Love Poem
I am the rain
You are the snow
Let us melt away
Photo: Das Sasha
Tag: society
but what about the novel? – ellen huang
The scene is in middle school, in two separate lines to electric chairs.
They won’t use the electricity. All we do is sit, they inject, and it’s done.
Then we get up and hop on over to the happy place–
a colorful room fluffed with pillows and stuffed
animals, the comfiest pile, the biggest slumber
party. Relax until sleep kicks in.
Before I know it, I’m next in line.
We’ve been chatting for a while, me and a tall, brown girl
who’s called up before me. Cheerily, she says she’ll see me soon. She means heaven.
Oh yeah, I say, casually. Casualties in the comfy room
didn’t occur to me. I’m called up next, and I’m at ease.
As I stroll to my death, a little thought asks,
But what about the novel? I realize I’m not ready to die.
I have a novel to write. The nurses, once so nice,
reveal themselves to be witches, escaped sirens from my story.
Lightning spews from their fingers when I run.
Ellen Huang is a cape-wearing mortal living her best life, with a BA in Writing & Theatre minor from Point Loma Nazarene University. She’s been known to possess vast knowledge of myths and fairy tales, as well as practically live in a prop closet full of exotic decorations. She has pieces published in Sirens Call, Wax Poetry and Art Magazine, HerStry, Diverging Magazine, Awkward Mermaid, Enchanted Conversation, Writers Ink, Between the Lines, Quail Bell Magazine, Ink & Nebula, Rigorous Magazine, Whispers, The Folks, Hummingbird Magazine, The Driftwood, The Gallery, and Perfume River Poetry Review. She enjoys reenacting movie scenes, burning things, and swimming in the sea. Follow if you wanna: worrydollsandfloatinglights.wordpress.com
Art: Steve Johnson
a vertigo – leah white
a.
the world is much more wonderful when you think that it is
the world is much more wonderful you can think that
think the world is wonderful and it is much more wonderful
you think the world is wonderful but it is much more wonderful
than you think the world is more wonderful if you think it is
the whirl is munch munch, one of the four with your shrink wrap it is
various things create a vertigo.…………..yes it is
b.
Cherie is blurry weary
worry is sorry
starry theory
merely heavy
I flounder
fluid flowing flute flipping
flicks leap end flap
flinch flake
varied things create a vertigo
you think the world is
wonderful but it is
vertical…………..then vitriol…………..then vigil
c.
a vertigo as in heightened contrast
as in soft soft soft…………hard
as a confuse……..new view that feels
everything written on water
a room of water
I flounder…………for the words
try to flinch in water
try to have a scare try to have a
have is
in water
Leah White is an MFA candidate at University of Colorado Boulder. Originally from Tempe, Arizona, she currently teaches creative writing, works on Timber Journal, and runs a reading series in Boulder.
Photo: Siyan Ren
self-portrait as bird flying into window -wanda deglane
and when you pull over, you’re still screaming,
hands held shaking in front of you like the skin
of them must not be real. my body hurled into
your windshield like mid-autumn hailstorm. my body
leaves streaks of blood and feathers and blindsided
desecration. my body the railroad tracks and
the trainwreck. the punching bag and the percussion
instrument. the pigeon queen, at once both sickness
and softness. you’re stumbling out of your vehicle,
sobs chiming from your throat. you see from
far away a mash of gray and white and red and bone.
tell yourself you can look at me up close. the carnage,
and the tenderness vomited from its mouth. there is
a strange grief inside you and you don’t know how
to free it from your ribs. there was a grief inside me,
and it spills an ocean on this asphalt.
Wanda Deglane is a night-blooming desert flower from Arizona. She is the daughter of Peruvian immigrants and attends Arizona State University. Her poetry has been published or forthcoming from Rust + Moth, Glass Poetry, Drunk Monkeys, and Yes Poetry, among other lovely places. Wanda is the author of Rainlily (2018), Lady Saturn (Rhythm & Bones, 2019), Venus in Bloom (Porkbelly Press, 2019), and Bittersweet (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2019).
Photo: Chris Slupski
sad stories of the death of kings – howie good
I ask a friend if she can remember the last time that the stars and moon hatched from a golden egg. She doesn’t answer straightaway, just tucks a stray comma of hair back behind her ear. Because it’s one in the morning, the darkness outside is more like a solid than a liquid or a gas. I’m suddenly really tired of struggling to stay awake. The answer comes later, when I read in the paper that they sliced open a dead whale that had washed ashore and found in its belly plastic cups, plastic bottles, plastic bags, and two flip-flops.
Howie Good is the author of The Titanic Sails at Dawn (Alien Buddha Press, 2019)
Photo: Edu Lauton
self-portrait as ghost with dementia – nathan elias
Nathan Elias is the author of the chapbooks A Myriad of Roads That Lead to Here: A Novelette and Glass City Blues: Poems. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Antioch University Los Angeles, and he has served as editor on the literary journal Lunch Ticket. His work has appeared in Entropy, PANK, Hobart, Barnstorm, and elsewhere. His films and screenplays have been official selections or finalists in festivals such as Cannes Court Métrage, Glass City Film Festival, Canadian Film Centre, Texas Independent Film Festival, and both Hollywood and New York Screenplay Contests. He has taught a variety of creative writing classes, including fiction, poetry, and screenwriting. | www.Nathan-Elias.com | @_NathanElias
Photo: Meriç Tuna
1632 (the witch) – december lace
After Claire C. Holland’s “Thomasin”
Dead roots from an infertile farmland
wither all around her
She is the only sprouting thing for miles
in this muted abandoned wood
Her ripening lips wish for stained glass,
butter, and a pretty dress
She left her heart in an established
country across the sea, unwilling
pilgrim bound by a parent’s faith
She shivers as an outcast, unsnared traps
leave her stomach broken, the whisper of
the dark side growing louder. Kill the roots,
they say. Kill the roots.
December Lace is a former professional wrestler and pinup model from Chicago. She has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The Molotov Cocktail, Pussy Magic Lit, The Cabinet of Heed, Awkward Mermaid, Vamp Cat, and Rhythm & Bones YANYR Anthology, among others. She loves Batman, burlesque, cats, and horror movies.
Photo: Meriç Tuna
i run into wolves running – ghost #13
i run into wolves running
into me into mirrors into
switchbacks into endless
forests along endless rivers
i run into wolves running
into walls into hiding into
rebirth into fires in rooms
that they may not ever find
i run into wolves running
into death into memory
into the precision of a
scalpel into the western west
and therein i die and i die
and i run and i die and i
see it there on the shelves
the dust attracted to the
light like moths attracted
to fire like wolves attracted
to movement to packs to
new mentality until they too
die. and i too die. and if
not now then when and
if not now then when?
then when?
we are ghosts. then when?
ghost #13 is something something something. they are from somewhere, sometime. this one is dedicated to someone someone, another ghost, i’m sure.
Photo: Ruslan Bardash
genesis – cassidy scanlon
he pressed seed to soil,
convinced that force could yield to growth.
the earth does not spit out
the beginning of your becoming.
for this, she is a true mother.
nurturing despite herself,
a sacrifice you are indebted to.
you know
the burden of a seedling
in tough soil. of plants
born in desert sand.
you know
what it’s like to grow
in a hostile womb,
suspicious of all things
padded for protection.
you are born
when the sun is at its height
cruel and unforgiving in exposure
of the elements.
your mother
tries to shade you,
casting shadows
you conjure when evoking
your father, an abandoned wind
lining the crowns of trees.
he speaks in metaphors
and you respond with poetry.
but language eludes you,
a longing lingers between
tongue and desire.
you search for roots
the potential of recognition
ravages
your family’s vines
concealing
the conception
of the first rejection.
the initial fortification
of want without resolve.
teetering on
a petrified foundation,
the past is porous
and swelling with decay.
but instead of dying takes
another form. molded
in stone, a fossil
imbued with traces
of recorded history.
Cassidy Scanlon is a queer writer, Capricorn, and astrologer who received her BFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University. Her work has been featured in L’Éphémère Review, Loaf Mag, and WITCH. She writes about astrology on her blog Mercurial Musings and is a regular contributor to rose quartz magazine. You can follow her on Twitter @sassidysucklon.
Photo: Brent Cox
two poems – D.o.t.B.
Guillotine
Revolution cut so bloody
chopping heads eyes wide
make that bourgeois die
what beauty to hear children cry
this rage broke your calm lie
you stabbed your neighbor in the eye
kill or be killed
church bell screaming
our holy great blade watches
forevermore
Hunger
Teeth gnashing spit splashing
desperation crashing
breaking brittle bones
sucking on stones.
they work hard to remove
the Great Feast from their minds
leave that horror story behind
but it happens again the same time
next year.
The ground too cold frozen
more solid than a shovel
no food left in the hubble
stomach screams no more grumble.
They eye the outsiders
light bright their fires
slash their tires
and make dinner.
try and pray away their inner sinner
the meat is good
the wine salt speckled
no evidence to hide
when it’s wrapped along your inside.
Next year there are no new neighbors
no one on the outside…
so they find babies flesh
tears tastes
softest and sweetest.
D.o.t.B. is a Godde that currently lives in the body of K.V. Dionne. Boulder artist, poet, and photographer, they are one of the founders behind Writer’s Block and are current editor in chief of Writer’s Block zines. You can read some of their work in Spit Poet and can look forward to a collaborative poetry book coming out soon. They have many Hawk friends and Crow songs to share!
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