“ghost” my disguise is my only friend but at times it stabs me in the back too “caraphernelia” this portrait of beauty still remains upon my eyes the soft colors that dance around my sorrow and mock the ache in my chest the blinding lights of the heart you have broken and carved out have dimmed their glow to an absolute fog they too have fallen into the pits of regret and anguish just as I “damien” his eyes were clouds and the rain never stoppedRead more "RICKY WINTERS – 3 POEMS"
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MARK ANTHONY PEARCE – 2 POEMS
SEATON As we walk across Seaton Beach My Grandfather Asks me of my prospects ‘I’m 75’ He said ‘Soon I’ll be fucking dead’ He seems to think life will work out for me But for a brief moment We are lost Eventually we find my mother And grumpy Grandma Before eating fish and chips My eyes looking up towards the sun Bristol, August 2006 GULAG Where he worked He lived And did not like To be reminded That he did He was always reliable But found others far from it He cursed them Under his breath As the days rolled by With cigarettes and coffee To try and ease the strain Sometimes it rained Sometimes it was windy And jobs would not be done He sat in his chair Made phone calls Annoyed Often cynical He would nonetheless Face his humiliation With a rare bravery One day One of his sons Wrote on a piece of paper ‘GULAG’ And stuck it on the wall Of his office He snarled At his sons sense of humour Because by Christ It felt like one Colchester, April 2007 Mark Anthony Pearce lives and works as a Receptionist in Bristol, England. His poetry has been published in University of Essex Poetry Journal, BS Poetry Magazine and online, Inefável, Coronaverses, Winamop, Horror Sleaze Trash, Duane’s PoeTree & Piker Press. Mark’s writing has also featured in ‘Anne Bean: Self Etc’ (Live Art Development Agency and Intellect Books, Autumn 2018)Read more "MARK ANTHONY PEARCE – 2 POEMS"
Joey Nicoletti – To Razor Shines
To Razor Shines Dear Mr. Shines: Razor, do I have to live a life others want for me, just because they’ve chosen it for themselves? When I look at your baseball card, I see the back yard of the house I grew up in, where hubcaps bloomed beside black-eyed-Susans. I see myself sitting at a round, burgundy spray-painted wooden table, slurping a glass of iced tea as I read and memorize the names of ballplayers and the various cities and towns they hail from. For instance, Razor is your middle name. Durham, North Carolina, intrigued me: it was somewhere and something different from what I knew; hundreds of miles away from the constant yelling, screaming, kicking, and punching; from the rubber boots, pumps, and knives the adults in my family hurled at each other as well as me. Your name; your career in The Show; your time as a Montreal Expo became a hope that I could make a different reality for myself; that I could find my own way to be present in the moment without knowing precisely how things would work out. And I am grateful to have this card, this marvelous window, where I can still see and hear some chickadees, perched on a clothesline; their gold chatter cracking a concrete patio.
~
Joey Nicoletti is the author of four books and four chapbooks, most recently Boombox Serenade (BlazeVOX, 2019) and Counterfeit Moon (NightBallet Press, 2016). Of course we are partial to his collection THUNDERSNOW because we published it.
Read more "Joey Nicoletti – To Razor Shines"Quincy Staley – November 3
good morning.
I hope it is, at least.
as it feels like the world is looking at the sky,
one foot hovering over the threshold of their bomb shelter.
and suddenly I’m caught between feeling
extremist for calling it a bomb, and
guilty because I know others are actually being bombed, and
suffocated by the idea that –
if I just repost one more graphic
if I can just memorize the right data
if I have “the hard conversations”
– maybe I can fix it.
good morning.
maybe it can be, if we let it.
the sun is so bright this morning
(that’s not a metaphor, it literally made me squint)
and yes, it’s a sun that is piercing our ozone
and giving weight to the smog we create
but it’s shining.
and drawing the shades tight,
tugging on the top of our twitter feed like a toddler at a hem
trying to get what they want,
will not change that.
we have tried to change so much.
and we have.
as companies proclaim “BLM” across the street from the house of a man
who fights back with “all lives matter”
we can see change.
as grandparents and uncles and siblings and friends soften to new ideas of justice
and switch the sign in their yard
we can see change.
as metal straws clang in reusable bottles
and wedding cake is smushed by a man into his husband’s mouth
and The Daily is a suggested podcast
even for people who “don’t get political”
we can see change.
and finally, as the number of people voting this year soars past 2016’s record, yes
we can see change.
so let’s rest.
just for a day.
battering our own mental health as some sort of penance
won’t change the outcome.
and the outcome won’t necessarily
change the fight.
so let’s allow ourselves a moment
to just be.
be kind to ourselves, to our neighbors
to those who feel unsafe, to those who may have gotten too comfortable.
give yourself and others grace,
if just for today.
we’ve posted and protested
we’ve pleaded and prayed
we’ve scrolled (and scrolled and scrolled)
we’ve lost friends and learned facts,
each point of data chosen meticulously
to help others understand.
politics have become deeply personal
and our emotions are somehow partisan
so today, on this most political day
let’s protect those emotions.
keep them safe, snuggled up away from what’s been weighing on them for
weeks, months, years.
for one day
one good morning.
~
Find Quincy here
Read more "Quincy Staley – November 3"Robert Beveridge – 2 POEMS
ALKALINE amethyst on your chin secret recipe for hot brown last time you grocery shopped brown leaves in the hall state halfway between sleep bottom of the bedsheets last time Toto had a hit movies released last Friday wakefulness against your toe maze of ice crystals unbearable weight of your skin frozen stacks of bills in the basement life unexamined scent of guava in Tiffin last thing you need * * * LIVE AT NAPA STATE MENTAL HOSPITAL I was thinking more about muscles than I was about rockabilly but the end result was the same, two uncontrollable legs and a pair of chopsticks across the room, chili sauce and shrimp splattered on the wall. There has to be some fiberglass around here somewhere, my brain conjures up out of nowhere as my seat rockets backwards and I head face first for the floor * * *
Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Blood and Thunder, Feral, and Grand Little Things, among others.
Social Media:IG: @ebolaisthesaviorDiaspora: shorturl.at/pqzRV
Joel Schueler – Glass for the Looking
Glass for the Looking And daybreak lifts from the Pacific Like tracing paper from a hairdryer Low setting. There is not any living object Of this world that turns to you, Your honeycomb tiles In your desert/dessert—depends what day it is—citadel. Marram grass like wind-bent strands Of floss coloured olive gesticulate to a High tide Reacquainted with a rusting fringe, Flames for eyelashes Medium burn. A dribbling of gulls across the skyline — Gunned down from sight at sundown. Kindling has evaded all eyes of this day Eyelashes have entered Begrimed brown, Toes made unlovely Like those on ends of foot-bound quondam souls. Panache of catwalk like hollow death. I saw it all Or did I? A seascape for threadbare eyes looking out The window Of neither A glass of truth nor self-reflection. Then what?Read more "Joel Schueler – Glass for the Looking"
RAUL DORN – I WROTE THIS LAST NIGHT
I wrote this last night.
“How ya doing?” asked a dear friend of mine yesterday. I told her that I felt like there was a room within me (as I patted my chest) where there’s a man crying, all day long. If it were the challenges and horror of the Pandemic alone, I’d tell myself that this is a rare potent time to create, to go within, to tap into the introspective blue. But if one feels empathy, it’s overwhelming. Another man in another room simply goes about making tea and speaking softly about hope while whispering the many names we have given God. Crying man sits unceremoniously at the end of the bed like the subject in a Edward Hopper painting, looking towards a wall that used to have a window. He’s predictable now and heavy company, so I don’t visit him often. I can see him from here. I get the internal nudge to create, to wake up from the inside out, to cultivate inner peace, to work to uncover truth, to protest in the streets, but I keep myself busy fixing everything around the house, my lists are long. I drink too much, smoke too much. Some nights it feels like everything is for nothing; that what was worth something wears only the clothes of memory. I’d like my life stirred, not shaken I murmur to myself as I wake in a dream. How does one care for one’s self when so deeply focused on caring for another? I place my ear up to the door of the crying mans room as I shove a love note beneath the door and wait.
Read more "RAUL DORN – I WROTE THIS LAST NIGHT"Kushal Poddar – Daughter Draws
Daughter Draws "Can I watch Pokemon on phone?" "No, draw a chair, colour something on the papers lying on the table." The long kitchen ends into a child drawn rill trilling on the crags until its evanescence means a lost picnic, a fishing rod streaming far. "Cannot you draw anything else?" She draws a Pokemon with father's face down in the dirt flashed from the stroke and sketches trees screaming and a bird tired to be any bird specific reduced to a V.
~
A poet and a father, Kushal Poddar, edited a magazine – ‘Words Surfacing’, authored seven volumes of poetry including ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, ‘A Place For Your Ghost Animals’, ‘Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems’ and ‘Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel’. Find and follow him at https://www.amazon.com/Kushal-Poddar/e/B07V8KCZ9P
Gaby Bedetti – 2 POEMS
Motion
You speed through
the Minotaur’s labyrinth
hoping to avoid the monster.
The motor responds.
You have another
someplace to go.
You look into the wind,
a lop-eared hound
head out the window.
Complicit,
the GPS tracks your
departures and arrivals.
In your sonic life,
you are the hip hero pointing
toward the next adventure,
the lover with the ball
of thread to navigate
the labyrinth.
~
Her Final Email
Days you stayed in bed.
Migraines. Texas heat
and medications
made you sweat. And then
another week had slipped away,
unlike your chores and wishes.
At your desk, a compost heap
of essays. You even began grading
and then Shadow would sigh
to say it was past feeding time
and you abandoned them. You called
him the best dog in the present world.
One son announced he was moving back
so you removed the sewing machine
from his room. You then grew angry
with your husband for leaving.
The other son mentioned downsizing
and you heard nursing home.
Your grandchildren were delightful.
In your final email, you acknowledged
you were lucky, but only so far.
And soon after, the fatal dose.
We could have reunited,
here in Kentucky or there in Texas.
We could have remembered,
and renewed, our luck.
Read more "Gaby Bedetti – 2 POEMS"
LANGSTON HUGHES – FREEDOM TRAIN
Freedom Train
I read in the papers about the Freedom Train
I heard on the radio about the Freedom Train
I seen folks talking about the Freedom Train
Lord, I’ve been a-waitin for the Freedom Train!
Washington, Richmond, Durham, Chatanooga, Atlanta
Way cross Georgia.
Lord, Lord, Lord
way down in Dixie the only trains I see’s
Got a Jim-Crow coaches set aside for me.
I hope their ain’t no Jim Crow on the Freedom Train,
No back door entrance to the Freedom Train,
No sign FOR COLORED on the Freedom Train,
No WHITE FOLKS ONLY on the Freedom Train.
I’m gonna check up.
I’m gonna to check up on this
Freedom Train.
Who is the engineer on the Freedom Train?
Can a coal-black man drive the Freedom Train?
Or am I still a porter on the Freedom Train?
Is there ballot boxes on the Freedom Train?
Do colored folks vote on the Freedom Train?
When it stops in Mississippi, will it be made plain
Everybody’s got a right to board the Freedom Train?
I’m gonna check up.
I’m gonna to check up on this
Freedom Train.
The Birmingham station’s marked COLORED and WHITE.
The white folks go left
The colored go right.
They even got a segregated lane.
Is that the way to get aboard the Freedom Train?
I’m gonna check up.
I’m gonna to check up on this
Freedom Train.
If my children ask me, Daddy, please explain
Why a Jim Crow stations for the Freedom Train?
What shall I tell my children?
You tell me, cause freedom ain’t freedom when a man ain’t free.
My brother named Jimmy died at Anzio
He died for real, and it wasn’t no show.
Is this here freedom on the Freedom Train really freedom or a show again?
Now let the Freedom Train come zooming down the track
Gleaming in the sunlight for white and black
Not stoppin’ at no stations marked COLORED nor WHITE,
Just stoppin’ in the fields in the broad daylight,
Stoppin’ in the country in the wide-open air
Where there never was a Jim Crow sign nowhere,
And No Lilly-White Committees, politicians of note,
Nor poll tax layer through which colored can’t vote
And there won’t be no kinda color lines
The Freedom Train will be yours
And mine.
Then maybe from their graves in Anzio
Black men and white will say, We want it so!
Black men and white will say, Ain’t it fine?
At home they got a Freedom train,
A Freedom train,
That’s yours and mine!
(1947)
LANGSTON HUGHES
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