POETRY: RITA ROUSSEAU – REMEMBERING

Remembering

I walk in the shadow of skeletal trees,

their fearsome, naked branches reaching out

in desperation, pleading for redemption

like ghostly soldiers back from war in search

of peace, an end to dreams

of screams and shattered flesh.

Scattered underneath, concealed among

withered, blood-red remnants of last year’s

flowers, lurk spiked seed pods,

tiny, inobtrusive land mines

set to detonate at slightest touch

exploding everywhere new seeds

prepared to sprout, to conquer, and

to dominate all lesser growth

exhibiting their red magnificence.

Until, again, the glory ends

in stark, bare desolation.

POETRY: LAURA MANARDO – Lemon Water in Lake Michigan

Lemon Water in Lake Michigan

Midwestern boys use tongue. And I’ve sprouted

from cracks in concrete. Midwestern boys use their fingers.

And I’ve used my hands

too. Trust me. I’ve used numb hands

to mold Midwestern boys. I know how they form words

in their heads before slapping asses

in beds that I’ve made.

I don’t wash my sheets anymore.

I used to know Midwestern boys, but they don’t bleed

with the vigor that I do. They don’t smack

ball of foot to earth the way that I taught them to.

And Midwestern boys use pretty words

like “only child” to water me,

make me grow, spread me

out, lick me clean. Midwestern boys borrow

my knitting needles and use them

wrong. Midwestern boys show me their photographs,

let me put finger to gloss. Let me put finger to mouth,

Midwestern boys. I’m stuck

between two slabs of planet

and all of the Midwestern boys are drinking

lemon water.

POETRY: Laura Manardo – Irrawaddy Dolphins and Casual Sex

Irrawaddy Dolphins and Casual Sex

Like the Irrawaddy dolphin,

I have sex for pleasure

and it ruins me

because I need you to hold me

afterward in the Mekong River.

I need you

to swim alongside me

and let me take a breath

from your blowhole.

It is estimated that 91 of us still exist,

still swim together.

Well, every time I leave

your bed I feel the dead

dolphins lining the river’s bottom. They lived

their lives trying to breathe

in each others exhaled breaths,

trying to buoy themselves to see

the sun rise and fall

on each others backs.

POETRY: ALLISON GRAYHURST – Exhumed

Exhumed Hello dead flower, for all time now you will be embedded inside of me. I will love you, dead as you are, withered like a left-out tomato. I will cherish you, your deadness, your smell and deep dead colour. There – the funny shadow on the upper wall – you killed my […]

POETRY: CATHERINE WOLFE – WHERE ARE THE SIDEWALKS

Where Are the Sidewalks?

Blades of grass slashed my feet.

“No Trespassing” signs smacked my face, screamed,

“Go back to your city, we have no sidewalks here.” Sidewalks,

sidewalks, where are the sidewalks?

Limping, dripping bloody footprints on the macadamia road,

I edged toward the school bus stop,

where hyenas brayed, “We are the cool of the suburbs,

worship at our Gucci feet!” The school bus choked me

with a mix of diesel and fluffy yellow cake uranium,

crazy-glued me to the seat with chewed orange bubble gum.

The rambling, random brick walls of the school blocked my path,

spat at me, mockingly proclaimed,

“We have no use for you, little girl,

go back to your dingy drabby scumdummy school.”

The bell shrieked, “You’re late for your viral

algebra class! Your punishment: prove theological theorems

for all to see. Pray to the icon of iconoclasm!”

Blackboards surrounded me,

erasers clapped together, suffocating with clouds of cyanide chalk.

The gymnasium belligerently belittled my body,

bleachers ripped off my clothes,

chanting, “Boo, boo, no one will ever make love to you!”

I hid in the showers and cried for the sidewalks.

But the sidewalks shed crock pot tears and

not for me.

POETRY: Husain Abdulhay – Devoted Dad

Devoted dad

Nothing more I reveled in than seeing my little kid’s blithe face.
One day we were sitting round my daughter’s birthday cake,
Say, ‘‘what you want for your birthday gift?’’
I will do whatever you wish.
There were some red fish in the aqua tank.
She said, ‘‘Please gulp them down in a blink of an eye.’’
Since I didn’t want to make her sad,
I swallowed them all at once.
Now I’ve got stomachache for two days long.
But I made her at last burst into lusty laugh.

Husain Abdulhay, born on 26 August 1979, is from Iran.

POETRY: JACK D. HARVEY – Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas “In the white giant’s thigh,” he recited, berry-eyed, while the moon, or the spotlight, like melted silver, poured down over wondering flocks of girls and their fellows; the college library wasn’t big enough to hold the babbling poems and broken science he would write, so he said, booming big and drunk, windy and […]

Cacti Fur

poetry