Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois appears in magazines worldwide. Nominated for numerous prizes, he was awarded the 2017 Booranga Centre (Australia) Fiction Prize. His novel, Two-Headed Dog, based on his work in a state hospital, is available for Kindle and as a print edition. His poetry collection, THE ARREST OF MR. KISSY FACE, published in March 2019 by Pski’s Porch Publications, is available here. Visit his website  to read more of his poetry and flash fiction.  

 

“it’s raining again” by Arlene Antoinette

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it’s raining again

and the little ones are sequestered in their
homes for the afternoon. Today they are forbidden
to go outside and play. I stand by my
window looking out on the wetness
of the street and chuckle. My lawn
is free of little feet running to and fro.
My grass is being nurtured instead
of laid on. My driveway is spotless.
My garage door is safe. I sip my peppermint
tea, which goes down smoothly, and all
is well in my small world until the sun
comes out and the young ones break free
from their holdings.

 

—

Arlene Antoinette is a writer who enjoys dabbling in poetry, flash fiction and song lyrics. Additional poetry by Arlene may be found @ Foxglove Journal, Cagibi Lit, Better Than Starbucks, Mojave Heart Review, With Painted Words, London Grip, Literary Heist and Your Daily Poem.