Poetry – Page 14 – Back Patio Press

‘where the heart ends up is a kind of funny place after all’ by Kyla Houbolt

July 7, 2019June 18, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

the heart
is a great pilgrimage toward God
a muscle the size of a caravan
an endless story told to an evil tyrant
in hope of something like escape
or at least a meal and a dry bed

on pilgrimage the heart
hears many stories, believes them all
and then believes only some
and finally believes none
because the path goes on
and on and on

and the heart is weary
of all this brouhaha about itself and about
the God it has ceased to seek
yet it can’t seem to just stop and simply
melt into the side of the road

and the awareness comes to it
gradually v. gradually that that
can’t-stopness may itself be
the sought God the electrical
pulsing of something that is not time
but an alive ongoingness

and what does the heart do then?

The heart laughs
and says

God
only
knows

—

Kyla Houbolt lives and writes in Gastonia, NC. She’s got various words published online, some in Black Bough Poetry, Barren Magazine, Juke Joint Magazine, and other places. When she’s not writing she can often be found spacing out somewhere, under a tree if she can find one. You can follow Kyla on Twitter @luaz_poet.

“Reunion/Rebellion/Refusal” by Kai Edward Warmoth

June 26, 2019May 6, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

Mother, throw out your black pearls
and smudged the rain will make them.
Their shine become like our shine
under the dirt and hooves of anabasis
where we are the sodden and soiled;
balanced scales.
New wardrobes that convert office lighting
to pure vitamin MDMA
and new costumes
so that we may ritually beg for treats,
guised as the Imago Dei.
These are what Mother will bring
from the conference
in another state.
It’s all the same State.
Gathering now around that oak stand in
the kitchen. What ever was it for?
Here grandfather would act
as if memory reserves seats.
“We shall weigh sod and we shall weigh soil.”
Iron wrought scales know fuck all of anything
but the presupposition of balance.
Order? That comes
through the bark of a dog on
the television.
A hunter-gatherer picks at
Marlboroberries and he gives little heed
to black pearls,
partly obscured in the ashy loam,
smudges left from the oil of a Thumb.
Leave it to the police;
they have a database for this
type of shit.

—

Kai Edward Warmoth lives in central Indiana where he patiently awaits being cancelled or Waco’d, whatever comes first.

“where the good sod dies” by Lance Milham

June 21, 2019May 17, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

my father spoke from a grin
behind a muffincrumb beard
about his backswing and traffic lights
and whatever-whoever-said-to-who-cares
while I peeled grains of sleep from my eyes,
but then I noticed a freckle
a thumbwidth above his ear
that his hair used to hide:
a tight brown circle
like the eighteenth green,
of an abandoned course,
the sod withering silently, defeated,
like the rest of the golfer must be

—
Lance Milham is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida. His fiction and poetry has appeared in Soft Cartel, Pinkley Press, Aurore, and the late Anti-Heroin Chic.

3 Poems by Jenna Vélez

June 17, 2019May 6, 2019 Back Patio Press1 Comment

pan rabbit and wine

here the doors screen you before you can come in
sometimes children skin their knees
on the blacktop fresh like raven sap
there was always grass that never let you whistle
but danced if you liked

if you listen hard enough
you hear the summer congregation of fireflies
like ember fairies in the blueberry sky

drive faster and no deer can touch you
out here where the woods are more familiar
than the city of unfounded freedom
ringing in your popped ears like corn blues

creeks flowing with the brook trout traffic
backed up like route bluer than her valley forge eyes

here is where i fell in love with the trees
that poisoned you before they let you climb them
and the bliss that smelled like pine forest winters
lake eerie with the sound of war-torn ghosts
and a bethlehem jesus never knew

♦◊♦

ode to a minnesota summer

there’s an ease about a maiden summer
not yet ripe or swamp-skinned
the southern humidity not yet
rising to meet pennsylvanian woods
where the heat glues the trees together
glues the people together

but there is a soft and gentle breeze that carries
buddy holly on a radio and sweet sun tea
it whistles with your hair like blades of grass
and whispers in my mother’s childhood songs

it doesn’t know the bees are awake from their sleep
and the dragonflies meet us for dreamy peach cobbler sunsets
while mosquitoes hum through the thick muggy air of twilight
this is mozart’s unfinished cricket and cicada symphony
warm, static cling skin and vibrating ceaselessly
but for now we enjoy the breeze
that carried dandelion wishes and kitchen clanging
on its winged back
beckoning the lake to cool us off

♦◊♦

will-o’-the-wisp

i see a woman with hips like the wind
and half moon eyes
she is a sway branch, hair like willow
she calls and comforts and cries
she says my name like a curse
like a love song
like a blessing
like a eulogy

i walk to her
barefoot and ghostly
nightgown and night sounds
i sit down before her feet unseen
hovering over the dewy earth
i weep and throw up and beg
for protection, for peace

she carries me back to bed
nothing but a song to move me
and the room gets bluer and bluer
and the air is gone, not a breath to be gasped
by the morning i awake
and sing with her
a mourning song

—

Jenna Velez is an emerging Latinx poet from suburban Philly. She lives with an absurdly large tea collection and her anxious 3am thoughts. She currently runs “The Northern Bruja’s Grimoire” column with Pussy Magic and “By Death, She Lives” blog with Rhythm & Bones Press. She tweets @northernbruja and can be found at jennavelez.weebly.com.

Four Poems by Lynne Schmidt

June 7, 2019April 23, 2019 Back Patio Press6 Comments

Asking Questions

When my youngest niece sees me in a swimsuit,
she peels various cloth to the side and reads the words I’ve painted on my skin.

Three years ago, when she was falling asleep,
she’d rubbed my arm.
Her small body stiffened with the question when she felt the raised flesh
but she didn’t ask.

Now they ask.

Now they tell me they love me.
My oldest niece still reaches for my hand when we walk on beach sand.
‘What happened to your arm?’ they say.
My mouth falls open.

I try to retch the words out,
try to explain something I’m not sure they’ll understand,
until I settle for silence,
because the language I would use
is a gunshot through their bodies.

How do you tell someone who loves you so much,
who runs across parking lots to jump into your arms
that you hate the person they love?

Baggage

I packed you up today
after selecting the perfect box.
I took the hat you gave me
the night it was cold,
the chalk from the elementary school
the blue one I stole,
the sticker I peeled from the fridge,
the blankets from my bed.
I carved off the skin on my arms
like the white meat on a Thanksgiving turkey.
I expertly washed you out of my hair
with bleach and chemicals.
And once all of it was
labeled, dated, bubble wrapped in case I get to unpack,
I dug my fingernails into my chest,
And became as empty inside,
as the shoebox I placed you in.

Bookshelves

And so you ask me to open
Like a library book
That promises a good story.
You ask me to press my tongue against my lips,
And spread my legs like pages,
Flip, and turn, and move forward.
But when I take too long to get to the point,
The words you choose are annoying,
Over-sharing,
Too much.
As though my life story,
Bound between leather holders,
And read by the masses,
Is too long.
Too many words.
Too much in general.
And so you pick me up,
And put me on the shelf,
Without another look.
So.
I collect dust,
Learn to tear out pages,
So that the next person who picks me up,
Won’t get bored.

Breathing Patterns

I learned to breathe in your arms,
pressed against your chest,
your heart setting the tempo.
Two beats in,
Two beats out.
Your skin became a compass
used to navigate life;
A bad day meant palms fused together
like two cars in a collision,
metal and shrapnel so intertwined
paramedics couldn’t tell my car from yours.
A good day meant finger tips on throats
Pressure, patience, and patterned bedsheets that
needed peeled in the morning.
And so it makes sense that when your skin settled into
Someone else’s,
I was gasping for air.

—

Lynne Schmidt (she/her) is a mental health professional and Master’s of Social Work student in Maine who writes memoir, poetry, and young adult fiction. Her unpublished memoir, The Right to Live: A Memoir of Abortion has received Maine Nonfiction Award and was a 2018 PNWA finalist, while her poetry has received the Editor’s Choice Award for her poem, Baxter, from Frost Meadow Review, and The Perfect Dress, was an honorable mention from Joy of the Pen. Her chapbook, Dead Dog Poems, was honorable mention from Pub House Books. Her work has appeared in Soft Cartel, RESIST/RECLAIM, Royal Rose, Sixty Four Best Poets of 2018, 2018 Emerging Poets, Frost Meadow Review, Poets of Maine, Poets of New England, Maine Dog Magazine, Alyss Literary, Her Kind Vida, and many others. She is the founder of AbortionChat, and has been and continues to be a featured poet at events throughout Maine. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.

Twitter: @LynneSchmidt @Abortion Chat

Facebook: Lynn(e) Schmidt

Two Poems by Kat Giordano

May 31, 2019May 1, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

LIVING ALONE

you start putting cream in your coffee,
because in his memories of you
you’ll continue to drink it black.

you buy a brand-new vibrator
and leave it sitting out on your bed at all times
because there’s no one in your life now
for it to loom over, reminding them
they can’t make you feel good
and that feeling good is something you want
and that you can get what you want
without permission.

you rekindle your love for early 2000’s butt rock
with vocals that sound like microwaved,
boneless Eddie Vedder. you flood your brain
with Hoobastank and Creed and when you catch yourself
cringing on his behalf, you turn it up louder.

you think about that time he called you “chubby”
and order two medium pizzas from Dominos.

you remember his constant displeasure
at your lack of milk, leafy greens, and salad dressing
and let your fridge grow empty, your meager
cooking knowledge eroding under a pile of pizza boxes
and smiley-face takeout bags. you forget
how to make eggs, and it makes you feel lighter.

you think about getting that nose piercing
that he thought was stupid. you consider
selling photos of your feet and ass online,
but that has nothing to do with him.
you just want money. you just want to know
what each part of you is worth now,
used-up and haunted.

a few months pass,
you start excelling at work again,
you start to feel like maybe
there’s more ahead than behind you
and how sad that also is.

your friends Go Places
and get Good Deals on cute apartments.
they’re throwing parties, scratch-making meals
you’re paying 30 bucks for on GrubHub.
they’re buying gym memberships, essential oils.
they don’t get it, you’re the one who left,
you’re supposed to gracefully peel him off
like a too-small snakeskin and be reborn unscarred
and short-haired on a mountain somewhere,
like some kind of lifestyle blogger.

but that’s okay, you don’t need them,
you have your eggless mornings
your Coffee-Mate and Chad Kroeger,
a dozen writhing orgasms ahead of you
in that unwashed bed. i mean,
look at all the space in it.

♥ ♥ ♥

CREDIT CHECK POEM

when he left my place for the last time, I waited
just long enough to hear the elevator
clinking to life behind my bedroom wall
before I called you and peeled off my clothes.

and I guess that makes me an asshole,
guess that makes me a vessel that can’t stand
its own emptiness, won’t turn its hands
on itself for once, feel how deep that bottom is.

how do I tell them that you are not a sack
of packing peanuts, that I loved you before I could
picture you inside me? I know how it looks,
this room filled with so much steam it makes sense
I can’t perform grief in these clothes, how my voids
match your outlines so well you could have traced them,
but you can’t fake this kind of shit timing.

and is it even shit timing? and were all those nights spent
crying for each other with all of Pennsylvania
wedged between us not a ransom for this one
in my still-lit room, where my makeup melts
onto the thumb-worn touch screen of my iPhone,
every breath too heavy to hold itself up?
where I don’t know if it’s the pent-up lust or the exhaustion,
but I swear I can feel your weight on me from here
as your body idles into the receiver like a diesel engine?

I want to go back to that first night at my house
and harvest all that wasted heat between us.
I want to burn the flesh off every poem I swore
wasn’t a love poem, melt down the bones, let the pressure
of our bitten tongues mold these past six months
into thin, shiny plastic. we have enough sad irony
on this thing to charge every single cent of moral debt
and then some, so tell me what you want, baby.
tell me you’ve earned it. do it for us both.

—

Two Poems by Adrian Belmes

May 27, 2019April 23, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

this is not an admission of guilt

but there is the story where my parents steal branded glassware
from a fast casual fish house
returning enough times to smuggle a whole set
out past the dining families inside my mother’s purse
like the georgian wine and the polish vodka in the airplane boot
secure in her fake burberry bags

gucci is cheap she says

they go enough times that they might’ve just bought the glasses
elsewhere with the money spent on salmon and on swai

unsatisfied with fries
they ordered only the better fish
the diners watching
and stole the glasses

there is the story where my parents aren’t poor
that is the one they want you to believe.

♦ ♦ ♦

we have the same conversation every time we talk

driving home
eating warm fries
and thinking about death.

there’s a comfort in not quite licking
all the salt from your hands.
a little always gets into the creases of
your pointer and your thumb.
that’s how you know you’re eating good,
when it lingers on you like a ghost.
that’s how you know that in your heart
you never missed that funeral
because you couldn’t leave the city
and you were afraid,
a little high but not enough to enjoy it,
just sad.

there’s nothing quite like remembering
the only reason you know a song
is because the man who introduced you
is a rapist now, but once a friend.
crying in the minivan, you can’t speak.
you’re liking a picture the same night he died
facing his brother down a barrel.
the salt cuts into your purlicue.
you lick it, but the sting, it stays.
you’re eating good, you tell yourself.
you never missed the funeral.

i hope you’re getting high enough.
i hope you’re doing alright.

—

Adrian Belmes is a reasonably depressed Jewish-Ukrainian poet and book artist residing currently in San Diego. He is editor in chief of Badlung Press and has been previously published in SOFT CARTEL, Philosophical Idiot, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere. His chapbook, “this town and everyone in it”, is forthcoming from Ghost City Press. You can find him at adrianbelmes.com or @adrian_belmes.

“No Flavor” by Mika Hrejsa

May 22, 2019April 23, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

black-on-black kicks splayed forward
toes up to the indiana sun dimming
melting under 55 degrees
artifacted smirks & sour smiles
i sink below limestone fangs
blunted with petrified sponges
watching immensity pass me by

capacity to give a shit prepaid via
oxycodone-coated credit cards
declined, declined–i keep licking
off the oxy dust anyway

comforts superficial before
they touch the mouth
a baby viperfish threading
thru my eye sockets making
it live off candy roaches
feeding the surrogate anger

a sugar-coated silence begins
to flood the street, only skeletons remain

low-hanging moon dumped on
by a cherry slushie
donating my bloodsweets to wolf howls

i take a hit off the vape my boyfriend
gave me for the anniversary of the
first time i blew him in a parking lot
on Anna Marie Island
lungs liquefy and begin to drip
onto my stomach
smoke right through my chest gaped
like coastal vortex
spitting out platinum buckshot
bubbling up from my esophagus

making myself into fragments
pair of chuck taylor’s my gravestone
i’m not picking up the pieces

—

Mika Hrejsa is a trans girl and poet from rural Indiana. She mainly writes about identity, sexuality, and trauma. She tweets @tokyo_vamp. Her work can be found at http://neutralspaces.co/mikahrejsa/

“A Human Heart” by Austin Davis

May 20, 2019May 6, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

I’m missing you,
so obviously, this cloud
looks like a heart.

Not the corporate, greeting
card, capitalist kind of heart,
all cartoonish and fake,

or the smooth shape
two swans’ necks make
when they’re about
to get it on
to some lofi jazz shit,

but a real heart.

This is the kind of heart
I’ve drawn at the bottom
of every love poem
I’ve ever written you.

This is a human heart,
gross and squishy –
as raw and intimate

as standing naked in the daylight
in front of your soulmate
for the first time.

This is the kind of heart
that makes sure
your hand pulls out a dollar

every time a homeless woman
tells a shopping cart
about her childhood.

This is the only sad, beautiful
little thing no poet could ever
find a way to capture
with a pen or a cigarette,

the soft, juicy peach
floating through our night’s
quiet chest, far too in love

with the way its sun
will always love the color purple
at 5 in the afternoon

to take another beat
or shed another tear.

—

Austin Davis is a poet and student activist currently studying Creative Writing at ASU. Austin’s writing has been widely published in dozens of literary journals and magazines including Pif Magazine, After the Pause, Philosophical Idiot, Soft Cartel, and Collective Unrest. Austin’s first two books, Cloudy Days, Still Nights and Second Civil War were both published by Moran Press in 2018.

“7th Grade” by Austin Davis

May 17, 2019May 6, 2019 Back Patio PressLeave a comment

When I was in 7th grade,
I went to one of those talent shows
where jr high kids sing
their favorite sad songs.

One girl sang “Let Her Go”
in the kind of dark auditorium
that made me feel like a caveman
trying to articulate how scary death is
through grunts and growls.

In the row behind me,
this little blonde kid named Clay
whispered, Ain’t that the truth, man

as the girl with the kind of bruises
the doctor doesn’t notice during check-ups
sang, Only know you’ve been high
when you’re feeling low.

I used to know Clay
before he started lighting joints
between every class
and ashing them in the water fountains
when the bell rang.

This was the kid
whose code name for pot was “pizza,”
the kid who mixed little blue pills
into his Kraft mac & cheese,

the kid whose big brother
gotten taken away in handcuffs
for dealing that hard shit one September night
after helping his little brother
with a geometry worksheet.

This is the little boy, who 3 years later,
bumped into me on my way to gym class
with bloodshot eyes – fucked out of his mind
on meth, laughing the way the Joker does
after carving his initials into a teenager’s forehead.

He shoved a handmade vase into my arms.
A burnout kid crying on the moon
was painted on the side of the vase,
the color of a lit match
snuffed out in a sip of grape soda.

I didn’t know whether to grab Clay’s hand,
spit on the vase until the paint melted into a universe,
and throw the puddle of colors on to his chest
like the last handful of water in a dried out creek,

or if I should just walk away,
drop a fist of seeds into the vase,
and pray that one day,
a daffodil might find a way to grow.

—