October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The woman taking my baby’s information
over the phone asks if I have postpartum
depression. I have no idea, I just want to know
how my reality has become Tucks pads slapped
down in underwear like slices of bologna
and a bra holding rock-hard porn-star tits.
Everything is breasts. My husband’s eyes, English
muffin halves, Katie Couric’s saucer. The nightly
sputter of the heater, a breast pump. At dawn,
it groans “Screw you. Screw you. Rat poo.” Regret
for not saving stem cells dangles in the Pottery Barn
mobile and every two hours a gurgling stream
of milk from my nipples shoots me awake.
In the nursing chair I recount the ludicrous
contortions between contractions that made
the midwife snort “That eighteen-wheeler plowing
through your uterus, that’s nothing special
happens every day,” while she typed
on her Blackberry. Yet we will do it again.
Forget the moment our vagina, butane-doused
and lit, tore open into the newest scalp on the planet.
Wish to vomit crackers while two hearts
beat inside us.
by Marcia LeBeau
Marcia LeBeau has been published in Handsome Journal, Poemeleon, Inertia Magazine, and others. She received an honorable mention for the Rattle Poetry Prize. She has attended various workshops with writers such as Sharon Olds, Tony Hoagland, Charles Harper Webb, Molly Peacock, Kim Addonizio, Dorianne Laux, and more. Marcia’s poems have appeared in Oprah’s O Magazine and have been read on the radio. She holds an MFA in poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts’ creative writing program. Marcia has played the violin/viola since she was four, and now plays in chamber groups. She is slightly addicted to self-help seminars and can be found cooking when she’s in a good mood.
October 2015 | poetry
I wanted the ghostliness of Fall,
the thrill of fresh masks
and hard candy
I wanted the romance of arguing,
the depression of school nights
and dim lamp lights
I wanted the abuse of painful side affects,
the fascination of my shadow
within a crowd,
the excitement of loneliness
I wanted the pleasure of demons,
the euphoria of erotic bonding,
the exhaustion of sadness
I wanted the love of parents,
the horror of sour nails,
the joy of intentionally sore skin
I wanted the relief of exhaling,
the weakness of flu season,
the peace of floating away
I fell asleep on black hair
and woke up inside a blonde tea pot
I was served to the earth unsweetened,
every ounce of me disgusting
by Ashlie Allen
Ashlie Allen writes fiction and poetry. She is also a photographer. Her work has appeared in the Tipton Poetry Journal, Gone Lawn, Spelk and others. She loves the Victorian era.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
And down the road I look
at Winchester on the Severn, the setting
star glaring amber as ochre-sweet
honey spoils with jaundiced age
in November. I stand on the hill
quietly knowing my life
will be unusual, different from how
(and now) it was then. Déjà vu―
my wood-shingled boyhood
home, the mint patch and Pines Park,
ghosts of the elm trees which met
overhead when Rt. 2 was B&A.
When dusk enfolds the arbor, mourning
doves sense the mist thinning. No
significance or scaffold in mind:
just a fouling wood and winter
looming in labor, heaped on planks
of limp, listless light.
by Zane Anthony
Zane is a senior at Middlebury College, studying architecture and biology. Zane’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Star Democrat, Middlebury Magazine, Sweatervest, and Zenith Magazine, and is forthcoming in other journals.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
a promise and a secret
written in stone
clutched like a dying heart
a life untethered
in the loveless ether
neither held
nor hoped for
too painful to remember
too impossible to forget
an anomaly of dark matter
gone supernova
between the rock of truth
and the hard place of hurt
nerves exposed in stars’ ignition
transmissions muted
space at a standstill
for it is
both now…
and never again.
by Edward Canavan
Edward L. Canavan (January 19, 1971 – ) is an American poet whose work has been published in such underground and revolutionary journals as Bleeding Hearts, Vice and Verse, Eagle’s Flight, and Oxford Comma. He currently resides in a small room by the freeway in North Hollywood, Ca.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Experiment in Weightlessness
Upside down fishbowl
occupant
right side up
tablecloths like spiraling
butterflies
brown lace-up shoe
a woman’s
random receipts brochures
sticky notes
last year’s desk calendar
curling uncurling
a glowing suspended instant
strangers on the ledge
faces averted
unwilling to witness
the tragedy of
scorched birds in flight.
The Power
I plant thoughts in your head,
walk a mile in your shoes
and leave you to wonder
where all that sand came from.
You once accused me of being
all talk and no action,
but you would tremble with fear
if you could see me now.
Magic dances on my fingertips,
sparks crackle in my hair.
I cook my meals these days
without ever going near the stove.
I just sear chunks of flesh
with the heat of my regard.
By Jeffrey Park
Jeffrey Park’s poetry has appeared most recently in Star*Line, phantom kangaroo, Mad Swirl, and Danse Macabre. A native of Baltimore, Jeffrey currently lives in Goettingen, Germany, where he is lecturer for Scientific English at the Georg-August-Univeritaet. Links to all of his published work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com.
July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Knight’s Night Out
You write
your memoir
of shattered mirrors
and misconstrued epiphanies.
for every recollection,
every doubt that
binds your
mountainous limitation,
to the top of the
summit of debt,
retaliations still sings
as it’s proliferation stings,
dissection
of affluent
memories persist,
onto life’s projection
where you tip-toe
towards your demise,
a modest dignitary
forever monetized
within life’s monotony,
where life is a lease,
any moment could disease.
Inked into our membranes,
are words transmitted,
through our rife.
We reside inside
our calligraphy,
where you recite.
Your memory is a mic
your future is a turnpike,
but the past remains
a present
– a precedent
only a wish could represent.
The Weight We Carry
We painted black
into backpacks,
revived our
medieval retrievals,
and clasped onto
our adamance
that sunk deep
beneath the bag,
where thorough
thoughts of
fervent promises
transported to
a portal of
prominence.
When we gathered
our optimistic
pleasantries,
we prevailed
like concrete
shadows,
but our fossilized
memories froze
under
the clock
that echoed
faint haunts,
as we traced
our uncertainties
that paved
to cemented
cemeteries,
where
we follow,
but never lead.
When we cleansed
the palate
that painted
only faithful
melodies,
we withstood
our melancholy
tragedies
as we
evaded our
casualties
to combat
the disdain
that punctured
the tapestry
of a gangrened
dancer.
We Bloomed
like flowers,
and watered them
until the spring
turned to autumn;
memories that
blossomed
melancholy
melodies,
and when
love walked
on bridges
we began
to break
by the
hook that caught
onto our shirts,
where we descended.
Still we arose;
we were maps
that traced back
into the wilderness
and we eroded
from our sacrilege,
sentences written
of trials tribulations
and labored distortions.
As they swallowed
their accelerants
and grabbed dismay
and sold it’s Adsense
to the relapse
that plummeted
into yesterday,
we still peak
to re-capture.
and re-hash,
decades of last
years ghosts,
so within
a century
our ancestry
could
create an abstract
memory
where dissipated
pilgrimages
pulled their
weight
like sacrilegious
vestiges
as they tore off their
appendages.
It’s never too late
to rekindle the seams,
that took apart
our shovels,
and buried our dreams.
by Chris Ozog
Christopher Ozog is a 23-year-old writer who currently resides in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has previously appeared in Burningword Literary Journal, The Commonline, and Crack the Spine and has work forthcoming in the 2015 winter Crack the Spine Anthology.
