Category: poetry

poetry

Two Poems – Desirae Terrien

Gray to Gray

It is almost like snow.
Fallen downy fragments—
pale, fragile, but still warm,
cooling in slow surrender
to a dry twilight, to the scent
of burnt meat and dust. Powdery,
it clings to fingertips, not truly white
but gray flaking to gray. Why
why
does it not rage red?


 
[laughing]
 
laughing
at the dark
you set fire
to a dandelion
and make a wish
—
Desirae Terrien is a speech-language pathology graduate student from Southern California. Nominated for the 2018 Best of the Net Anthology, her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in NonBinary Review and 34 Orchard.
poetry

I flood my apartment to prove I am beyond God’s dominion – Sarah Lyons-Lin

i.
the first day after you i wanted to hang
pictures of only myself.  to cover the walls
i found myself in everyone: their twisted bodies,
joints angled as whitecapped waves.
the ways their hands worshipped what they touched.
when i looked at you it was like facing the dark
of the ocean.  unfocused movement.

the first day i wanted to hang pictures
of only myself.  tape flaking from wall like fish scales.
everything i loved left now in one place.

ii.
if you and i were still in love we might have had a child
who would have asked why she was named
after a jellyfish.  i would have taught her
how to paralyze prey.  i would have taught
her that word: paralysis: to be so filled with madness
that movement is impossible.  i would have
taught her to reproduce asexually,
to divide and divide and divide and divide—
small cell, small blood clot, small madness.
i would have let her be free of organs
like brain and heart.
—

Sarah Lyons-Lin works as a braillist and loves the Midwest. Her work is forthcoming or has previously appeared in Rust+Moth, Storm Cellar, Cherry Tree, and Art House America. Her handmade chapbook lectio divina for reborn things was published in winter 2018.

poetry

Songs Written for Everyone – Tiffany Belieu

and no one
said they heard you

like I did in all the songs
about other girls

you said shut up they don’t 
write songs about us 

but smiled and swayed
when I whispered 

your name is the sigh 
of long grass

sharp as glass bottle cuts
on the bare foot of               

summer, confetti left
longingly after a parade –

the things that stick and sting
and stay

you called them meaningless
words from an in-love tongue 

but I didn’t hear
over the music you make

—

 

Tiffany Belieu is working hard on her dream of writing. Her work is published or forthcoming in Back Patio Press, Q/A Poetry, Muskeg Magazine, Rabid Oak and The Mantle among others. She loves tea and cats and can be found @tiffobot on Twitter

poetry

Pulse – Chella Courington

You talk to him
as if you care, rest

your fingers on his wrist,
touch him

longer

than needed. No!
You are the woman

lulled to sleep
in my arms,

My arms. Holding
you like Diego’s lilies

and now you turn
your back

on me. I’m close enough
to hear you lay

one word on top
another, holding back

a consonant
so he will want to dig.

What drawls in your bones
shakes my insides.

 

—

Chella Courington is a writer and teacher whose poems and stories appear in numerous anthologies and journals including Spillway, The Collagist, and The Los Angeles Review. Her novella, Adele and Tom: The Portrait of a Marriage, is forthcoming from Breaking Rules Publishing. Originally from the Appalachian South, Courington lives in California with another writer.  Visit her website at chellacourington.net

poetry

The willingness – Lauren Suchenski

the willingness to
peer into the present moment
without a passing thought

the fullness of the fearlessness
between your fury
that pours onto the concrete –

peeled resonance ;; absolute
resistance to the reality of your
eyes percolating – relating – rotating
seeing everything except
the circumstance of air
Around my body

 

 

—

Lauren Suchenski has a difficult relationship with punctuation and currently lives in Yardley, PA. She has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize as well as twice for The Best of the Net and her chapbook Full of Ears and Eyes Am I is available from Finishing Line Press. You can find more of her writing on Instagram @lauren_suchenski or on Twitter @laurensuchenski.