Tag: poems

Hear Me Out | Sam Moe

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Image: Gauravdeep Singh

Hear Me Out

  1. I am pretending to be a god in the bathroom mirror.
    Dim blue Christmas lights blend with a single pale
    yellow bulb, the same dangling light from the stories.
    Atop my head is a puddle of green. I used to have
    better words. You’d give me your hearts and I’d say,
    fire lamb, my love. But that was before, and I’m not
    supposed to adore you.
  1. I want dessert for dinner. I sit on my hands to keep
    my reach from your wrist. Watch out the corner of
    my eye as you slice into a filet whose center is bright
    and fiery as an ember, you can change your heart’s
    shape and I’m lost in daydreams of summers gathering
    seasoning, mint leaves with aphids, I had a thing for
    toffee, held my breath as we walked side-by-side
    through the radish patches.
  1. In the dictionary of flowers, I doodle your initials. You
    haunt the way I hold my pen; you tell me to stop but I
    can’t help myself, I’m not as into the weather as I could
    be, would you save me, or should we toss liking into fire?
  1. Moon tattoo on your thumb, the day in which I pay the
    price, how you care more for jaws and violet roses, you give
    up on my alphabet, there is apple blossom and ash, trumpet
    flower fit for a mouth, bells then shells, I’m doing that thing
    you hate where I offer catchfly snare as answer.
  1. I could try a little more truth if you wanted me to. Corn straw
    cress, the crown imperial, and your father’s fir. Then it’s days,
    flowering reed, iris and sprig, the juniper in jars, Larkspur then
    lavender are you still going to love me when I’m moss?
  1. Know your breathing. I’d sacrifice birds, too. It’s time to ask
    the father how to build the altar. Oranges, split lip from a fall
    off the pew, broke a cherub statue’s arm, I’m forgetting how
    to explain myself, just saying I have a crush because of robes
    and the bucket of ashes, do you think the priest knows our lungs
    do you think he sings when he drives the thin edge of dusk.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genres contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, “Heart Weeds,” is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, “Grief Birds,” is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

A Wakeup Poem | John Grey

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Image: Krisztian Tabori

A Wakeup Poem

With great effort,
I crank open my leaden eyelids.
I open my mouth
at great expense to my jaw muscles.
I yawn,
threaten my upper arms with muscle tear
as I suck in my ration of air.
I lift myself,
first, at the waist,
then I swing my legs around,
cranky and creaking,
like a rusted weathervane.
I haul myself up
to the vertical state,
as wobbly
as some Olympic games wrestler
going for the record.
My knees tremble
but they hold.
Blood picks up speed.
Oxygen fights it way to my brain.
The hardest part of the day
is over.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.

reasons for raisins | Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

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Image: Andreas Haslinger

reasons for raisins (6)

tell me you know something
of the love lost on grapes
of skin peeled away
very carefully
and while eating the grapes
skinned and exposed
for what they really are
think of those of us who crave them
who want only to eat them
again
and again
and again
who want only to hold them
to save them for another day
to do the very human
thing and change them
into raisins or wine

reasons for raisins (7)

call it age if you like
or experience or maturity
just as wine matures with age
or call it a step in the cycle
through which all living
things must pass
in order to survive as
humans we believe
in the pleasures of life
this is why we eat grapes
or drink wine
or plant such seeds
and as humans we ultimately
mature so as to provide for
ourselves and the ones we love
this is why we must grow old
so it is also with grapes

reasons for raisins (13)

here are the ones
that got away the ones
so cocksure and cool the ones
who ran so electric
as they slipped under the
stove the refrigerator and the sink
how sad they all seem now
cloistered in the corner dust

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers is a poet, writer, photographer, and publisher. He is the publisher and editor of Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal.

Stay, Illusion! | Liam Max Kelley

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Image: Thought Catalog

Stay, Illusion!

Some purple pile of angels,
stone, by base of worn stairs, watch
eagles adorned with your teacups,
saucers—

and Shakespeare is mistaken
for Jesus going sideways down
the metro escalator.

I’m warmer for your shaking.
My pills hurt swallowing

—the king assumes his photographer
wields rifles and vermin
instead of
red spinning tops—horses too tall
for stars to hold
any meaning beyond
lost beanies and orange wine.

(Somewhere it’s Thanksgiving, so I’ve left
                everyone.)

Maybe an old woman veins out
licorice toffee
to each of her teeth chatting
on the morning train
fortressward, coastalward…
she smiles,
offering to bag me,
and I take the first my fingers find.

Another lady, bald,
offers me four licorice cough drops.
Though one falls from my hand.

Mouth beating black three
—I cross over
the ocean seat. My scarf doubling
a pillow
for wrist splints—the fog
spreading out over the window,
old blood on a warm bandage.

I take back-to-back photos of you
scalpelled behind yesterday’s closed eyes.

Hamlet’s cream puff pulls espresso
with broken glass pain and
our future light, the
question burning—

my napkins parade away towards
a mooring…

You stable that Christmas
rat in your arms—

for one you stand sleeping,
steps broken,
the other your stare
bungees under shadow
of labyrinthine brows,

buried deep
in the casemates
by Holger Danske, the bats, God,
and that penis
gunned down in stone.

You took a bite of my cheese
sandwich at the station—right before
I tossed the timeline ruler.
For a moment I could’ve swore
I’d taken you for a swan
or beached Ophelia,
but I recalled then
this country’s hole is a castle—
words, cannons
—please remember we are in a church.

I vain thanks for a moment

to remind myself
of where the metal ball should be—
then board a top car backwards,
returning home to you…

Liam Max Kelley is a Chilean-American playwright, poet, and teacher. He is a board member and open mic host at Stain’d Arts, an arts non-profit based in Denver, Colorado, and the co-founder of RuddyDuck Theatre Company, a local absurdist theatre group. He writes poetry to avoid making an argument, to highlight life’s horrid ambiguities, and to turn the heads of those he holds dear.

The moon | Steve Anc

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Image: Sven Aeberhard

The moon

She is the peddler at the end of our dreams,
With a beautiful surface.

The dance of the morning,
where gentle sight abides.

The feast of clear color
with smiling song and form.

The sight that sees beyond the sea
And the coming home of the fishes.

The song of the kindly living,
And the coming home of the lovely breeze.

Steve Anc is the son of Ajuzie Nwaorisa, a Nigerian poet. He is a poet with searching knowledge and deep meditation on universal themes, he is quite a modern poet in his adherence to language and his use of metaphor is soul-searching. Anc’s works have been published in Open-door Poetry Magazine, Poetrysoup, Goodlitcompany, Voice From The Void, Our Poetry Archive, I Become The Beast, Fire Magazine

Letitia’s Memories | Sylvia Byrne Pollack

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Image: Keith Chan

Letitia’s Memories

are silent films    slapstick and melodramas
projected onto old white sheets   hung 
inside her skull    If she wants a sound track 
she has to create it herself

Memories blur   and   emulsion molds   
even on precious 35mm Kodachrome slides   
evidence of her family   her childhood   
her dogs   Lassie   and   Bambi

She squirrels letters   photographs   clippings   
opera programs   museum tickets   trip itineraries   
in 8 x11x 4 inch boxes on shelves in her study 
She can’t remember what’s in the boxes   

Who cares what’s in the boxes – 
a memento is not the memory    

Memory requires mind   electrical waves sweeping 
over the cortex   sweeping cobwebs from corners   
swapping one year with another   one face with another   
flux of memory trails through forests of fact and fiction

Memories do not stay stacked neatly in boxes 
but dribble   foam   seep   sublime onto the rug   
into corners   over window sills   flow down 
the clapboards on the side of the house

They trip her up when she goes outside to water 
the garden   Tigers of grief pounce when her back 
is turned    Sudden tears on the anniversary of her 
mother’s death even though it was more than fifty years ago

To look back is to flirt with becoming 
a pillar of salt    but   says Letitia   
with a shrug   it adds needed flavor 
to whatever I’m stewing in today

Sylvia Byrne Pollack, a hard-of-hearing poet and former scientist, has published in Floating Bridge Review, Crab Creek Review, The Stillwater Review and many others. A two-time Pushcart nominee, she won the 2013 Mason’s Road Literary Award, was a 2019 Jack Straw Writer and a 2021 Mineral School Resident. Her debut full-length collection Risking It was published by Red Mountain Press (2021.) Visit her at www.sylviabyrnepollack.com

Until Death | Talya Jankovits

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Image: Oscar Keys

Until Death

One day our bodies
won’t work this way—
won’t fit together 
coaster on tracks, 
wild
ride rise fall plummet 
                                         into
                                                         oblivion.
exhilarate
tummy turned
knotted nausea
panting
fingers clenching,
holding onto,
pushing into,
leaning back to

              There might be 

bedpans.
diapers.
A neat row of teeth 
soaking in solution.
Bones so arthritic
they can’t bend 
towards each other. 
              or unbend, 
and still
I will reach 
for you.

Talya Jankovits’ work has appeared in a number of literary journals. Her short story “Undone” in Lunch Ticket was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her poem, My Father Is A Psychologist in BigCityLit, was nominated for both a Pushcart prize and The Best of the Net. Her micro piece, “Bus Stop in Morning” is a winner of one of Beyond Words Magazine’s, 250-word challenges. Her Poem, “Guf” was the recipient of the Editor’s Choice Award in Arkana Magazine and nominated for the Best of Net. Her poem, A Woman of Valor, was featured in the 2019/2020 Eshet Hayil exhibit at Hebrew Union College Los Angeles. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and resides in Chicago with her husband and four daughters. To read more of her work you can visit www.talyajankovits.com, or follow her on twitter or Instagram @talyajankovits

A broken-window wind. | DS Maolalai

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Image: Thom Masat

A broken-window wind.

a broken-
window wind
and these flutters
of unsettled
evenings,
pushing elbows
through shelves
in a second-
hand bookshop.

pages flutter wildly,
falling wide open –
flags flying to signal
all nations.

DS Maolalai (he/him) has been described by one editor as “a cosmopolitan poet” and by another as “prolific, bordering on incontinent”. His poetry has received eleven nominations for Best of the Net and eight for the Pushcart Prize, and has been released in three collections; “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016), “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) and “Noble Rot” (Turas Press, 2022)

Teaching my (step)sister to smoke in the Taco Bell parking lot // Monica Fuglei

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Image: Brandon Holmes

Teaching my (step)sister to smoke in the Taco Bell parking lot

BY MONICA FUGLEI
We smoked first, remember? I thought
the tacos would cover our breath, 
rolled the windows of the Mustang down, 
opened the moon roof to look at the stars. 
We were so young, then – summer before
your junior year. I’d just bought my first Docs, 
wore baby doll dresses. Looking at the sky, I 
wondered if this was sisterhood, if we finally
melted our lives together, if I had a shred 
of what you had with your blood sister–if the 
Marlboros, the tacos, the sky, the way we passed
our cigarette back and forth–if this was sisters 
but no, it wasn’t the smoking, it was the drive-thru
fight when I forgot the mild sauce, when I backed up
the car, when I nearly hit the car behind us, 
the way you yelled and laughed, 
it was later when you rocked my daughter through the night
while I slept nearby, exhausted, it was later still
when you packed up your life to move home
after we learned our father was dying, 
it was in the ICU when we shared earbuds
the night before we said goodbye to him, 
the way our heads came together, tethered,
hospital curtains open, the way the stars 
                                                                remained.

Monica Fuglei (she/her) currently teaches in the Department of Composition, Creative Writing and Journalism at Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, Colorado. A 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has recently appeared in Mason Street Review, a thin slice of anxiety, and The Hidden Peak Review. When she’s not writing or teaching, she’s usually knitting or tweeting on #AcademicTwitter.

April | Mickey Thompson

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Image: Mick Haupt

April

Barefoot and listening to Fiona Apple,
feeling as eternal at 33 as I did at 9 years old,
at 12,
just as likely for every emotion I have ever had
to destroy me or vitalize me,
just like every feeling is a Grand Canyon,
barefoot on the gravel that is every stripe of red
that music has ever made me relive,
invincible and vulnerable at the edge
of realizing that a chasm is beautiful
because of what it exposes.

Mickey Thompson (she/they) is a poet, biologist, and teacher who grew up in Arizona and has now found her heart home in Northern Colorado. Their work has appeared in “Multiverse: An Anthology of Superhero Poetry of Superhuman Proportions” from Write Bloody Publishing, and one self-published chapbook that was stapled together on the arm of a couch in Tucson.