Pastoral / Joanna Grant
I shut my eyes
aware of my heart
a well-done sun
heavy, fat, gold.
Brave lilies rise
in the silvery mirror, they
eat my dead father,
his bean tree,
his Sunday lamb,
they crack his branch,
his heavy throat, his red bloom.
Purple words. Heavy wisdom.
Just another dream / Judit Hollos
At night I leave the horror story I’m working on
in the middle of the wildly snaking narrative
I put the haunted mansions and eerie screams to sleep
the damsels to find their way in a home-made nightmare
In my dream, the story goes on but the scene changes
the mansion becomes a maze of red pre-fab buildings
the park turns into a playground buzzing with children
with me sitting on a beach,watching my daughter play
And the next time I look up I just loose sight of her
the park is now abound with the echoes of kid-laughter
and as I wade through the tendrils embracing our hourse
I find a grey-haired woman there who’s never known us.
Saints Electric / Zach Hauptman
electric saints
o saints electric
martyrs to our cavernous hungers
more math more knowledge more metal
more unearth excavations
nickel copper electrode
neurons
nicola tesla humble patron
of the currents
voiceless under
the damn telephone ringing
your generation
a name that can only be
synonymous with failure
to the electric elohim
borne on twisted cables
tightened like a too small serpent
around the earth’s belly
voices on the wind
are just vibrations
set off by people
who don’t know any better
ada lovelace, lovely ada
her mind brimming with
erotics of equations
a Lord Byron of
sparks and holes, of counting
accounting,
elegant monster, swallowing
fanaticism and spitting out
our imaginary numbers
call down the angels electric
three, four heads that never turn
a fifth dimensional puzzle
from every direction at once
galvanic lords,
humans were never meant
to see this much
alan turing, patron
of those struggling
to be human
to be seen as human
broken on the wheel of
inhumanity
when we call on you
to bless life
into lines of code
earth mother / Brice Maiurro
earth mother paint mud upon my weary soul
hold me in the clay that i was framed within
earth mother kiss me at the alchemy of wind & grass
i turn my cheek for you you ask me to hold it still
earth mother when i close my third eye it is you there
pranava calling me to grow the rainforest of my mind
earth mother love is the path you’ve lined with stones
i pray that my footprints imprint your pathways deeper
earth mother forgive me for not seeing your face in my face
there is so much relentless smoke in these heavy days of sun
earth mother return our footsteps to the pace of your pulse
if we march to your beat we are all our own drummer
earth mother carve my heart from the top of the mountain
as below i witness your open-ended opus in polychrome
earth mother i feed every day upon the same water as ever
both your cold & hot water find a middle way a warmth
earth mother show me how to turn the way you turn
my legs grow tired from being pulled to turn against you
earth mother it was you in the wild of my childhood
it is you in the wild call of my child it is you the wild
earth mother i want my love to look like your love
i will hold my nectar forever out for the hungry future
earth mother to be held in the red swell of your heart
inside of a flower thirty lotuses found in the mud of them
earth mother teach me to move the stubborn clouds along
share with me a daylight beneath a well-earned blue sky
earth mother i have seen the death beneath your tongue
as new & beautiful as the baby birds in the nest of your hair
earth mother am i the dead deer on the margins of the road
or am i the horns the road the headlights or am i the crash
earth mother my feet never leave your cold spring river
its shock keeps me conscious through this lightless era
teach me how to reborn when the next light is so far away
Superlatives I Have Not Been Awarded but Deserve / Kimberly O’Connor
Superlatives-I-Have-Not-Won-but-Deserve-1After Naptime / Michael Schad
We went to the Beach after
naptime. Matthew and I played
soccer while Amy and Asa flew a kite.
It was cold. The tiny waves lapped
on the sand and the breeze was beautiful.
Later, Amy went for a long walk
and then we ate cedar smoked Salmon.
From naptime until bedtime,
I carried the image of my father’s mother
sitting in a recliner sallow and fully removed
from the world; it is my last memory of her,
not my favorite, I prefer to think of her
in her green shingled home in Huntington Station
standing by the door smiling, blinking the light of her house
as we left, or possibly the smell of her clothes as she brought
me close for a kiss and a hug.
is quilting a verb or is it a noun? / Kashiana Singh
quilted sky
quilted calm
quilted skin
quilted illness
quilted breast
quilted routines
that which does not escape stay
inside this quilting of undone rage
between our eyebrows is quilting
their fur a canopy, a stiff awning
of imagination, papillae pressed
on the linen of tongues, stitched
with pellets of regret, its taste so
bitter you want to spit at the next
person who asks you how you are
quilting of words, stiffened thread
Dancing in Ward Time / Elizabeth Wolf
Mirror, Mirror in The Hall…
This is what happens when you write before taking all of the medication as prescribed. You can try palming it, or just don’t swallow, or don’t look at the clock when it is time for a dose. If the line is long and shuffling they may not notice. Then you can still think and dream, trace the moth of your thoughts to the flame.
It doesn’t work the same after the pills; it trundles out tame and the rhythm plods. No syncopation or trills, no thumps from your heart, no flowing/soaring /pouring from your soul. On meds it trods like a dirge in 3/4 time: Today we had 4 meetings. First there was large group: I didn’t speak. Next was O.T.: I colored a cloud-shaped box with a mouse on the lid, smothered in layers of glue. Then came small group: I didn’t speak. Then was team teen: I didn’t play. Now is the time for journals. This is my entry.
But if your mouth stays shut when the cart comes by at 5 and again at 9 (9, 1, 5, 9, who can ever forget that routine? One two and right left, one two and glide; one two and swallow please, slide shuffle slide…). At night the moon and the stars are still out, if you can spy a window with a slice of sky. Sometimes I line up hand mirrors to see how far I can see. If all the doors in the hallway line up forever, won’t one of them open?
The double doors keep us all in. The double doors keep you all out. The pills keep us all quiet. Without them the walls couldn’t keep us contained; the groups couldn’t keep us compliant. The O.T. cart would be trashed, overturned in the hallway; walls and floors painted and stained, blood spattering the nurses’ station. I folded up the ping-pong table to play against myself and though the table returned every shot I still won, oh I won, the tournament and the whole damn starry night.
