he, he, he – a giggle
Posted by Marion Smallwood | Filed under Poetry, Print
ceiling fan –
what a four winged liar
to make me think that’s his breath on my neck, his wind
his attitude about moving my hair
he takes things to a jar, leaves it
lidless – a load off my lungs
he won’t call it stealing but i know better
we discuss ‘we’
decide it’s just a drawbridge
and move slowly to where the other is coming from
i don’t look down, i love him
so i crawl into my phone
fit my drink and bed and toes
bring my suitcase full of little things
and give him handfuls
the space bursts
it will, i become millions
collect me like a paperclip
hold poems together with me
and promise nothing
Lost Boys
Posted by Hannah Van Sciver | Filed under Poetry, Print
Let’s have a party.
With no occasion besides the twilight makes our skin smile,
and we all hate to be alone.
Evening, like cookie dough, is best when shared
and there’s plenty to go around,
so don’t let me eat it all on my own.
Come on over.
Let’s strum the backyard into oblivion,
and drink to the inevitable explosion of the sun.
Let’s be young tonight.
I’ve got a fire burning in my stomach
and six gallons of ice cream in the freezer,
and it’s raining you and me like cats and dogs out there.
So let’s let our clothes fall off like outdated theories.
Skin is skin and naked is sacred in the moonlight,
so stripping is the obvious option.
It’s been too long since I last wrote a love song,
and it’s far too early to start again.
So let’s hang like leaves and surrender to the wind,
let’s let our stems snap and cherish the fall.
Let’s be candlesticks on the beach.
Let’s smile deeper than stomachs,
because smiles shouldn’t require occasions.
And the moon has got to be a cause for celebration these days.
Everyone’s invited.
Bring your bruises, bring your drums,
and bring your souls, no matter their condition.
Spare parts are welcome.
We’ll press them together like puzzle pieces that don’t quite fit,
because nothing’s worth anything unless it requires a little effort.
We’ll howl at the moon like it’s peter pan
imploring us to believe in fairies.
We’ll pretend the stars are fairies,
because the first step to healing is make-believing.
I believe our broken parts are instruments.
If we play them loud enough, you can’t tell the difference.
It’s been too long since I last wrote a love song,
but maybe this is better.
Maybe somewhere in the cacophony of souls,
Maybe somewhere between the cracks and the violin bows,
there’s something exquisite.
Maybe truth lives in the hollow of every empty promise,
and you just have to scrape bottom to find it.
And if the sun explodes in the morning
at least we were howling the night before.
And if the neighbors complain about the ruckus,
we’ll tell them we’re lost boys
looking for gold in the corners of the midnight.
We’ll tell them we’re stained glass mosaics,
hold us up to the light and our broken pieces become beautiful.
So come on over, please.
One’s a mess, and three’s a crowd, but everyone together
is greater than lonely.
And there’s plenty of evening to go around.
american shark
Posted by Richard Thomson | Filed under Poetry, Print
America, not yet born,
fights in the womb of her mother
like a tiger shark
she swallows pieces of her sisters
to prove that she is different, calls them
savages, and is born
America, age two,
squats in the muddy afterbirth
of her history
pretending she is not a child
she spills her drink across
the table of empire and demands
a seat in the high chair of liberty,
still chewing mouthfuls of
wampum and gunpowder
America, age five,
asks the meaning of her name
and gets strange answers
America, feminine form of Americus,
itself Latinized from Amerigo for Vespucci
she has never thought of herself as Italian
and so she asks further
Amerigo, taken from the Gothic Amalrich
meaning “ruler”
she is too young to understand irony
and starts dressing like a princess
America, age eleven,
goes to the library and finds
a book entitled The Mysteries of Blood
it is composed in a language of twenty-six letters,
like Rosetta Stones, the bones of twenty-six ancestors
she has never learned the meaning of their names
Massachuset, Wampanoag name for the “range of hills”,
that form the Berkshires of her spine
Kentucky, derived from the Iroquois word for the “meadowland”
that spreads flat across her stomach
Minnesota, the Dakota Sioux word meaning “cloudy water” for color of her eyes
her body, tattooed with twenty-six codes
for pieces of herself she barely knows
surviving only in echoes
etymologies may be forgotten
but words have a way of growing their own claws
America, age sixteen,
is just learning how to drive
she wears her hair in tight buns to hide
her split-ends slit like hairpin bends
she takes the corners fast
to change direction
but finds she is only ever moving downward
and never checks the rear-view mirror
until America, age eighteen,
looks at herself
and discovers that she is a shark
scientists say that most modern sharks
have evolved to the point of requiring constant movement
to keep water flowing across their gills
and America decides she is no exception
America reaches womanhood believing
that her movement has become biological
that evolution has taken rest out of
the equation, that like a shark,
she must always keep swimming
to keep breathing, working to keep from sinking,
moving towards nothing
but the occasional thin fish of progress
and kept alive only by her own momentum
America, age 235,
has not stopped yet
she says she will rest when she is dead
straight
Posted by Tiffany Kang | Filed under Poetry, Print
you cradle my skin in your palms
as rivers rich in oil run through them.
gold mines lodged between every finger
a crevice of silver seeping through my hair,
we have never felt so wealthy as tonight.
so willing to drown between the strands,
you climb the tightrope of body with kisses
for i have harvested many a knot
tangled in my stomach
split ends halving my backbone.
yet you unravel the maze of heavy
place my beginning before end
and everything else in order, single file
i know this for when we are done,
i am a straight line.
tonight, you have sucked out all the poetry
long clogging my arteries.
found an open pore for deep breathing,
how long i have missed the gasp of daylight
words struggling for freedom from womb,
for the thrill of glossing fingers over face
and remembering, finally,
that all is beautiful as is.
you remind me tonight
that i am beautiful as is.
you meditate on my dimensions
as if they were the fourth,
a pandora of seashore and firework.
i have never felt so full of treasure
as when you set foot to find it,
breathing mists of prayer upon my being
twisting arches of spine into arrows and praise.
you bring me back a bucket of laughter
and armfuls of gaze between us.
i did not know i was capable
of holding such foreign but beautiful objects.
amongst the rubble and debris,
we tumble in blackness across the earth
love me crooked as tonight,
but leave me a straight line
when we are done.
