six poems – margarita serafimova

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The days – salamanders, were passing, white,
against the background of an elapsed summer.
The synthesis was a baby.

 

 

 

 

Everything is headlong –
to be touched, skin to skin,
and to become one.

 

 

 

 

Time was speaking.
It was saying that the future was past,
and the past was never.

 

 

 

 

I love you!, I was saying to the underwater bells of light
where I was seeing him above the sea floor.
I was loving him with bliss,
and I was knowing him.

 

 

 

 

Ουροβόρος (Ouroboros)

He is caressing my breasts,
I am caressing his hands,
which are caressing my breasts.

 

 

 

 

All life created itself so that
I would feel in your arms
the way I do.

 

sbgs cowskull

Serafimova was shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize 2017 and Summer Literary Seminars 2018 Poetry Contest, and long-listed for the Erbacce Press Poetry Prize 2018 and the Red Wheelbarrow 2018 Prize, as well as nominated for the Best of the Net by the BeZine. Margarita has three collections in Bulgarian (the most recent being The Insolubility of Splendour (2018)). Her work appears in Agenda Poetry, London Grip New Poetry, Trafika Europe, European Literature Network, The Journal, A-Minor, Waxwing, Orbis, Nixes Mate Review, StepAwayInk, Sweat and Tears, HeadStuff, Minor Literatures, The Writing Disorder, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Orbis, Chronogram, Noble/ Gas Quarterly, Origins Journal, miller’s pond, Obra/ ArtifactCalifragile, TAYO, Shot Glass Journal, Opiate, Poetic Diversity, Novelty Magazine, Pure Slush, Harbinger Asylum, Punch, Tuck, Ginosko, etc. Facebook

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nightmares – ghost of esperanza

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I have these recurring dreams of protecting myself

In one, I was hitch-hiking.
I had a purse full of knives in case of danger
I still remember glancing inside my purse trying to determine
Which one would make me the safest?
Which one could I grab the quickest?

I once heard a story of woman hitchhiking
She got picked up by a truck driver who put his hand on her knee
He tried to grab her by the neck and push her face into his crotch
She stabbed him in the leg
and threw the truck into Park
and hopped the fuck out

In my dream, I didn’t need the knives for protection
In my dream, I took the truck

I had a dream
That my brother’s friend took me in when I needed a roof
I told him that I would not hug him
I told him that I would pay him because I didn’t trust a handout
He eyed me like cake
he waited until I was asleep to touch me
He said he only wanted to tickle me
In my dream, I said I didn’t want to be touched or tickled.
In my dream, I put pepper spray can to his face
and said he didn’t get to touch
He said I was cute when I was angry
In my dream, I peppered sprayed the fuck out of his eyes

I had a boyfriend who once gave me a knife to protect myself
He said he never wanted a bad thing to ever happen to me again
He yelled at me the day I forgot to carry it in my bra
He yelled at me that same day for trying to say “no” to him
He was proud when I remembered the knife
He was surprised when I held up the knife to protect myself after he broke down the door
He was stronger when he wrestled the knife out of my hand
and showed me in the mirror how you hold a knife
to someone’s throat
MY THROAT
my blood on the floor
He instructed me to clean myself up

I broke a mirror and fled
that wasn’t a dream
it was a living nightmare

I have this dream that I don’t carry all this anxiety
That I don’t have to think of the best ways to protect myself
That I can walk around
and not be so goddamn scared

sbgs cowskull

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maybe i’m in a murakami novel – ghost #62

ghost yard

Maybe I’m in a Murakami novel. Maybe I never got off that train in Japan. Maybe this is enough, I think, as I sit on a subway, contemplating my disappearing cat, my disappearing lover, eating a sandwich, my bags all shuffled like a chaotic orchestra. Maybe there’s death to be had. Maybe there’s morning that has yet to be sipped. Maybe there is a transcendentalism to bingewatching television. I am bingewatching people in the park. I am closing all of the garage doors to my emotional relevancy. Maybe I never left the city. Maybe the city is in me, a creature of habit, half asleep on a train that goes in circles beneath the novel of my moment.

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sometimes a building will not let you – ghost #4

ghost yard

Sometimes a building will not let you
move around itself the way you want:
you feel an architectural punch.

You step over the leaves, & there is a branch
you did not see. You feel it in the back
of your leg, & again feel it for days.

You see a voicemail. You must have missed a call.
There are no missed calls. You cannot fetch
the voicemail. You turn your phone off
& back on again. You will do this again.

sbgs cowskull

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you rearrange men under the sea with your hands – glen armstrong

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I take comfort in long lines.
I am not alone.
I pretend

that I’m a prisoner,
grateful for small slips of paper.

The stars belong to bankers.
They are strictly catch and release.

I pretend I’m all sorts of things
that I should never
pretend to be.

My youngest son wants to know
about our progress
and his mother.

sbgs cowskull

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cloudbank.

Photo: @richardguest9440

 

things i hate: a process of progession – dalton telschow

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1. List Poems
2. Stealing memes and turning them into poems
3. Irony
4. Lists
5. Repetition
F. Inconsistentcy
7. Acting like something never happened
8. Continuing to hate at all
9. Seriously tho lists
10. Maybe structure? Order? 9a: am I a fan of the static? Am I encouraging it like I never was?Nurturing it like a baby bird when it’s actually a metaphor for chaos if I built that metaphor correctly. Put the right structure into it. Loved and tended to it like it was my child
11. I’m never having children. I’ve seen the wires of my mind, and I wouldn’t wish anyone else to be wrapped up in them.
12. I’m wrapping myself in wires and cables and playing guitar so loud that the tar retreats, if only for a moment
13. I’m learning to live in moments, and grateful there are so many of them
14. My god there are so many of them and a lot of my wires are frayed now
15. I’ve forgotten so many moments. My brain has been fried and smoked from pills and pot and I have failed to see the mechanics in coping. Now I just see the gears turning. Everywhere.
16. Apophenia is the perception that unrelated phenomena are connected
17. Fuck
18. My art shall be my children, and when I’m gone hopefully they help make this world a better place than when I got here
19. Hopefully
20. A better place
21. Than when I got here
22. Ending abruptly.

sbgs cowskull

Charles Dalton Telschow is a Denver artist on the cusp of 25, and he has just released his second book of original poetry, “Blueprints For Bridgeburning”, available on Bandcamp. Telschow is also the man behind the upcoming local solo music act, The Polite Heretic.

photo: @fm.ghost

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hydronicus invicta – c.c. hannett / kmwgh

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Sonic-tidal | Pareidolia | How does a whirlpool breathe? I see what you did there |
You blew out the stretch marks of your blimpish gut | Popped yrself a pair of gills |
Oxygenic tummy wounds | Flabby respirators | I get it | Vision returned in the form
of engorged areola | Optic tentacles | Gastropodic Nips | Auditory axilla | To tell
you a secret is to endure rough odors | But how do you eat? How do you eat with
waves? You punctured your own belly button, is it? With those long and jagged nails
| You’ve filed w/ barnacles | You fisted the pit; an orifice | Broke off your little
slashers | Stabbed ‘em into dentures | That hungry tummy chews for itself | Gored |
Self-mutilation as a method to resurrect and experience the joys of experience |
Fulfilling scars—

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Kris Hall / C. C. Hannett / kmwgh is a writer who feels queasy when he identifies himself as a writer. Or anything, really. Author of I Gave This Dream to a Color, Triune, and SAGA ctrl (Spuyten Duyvil) + a number of chapbooks. He is the event organizer for Quake: An Everett Lit Crawl and Poetry: Uncharted. Currently, he is the Managing Editor for Really Serious Literature (@rlysrslit) and their Disappearing Chapbook Series. Work has been placed with Softblow, DREGINALD, Gramma, Juked, etc. He currently lives with his wife and three animals somewhere in the PNW and/or behind you.

Photo: @jseigar

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blindfold chess – mark j. mitchell

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A memory built
of white and black squares
where pieces you
can’t quite see walk,
hop and battle.

Sets get mixed—
his queen doesn’t match
your castle
and liveried knights
wander questlessly.

You focus your
weary brain, fierce
as any bishop’s but
you just can’t remember
your next move.

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Mark J. Mitchell’s latest novel, The Magic War just appeared from Loose Leaves Publishing .A Full length collection of poems will released next year by Encircle Publications.  He studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver and George Hitchcock. His work has appeared in the several anthologies and hundreds of periodicals. Three of his chapbooks— Three Visitors, Lent, 1999, and Artifacts and Relics—and the novel, Knight Prisoner are available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  He lives with his wife the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster and makes a living pointing out pretty things in San Francisco.

A meager online presence can be found at https://www.facebook.com/MarkJMitchellwriter/

Photo: @sweetdangerzack

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