Tag: Poetry

Reputation

TW: SA

By Frances Koziar

 

He speaks of his reputation
while I think of fates worse than death,
his name, when I would gladly give up mine
for a good night’s sleep, to see those nightmares
shaped like ordinary men slain
before their groping hands reach me; he speaks
of having a life ruined, not knowing
what that really means, not understanding
how men can form packs like wolves
at the first sound of a woman’s
assertiveness, ready
to tear that voice from her neck, carnage
be damned, not seeing our loss of reputation
every time we speak our names, our shame,
even when the evidence convinces anyone
who’ll let it; I laugh
when I want to cry, hold still
when I shake with fear, walk with poise
when I am running away, because attention
is the most dangerous thing of all. Smile
they tell you while you bleed out from the throat;
Speak, Pretty One,
but only if you say frivolous things; Sing—
but I can only hear screams.

 

Frances Koziar has published poetry in over 35 different literary magazines, including Vallum and Acta Victoriana. A young (disabled) retiree and a social justice advocate, she lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Visit her website and follow her on Facebook.

Photo credit: “Eve in Shame” by Stanley Zimny via a Creative Commons license.

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Justice Clarence Thomas Ate My Fucking Plums

By Christina Bagni

after William Carlos Williams

 

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the ice box

and which
you were probably
relying on
forever

Forgive me
you didn’t deserve them
they were always
mine to take

Forgive me
but the icebox
was always meant
to be empty

it came that way
and that’s how god
told me
it should be

So I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the ice box

to return order
to your cold
empty
world

I did it for you,
you see.

Forgive me.

 

Christina Bagni’s creative work has been published in Asterism, Lit202, and Underground Literary Magazine, among others. She is the Chief Editor at Wandering Words Media and a writer on the Captain Bitcoin comic book series. Her first novel is forthcoming with Deep Hearts YA (2023).

Photo credit: Public domain.

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The North Wind & The Sun

By Jacqueline Jules

“Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail.”
       —The North Wind and the Sun, Aesop

                    

The woman seated next to me
on the plane, sees the star
around my neck and begins
asking questions.

How can I be happy without eating ham?
she wants to know. Or live in America
without a Christmas tree?

I could tell her to ask the internet,
my eyes as cold as the tiny soda cans
we’ve just been served.

I could bluster and howl
like Aesop’s North Wind
forcing her to pull
her blue silk shawl
tighter and tighter.

Or we could have a conversation.

And I could be like Aesop’s Sun,
shining with gentle beams, until
she feels too warm to stay wrapped
in her misconceptions.

 

Jacqueline Jules is the author of Manna in the Morning (Kelsay Books, 2021) and Itzhak Perlman’s Broken String, winner of the 2016 Helen Kay Chapbook Prize from Evening Street Press. Her poetry has appeared in more than 100 publications, including K’in, The Sunlight Press, Gyroscope Review, and One Art. Visit her website at www.jacquelinejules.com.

Photo credit: Garland Cannon via a Creative Commons license.

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Two Poems by Renee McClellan

Black Listopia

I feel like an idiom that drips from Baldwin’s pen
“that” angry Black woman negotiating sin
I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO! A thing to be had
Thick lips, curvaceous hips, or a fashion fad
You can’t set me like diamonds
Or string me like pearls
Pick on my afro, then appropriate my curls

I AM A BLACK WOMAN
Black, Brown, and Yella, too
Why are you fucking with me? I don’t fuck with you.

I feel like a literary assault by Langston Hughes
An angry Black woman and her Weary Blues
I, TOO, SING AMERICA, a pejorative dream
Ghosts of my ancestors flow in my blood stream
That white picket fence and that sweet apple pie
That dream wasn’t mine, that nightmare’s a lie
Like a Raisin in the sun, do I fester, do I run
What happens to a dream Deferred, you’re looking at it
You haven’t heard?

I AM A BLACK WOMAN
Black, Brown, and Yella, too
Stop fucking with me and I won’t fuck with you

I feel like a mythical logophile, words linger & prod
Like Zora Neale Hurston
MY EYES ARE WATCHING GOD
Truth be told, Every tongue must Confess
Like Dust on the Road, I’m God’s perfect mess
Perfectly flawed and divinely conceived
All of Africa holds the mystery that is me
Ripped from my familiar, felt the soul of my seed
My daughters are raped and my sons can’t breathe
I’m a paradigm of potency, a leather-bound force,
An African fused American on a reparation course

I AM A BLACK WOMAN
Black, Brown, and Yella, too
I will NOT apologize for this trauma, FUCK YOU!

Angelou knew and her encouragement wise
Like a phoenix from its ashes – Still I rise
A PHENOMENAL WOMAN, phenomenally
I’m a Queen like Sheba with the bones of Lucy
With all that was taken on that infamous boat ride
My womb for stock and trade for my babies genocide
I should be angry, it’s justifiably so,
You auction the fruit of my womb then call me a ho
You ripped from mother African, the Proverbs of her son
And refused to Honor her for the work that she has done
Her children will RISE like the sun bathed in blue
Ebony warriors and the daughters of Shaka Zulu
I AM A BLACK WOMAN & I’m angry as fuck
But forgiveness in this moment, bitch, Good Luck!
I’m not the PEACE you seek, I wont lay down and die,
I wont turn the other cheek, I want an eye-for-a-mother-fucking-eye

I AM A BLACK WOMAN
This is the America I Sing
But you keep fucking with me,
HERE!
Hold my mother-fucking earrings!

 

That Tree

Strange fruit hanging from that tree
The crown shudders with each crosswind
Leaves of humanity blow like flecks of dust on the sea
Seeds sprinkled on top of soil
The roots spiral deep and strong,
The branches sway,
reaching for the sun limbs refusing to break
Spiny twigs like fingers closed around a tight fist
The trunk solid taking shape
Searching for a place to exist
Branches reaching toward the warmth of the sun
But meeting the coldness of too much shade
flailing in mercy

No sustenance to nurture its existence

Life dangles from that tree
Dangling shapeless
caught in the ambiguity of the whistling wind
the fruit falls from the tree
pulled to the ground by desire
thick tentacles of hope
Strange fruit growing on that tree

 

Renee McClellan, a Chicago native and writer of the EMMY award winning PSA, Pick Me! – Toy Loan, began her career performing with elite theater groups in Chicago. As a film and television actor, she performed in such productions as Brewster’s Place, Seinfield, and Deep Impact. She continued on to writing, directing and producing various film and television projects. A graduate of Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production, she also has an MFA in Screenwriting from The American Film Institute (AFI). A Long Beach resident, Renee has produced many award-winning productions often using Long Beach as the backdrop of her artistic expression. She is currently a professor at Pepperdine University, a best-selling author, and an award-winning filmmaker.

Photo credit: Lynne Hand via a Creative Commons license.

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Prolapse

By Tara Campbell

 

The uterus is tired.

The uterus is sorry
but it can’t seem to stay
in one place anymore,
which isn’t surprising
considering how often
it’s been poked
and prodded
and pricked
by congressmen’s pens.

The uterus would like
to get in a word of its own,
just one, even edgewise
just one goddamn word.

The uterus wishes
it could remember the words
to that song you sang
when you didn’t have to worry
about your uterus all the time,
when you didn’t have to be
so goddamn vigilant,
didn’t have to keep twisting
and turning away from men
shoving laws into it
edgewise.

The uterus is tired
so very tired.

The uterus would like
just one goddamn moment
to itself. The uterus just wants
to be. The uterus is sorry
it can’t give you that.
The uterus remembers when
it was barely aware of itself
which sounds like a contradiction
but was merely a state of grace.

The uterus is small and pink
and lovely and valued
and sacred and blessed.

But no, the uterus doesn’t believe
its own press. . .
well, it didn’t. . .
well, it shouldn’t have, and now
the uterus is continually disappointed
to find it is neither valued
nor sacred
nor blessed
nor even safe.

The uterus is tired
so goddamn tired.

The uterus is sorry it’s letting you down
because now it’s letting itself down
slowly, uncomfortably—
this is called “prolapse”
and the uterus wants you to know
this is not your fault either,
and it would have told you
everything sooner, but the truth
just gets the uterus bullied,
harassed, and threatened with rape
for upsetting men
(and, when the truth
is too educational,
it just gets the uterus kicked
off the socials for “porn”).

Some days the uterus feels philosophical,
and some days the uterus feels angry—
who are we kidding,
most days the uterus feels angry
if not for itself
then on behalf of other uteruses
who are told they’re overreacting
to getting bullied,
harassed, and threatened with rape
for upsetting men.

The uterus is often depressed
but today the uterus is simply tired
the uterus needs a break
to forget how everyone
is always talking about it
even when it’s not in the room—
especially when it’s not in the room.

The uterus is tired,
and the uterus is tired
of being asked why it’s tired.
The uterus no longer wishes
to be interrogated.

The uterus just needs a little time
a little goddamn time
to itself, and who can blame it
for feeling heavy
for wanting to slide
just a little bit lower
and rest after everything
it’s had to endure.

The uterus simply wants to sit
in the warm and the dark,
mind its own business
and quietly sink, baptized
in silence, blessed
finally
with one goddamn
moment of
peace.

 

Tara Campbell is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse, and graduate of American University’s MFA in Creative Writing. Her publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Wigleaf, CRAFT Literary, and Writers Resist. She’s the author of a novel and four multi-genre collections including her newest, Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection. She teaches writing at venues such as American University, Johns Hopkins University, the Writer’s Center, Catapult, and the National Gallery of Art.

Photo credit: Ittmust via a Creative Commons license.

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hegemony: footnotes in future history

By Yvonne Patterson

 

bookended with blood, The Reaving Era births in the conflagration
of Origin Crusades, subjugates the populace and banishes science,
ending in funeral pyres of anti-pogrom riots: The Reclamation Years.

closing scenes, unlike the exuberance of symphonic finales, manifest
in discordant notes. bright allegros falter. sonorous glissades collapse
in coarse staccato. dark notation seeps into public view. audience exits.

the Great Court assumes sombre hues: meticulously carved mahogany
chairs line the High Bench in a barren row. the antique red carpet, woven
with faded battle sigils, colloquially known as the river of blood, stagnates.

only stalwart readers remain, squinting, hunched over Library manuscripts
chained to tables. the edifice, deeply veined with cracks, blackened
with ingrained dirt, brittled with fetid breath of centuries, suffocates.

fables of self-proclaimed hegemony, echoing former eminence, lie
embalmed in stained glass windows. glass shards, encrusted with grime,
colours leeched by vicissitudes of relevance, obscure daylight, mute hubris.

 

Yvonne Patterson is New Zealand born, living in Perth Western Australia, proving that kiwis do fly. She enjoys the freedom of poetry after a career in human services in clinical psychology and policy in mental health, disability, community and justice areas and holds an M.Psych (Clin) and MBA from UWA. Her poetry explores borders and fault lines around us as human beings living within social and political contexts. It asks questions about the ethics of how we behave towards each other and our environment. It draws from career experience and personal interests in arts, science, politics and especially social justice and equity. She has poems published in Anthologies and Journals including Not Very Quiet, Grieve Anthology, Writers Resist, Creatrix, the Australian Rationalist Journal.

Photo credit: Marco Orazi via a Creative Commons license.

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On Hearing of Russian Soldiers Booby-Trapping Dead Ukrainian Civilians with Land Mines

By Karen Kilcup

 

How do they do it—
lift a heavy head
and place the bomb
beneath an ear? Slide
the metal disc under
a shoulder or thigh?
Or worse: do they slice
the swollen
long-dead chest, flies
fluttering, the stink
unbearable, nearly?
Do they carve
a red-rimmed cavity
large enough to implant
the device, which mimics
a hockey puck, a nippled breast?
How could they tuck it in?
How could they close the
hole, back away,
hope for the best?

 

A teacher and writer for more than forty years, Karen Kilcup is the Elizabeth Rosenthal Professor of American Literature, Environmental & Sustainability Studies, and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at UNC Greensboro. She feels fortunate to work with many students of color, first-generation students, and LGBTQI+ students at this Minority-Serving Institution. Their courage and imagination inspire her and give her hope. Her forthcoming book, winner of the 2021 Winter Goose Poetry Prize, is titled The Art of Restoration.

Photo credit: Chi Wai Un via a Creative Commons license.

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Duplex with Gun

By Dotty LeMieux

 

The gun tucked neatly in the large man’s waist
I avoid his stare, move slowly, lock the door

I move slowly out the door
Cap pistol held at the ready

The gun moves out in the large man’s hand
Children run fast across the lawn

I cross the lawn going pop pop pop
Children scream and then they drop

Children scream, I watch them drop
One by one, as the big man shoots

The children laugh, they jump up, shoot back
Harmless popping under the sun

The popping stops, the sun is gone
The gun tucked back in the large man’s waist.

 

Dotty LeMieux is the author of four chapbooks, Five Angels, Five Trees Press; Let Us Not Blame Foolish Women, Tombouctou Books; The Land, Smithereens Press, and most recently Henceforth I Ask Not Good Fortune, Finishing Line Press. A new chapbook is forthcoming from Main Street Rag, likely to appear in 2023. In the late 1970s to mid-1980s, she edited the eclectic literary and art journal Turkey Buzzard Review in the poetic haven of Bolinas, California. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online journals and anthologies, including Writers Resist. Dotty lives with her husband and two aging dogs in Northern California, where she practices environmental law and helps elect progressive candidates to office. You may read more at her blog.

The photograph, “Halloween at Gun World, Burbank,” is by Stephen Sossaman, a writer living in Burbank, California. His primary resistance work is within the peace movement.

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just-ice

By Samy S. Swayd

 

don’t drink from this dripping
cracked cup, for it’s my own heart—
my beats poured into words for broken
lines, making this page perplexing
and pale.

but if you take a taste, you must sail with
a deep breath and an active mind, and paint
a spirited sign to remind you of Thoreau’s
tender daring triplet daughters—
“simplicity, simplicity, simplicity.”

unlike the daughters’ times, today’s
world is complex and keeps birthing
busy people, or people with big blind
spots, causing stable slices of life to slide
back into the deepest, darkest ends.

only sensible sailors see
the ice silencing
the just
in the name of justice.

as for the i, me, and myself—three wide eyes,
on Monday, we weep and wail

watching caskets of kids
and baskets of gun-shells
piled in schoolyards’ corners.

on Tuesday, we whistle with tears

seeing bees and birds, with
chemicals-washed wings, seeking
sustenance and safe landings.

on Wednesday, we witness or overhear

the same simulated politics—
tuning down voters’ intellects
and pruning people’s primary rights.

and then it’s all over again, like the rain,

not of America’s Alaska,
but of India’s Meghalaya.

so, what are we to do, besides being mindful?
turtle-talk our minds to articulate

the many similar unfolding trends?

circle-walk our hearts to remain humming—

despite the Court’s “daggers” and bites?

quick-axe the frightening forecasts

and the long-term side-effects?

or book a room inside our heads

and ask denial for a dance?

 

Samy S. Swayd is a retired adjunct faculty-researcher in religious studies, who has taught in a few Southern California universities, mostly at San Diego State University. His courses included American religious diversity, spirituality and the environment, and comparative mysticism. After a decade long career in administration, he then earned initial degrees from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a Ph.D. from UCLA. The present selection is from a book manuscript in progress on spirituality and goodness.

Photo credit: Liz West via a Creative Commons license.

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Ode to My Reflection in the Mirror (on just one day)

By Kathy Kremins

“I sat with my anger long enough until she told me her real name was grief.”     – C.S. Lewis

 

We are better than this     No, we are this     Always have been

Columbus   mission schools   Tulsa Race Massacre   Charlottesville
La Operacion   children in cages   smallpox   pipelines   voter suppression

We are better than this

Michael Brown   Vieques   ICE   Indian Removal Act   fracking   Jim Crow
Breonna Taylor   Ponce Massacre   MAGA   Trail of Tears   lynching

No, we are this

16th St. Baptist Church bombing   Trayvon Martin   Hurricane Maria
Trump   California Gold Rush   slavery   Emmett Till   Elijah McClain

Always have been

Japanese internment camps   Proud Boys   Wounded Knee   Ku Klux Klan
Charleston church shooting   Tuskegee experiment   eugenics   Brett Kavanaugh

We are better than this     No, we have never been

 

Kathy Kremins (she/her) is a Newark, N.J., native of Irish-Catholic immigrant parents and a retired public school teacher and coach. Her poetry chapbook, Undressing the World, was published by Finishing Line Press (2022). Kathy’s recent work appears in Gallery Affero’s ongoing Poem Booth Project: Make Me Want to Holler, Drunk Monkeys, Digging Through the Fat, Limp Wrist Magazine, Platform Review, Paterson Literary Review, Soup Can Magazine, The Night Heron Barks, Stay Salty; Life in the Garden State Anthology, Stillwater Review, Lavender Review, and Divine Feminist: An Anthology of Poetry & Art By Womxn and Non-Binary Folx, and other publications.

Photo credit: Cathy Baird via a Creative Commons license.

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Hollow

By William Palmer

 

What happened January 6
was forgettably minor,
the most popular Fox host
claimed on June 9, the first night
of the House Select Committee’s Report,

so forgettably minor
he did not allow any
commercials during his show,
decreasing the chances
viewers might stray,

or might consider the view
that what had happened was
unforgettably major

and that the host
was therefore
lying

and that when they hear him
claim January 6 was not
an insurrection but simply
vandalism, they might
question what he says
in the future

and hear the thump
of his hollow heart.

 

William Palmer’s poetry has appeared recently in Cold Mountain Review, J Journal, One Art, On the Seawall, and Poetry East. He has published two chapbooks: A String of Blue Lights, and Humble. A retired professor of English at Alma College, he lives in Traverse City, Michigan.

Photo credit: John Spade via a Creative Commons license.

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Love Songs for End Times

By Zoë Fay-Stindt

 

I sing to
the green anole
in a made-up
lizard language—
fiddling tongue,
whirlwinds
and whistle-
clucks.
He curves his neck,
ear hole craned
to my porch perch.
He pinks
his bubble-throat.
For years, I saw
devil horns peeking
from each human
head. Yes,
the chemical,
the highway framed
with fields
and fields
of low metal
chicken farms,
bouncing off death
in the sun. Yes,
the river
nearly evaporated.
But on all those
superfund sites,
someone—
no, a people
—are planting
black ash trees.
Sweetgrass
grows thicker
from our harvesting
hands. Reader,
it’s not all gone up
in flames.
I say this
for you
and for me.
On a postcard
taped to my wall,
a globe as deep
pink as the lizard’s
puffed throat:
le soleil
ne se couche pas.
And it’s true:
the sun never sets.

 

Zoë Fay-Stindt (she/Z/they) is a queer, bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American South. Their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, featured or forthcoming in places such as RHINO, Muzzle, and Ninth Letter, and gathered into a chapbook, Bird Body, winner of Cordella Press’ inaugural Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize. She lives in Ames, Iowa, where she is an MFA candidate at Iowa State University, award-winning teacher, and co-managing editor for the environmental writing journal, Flyway.

Photo credit: Green anole image by Matthew Paulson via a Creative Commons license.

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Predators

By Laura Grace Weldon

 

If a grizzly wanders into your social media
don’t make eye contact or sudden moves.
Abandon the sandwich you were eating, leave
the small square of chocolate you saved for last.

Sharks often appear in parking garages
silent, stealthy, even as you confine
your blood’s scent under a coat pulled tight,
hurry your steps, summon your car’s refuge.

You’re warned away from boa constrictors
although their natural habitat is your manager’s office,
the statehouse, every tightly coiled corporation
crushing you bit by bit.

Predators often smile, extend a hand, act polite.
Beware, the trap may be ready to snap.
Expect the hurt, the trick, the vicious threat,
the unholy fury when you try to walk away.

 

Laura Grace Weldon served as Ohio’s 2019 Poet of the Year and is the author of four books. She works as a book editor, teaches writing workshops, and maxes out her library card each week. Connect with her at lauragraceweldon.com.

Illustration credit: 1906 illustration of a corporate predator from Arena Magazine, Volume 35, in the public domain.

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Velocity Squared

By Flavian Mark Lupinetti

 

when the gun smoke clears
and the EMTs bring the bodies to my ER
and I ask why they bothered and they say
we need someone to pronounce them most
times I say you pronounced them just fine
but today I can’t bear to make that joke
because these aren’t so much bodies as
they are chunks of protoplasm subordinated
to the law of physics that dictates force
equals mass over two times velocity squared

when the gun smoke clears
I reflect how clever of Eugene Stoner
who shrewdly designed his AR-15
to fire rounds of a petite .223 caliber
but to propel them at 3200 feet per
second because how else to
penetrate steel plate at 500 yards or
disarticulate a leg from the pelvis
with a flesh wound below the knee
unless you rely on velocity squared

when the gun smoke clears
it still amazes me that these
headless corpses and these
exploded chests each resulted
from a single shot yet it makes
perfect sense mathematically
if you want to create an exit wound
the size of an orange with a bullet
smaller than your Bic pen
you need that velocity squared

 

Flavian Mark Lupinetti, a poet, fiction writer, and cardiac surgeon, received his MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. His work has appeared in About Place, Barrelhouse, Bellevue Literary Review, Briar Cliff Review, Cutthroat, Sport Literate, and ZYZZYVA. Mark lives in New Mexico.

Image credit: Jasper Nance via a Creative Commons license.

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Oratorio of Arrival

By Dia Calhoun

for Ukraine, 2022

 

Because the woman hugs a green glass bottle
yellow-wicked, and waits
by the fabric store where she once bought
the blue wool for her coat,
the scarlet gingham for the kitchen window,
coral flannel to snuggle her baby
somewhere now on the pouring road to Poland—

Veni Magna Spirita

Because the composer holds his index finger,
limber from years of black piano keys,
on the trigger of an AK-47,
a melody in B minor playing in his head—

Veni Magna Spirita

Because the music is louder, the blue brighter
than the tanks now grinding down the street—

Veni Magna Spirita

Because their eyes meet
because she lights the torch
because he pulls the trigger
singing his greatest opus—Fuck you, bastard!
because she runs out, blue coat whirling,
and throws—

Veni Magna Spirita 

Crossing a different border, their baby looks up.

 

Dia Calhoun is the author of seven young adult novels, including two verse novels, After the River the Sun and Eva of the Farm (Atheneum, 2013, 2012). She won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. Her poems have appeared in The EcoTheo Review and MORIA Literary Magazine. An article on poetry craft, co-authored with Deborah Bacharach, is forthcoming in the Writer’s Chronicle. Calhoun is a co-founder of readergirlz, recipient of The National Book Foundation Innovations in Reading Prize. She has taught at Seattle University, Stony Brook University, and The Cornish College. Learn more at diacalhoun.com.

Image credits: The compilation is by our own Debbie Hall, poetry editor and author, and the flag image is by Nataliya Smirnova on Unsplash.

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Tribute

By Eric Abalajon

 

My coffee tries to push back the basement chill
crawling up my legs, as I read a friend’s message.
I want to describe to you my table, Mayamor.

I remember your poem where you simply
list the towns won over by,
and sustaining, the movement.

It was, however, a security issue to publish it
in any mainstream venue, even a college folio
as it could be used as a blueprint for retaliation.

Safe to assume in this protracted fight,
our enemies read our poems as well.
The piece is an interesting rejoinder to
the image of a subversive poet, one not writing
witty metaphors against tyrants
but labors in naming of an emerging realm.

I would like to imagine, it was drafted
in folded cigarette packs during breaks
from long treks where you were
embracing fauna, seldom
acknowledged allies to armed encounters.

Another thorn of living in the
other side of the world is
the unease waking up to tributes for you.

Evenings is when we grieve our martyrs,
but I get to feel your weight of your life
on my chest, like Mount Napulak, in broad daylight.

 

Eric Abalajon is currently a lecturer at the University of the Philippines Visayas, Iloilo. His works have appeared in Ani, Katitikan: Literary Journal of the Philippine South, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, The Tiger Moth Review, and elsewhere. Recently his poems are included in the collections Sobbing in Seafood City (Sampaguita Press, 2022) and Footprints: An Anthology of New Ecopoetry (Broken Sleep Books, 2022). He lives near Iloilo City. You can find him on Twitter @JLaneria and on Instagram @jacob_laneria.

Image credit: “Cemetery of San Joaquin,” Iloilo, Philippines, by EdseastresD600, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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Secrets in the Gazebo

By Penny Perry

For my Aunt Leona Heyert Tarleton
who died at age 33

 

We are looking at the mockingbird
in the lemon tree. This is the first day
of my cousin’s summer visit.
I wriggle closer to her.
“I know how my mother died,”
my cousin whispers.
The gazebo is the place for secrets.

My Aunt Leona was almost famous.
She wrote plays that were on Broadway,
did crossword puzzles in ink. On a cold
spring day when silly girls wore sundresses
and shivered, Aunt Leona wore a smart
wool suit and pinned a spring violet
on her lapel.

Wendy’s mother died when Wendy
was only seven months old.

My cousin squints at the sun shooting
off the adobe tile roof. This is the first day
of her summer visit.
The jasmine smells sweet. She is thirteen.
I am eleven.

“She had an abortion,” Wendy says.
Her eyes are bright. She loves telling me
things I’m not supposed to know.

“A-bor-tion,” I repeat. Grandpa taught us
to sound out long words.

Grandma calls my cousin an orphan
even though she  has a father.
“My mother didn’t want to have a second
baby so soon.”
“A baby?”
“It wasn’t a baby.
Your mother drove her to the bad doctor.”

“She wouldn’t do that.”
“But she did.”
I blot my wet face with my sleeve.
The excitement has left my cousin’s eyes.

Now I know why sometimes Mother
locks the bathroom door, turns the water
on full blast. She thinks I don’t hear her cries.

Wendy has long legs and her feet
touch the ground. My legs dangle
and the tie on the right sneaker has come
undone.

 

A seven time Pushcart nominee, Penny Perry has published a poetry collection, Santa Monica Disposal and Salvage (Garden Oak Press). Her novel Selling Pencils and Charlie, also from Garden Oak Press, was a finalist in the San Diego Book Awards in 2021. Her new poetry collection, Woman with Newspaper Shoes, was published June 2022 by Garden Oak Press.

Photo credit: “Polite Notice on Studded Door” is by Morning-meadow Jones, an American junior high school dropout, who later went on to realize her full potential and drop out of college too. She is a mother, migrant, and multi-media creative, practicing all manner of arts from her home in Wales, UK. She recently launched her writing career at the age of 51. Foolow her on Twitter at @Morning_meadowJ.

A note from Writers Resist

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.

 

Feeding the Goldfish

By René Marzuk

We walk to the edge of the pond at the far end
of the backyard—a pond dirty and small, slightly bigger
than a bathtub—filled with plants and fish carefully chosen
for their ability to survive off each other. “An ecosystem,”
you offer.

A grubby Eden. Colored shapes appear
and disappear within the murky waters, like spilled glass
marbles or ghosts drawn in sfumato, dodging our gifts.

Each crumb is an excess to be pondered. Kindness,
many a time, finds its way into a contract.
“How much, just how much exactly,
will this miracle cost us?”

 

René Marzuk is a poetry and prose editor at Writers Resist.

After completing a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Rene is on the path to finish his English MA at the same institution and is already considering his next steps. Accidentally born in Ukraine to Cuban parents, he grew up in Havana, Cuba, and migrated to the United States as an adult.

He is currently a contributing editor of The Envious Lobster, a collection of nineteenth-century American children’s nature writing, where he focuses on rescuing the works of non-white and child authors. Overall, his research interests include Modern American literature and literary-cultural intertextuality, children’s literature, cultural studies, semiotics, code-switching practices, and articulation of marginal identities in literary works, among others.

Both inside and outside of academia, Rene has worn and continues to wear many hats. As of right now, he writes poetry, runs, takes pictures, and dabbles in drawing and illustration. He lives in High Point, North Carolina.

Photo credit: Image by Matt Artz on Unsplash.

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Slave Cemetery

By Elizabeth Spencer Spragins

 

anguish overflows
levees lined with unbleached bones—
a channeled fury
gathers silt of centuries
and the river roars their names

 

Elizabeth Spencer Spragins is a fiber artist, writer, and poet who taught in North Carolina community colleges for more than a decade before returning to her home state of Virginia. Her work has appeared in 80-plus journals and anthologies in 11 countries. She is the author of three original poetry collections: Waltzing with Water and With No Bridle for the Breeze (Shanti Arts Publishing) and The Language of Bones (Kelsay Books). Visit her website.

Photograph by Gregory Monk via a Creative Commons license.

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Body Before Extinction

By Emily Hockaday

 

I sing to the water and lower my only child
into the foam, wiggling toes first. I think about
all the species the ocean held
that I don’t know the names of
that have gone extinct this past year
and focus on the sound of the waves
and all the metaphors
that the tide could cover.

I have walked this beach
and pulled balloons, broken bottles,
cracked plastic, and wristwatches
from the surf and dunes
without seeing another person
for miles. I listen for the wind
through the beach grass and
the plover and seagulls
and hand my daughter a trash bag
and gloves. I don’t even know how many
animals are left. I am afraid
to look for the answer.

 

Emily Hockaday’s first full-length collection Naming the Ghost is out with Cornerstone Press November 2022. She is the author of five prior chapbooks, most recently Beach Vocabulary from Red Bird Chaps. Her work has appeared in print and online journals, as well as the Wayfinding, Poets of Queens, and In Isolation anthologies. She can be found on the web at www.emilyhockaday.com and on Twitter @E_Hockaday.

Photograph by Aryeh Alex via a Creative Commons license.

A note from Writers Resist:

Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.