Today,
I realized
everything I do is a joke
and God is on stage
doing stand-up
waging his finger at me
laughing
uncontrollably
while everyone in the audience
is relieved
he isn’t pointing his stubby fat fingers
at them.
by Kari Hawkey
she’s a little crazy, right? half,
at least. cloaking herself in
inky star-spilled darkness,
unmasking her many moods;
this waxing and waning at whim
crescent grimace gloating,
gibbous eye hypnotizing
tumbled time and tide
fat and full and freckled
face beckoning, reckoning
you are but earthbound, and
she, a beacon of the night
who can neither shed nor
bear her own exquisite light.
Draw a line in the sand.
Don’t cross it. Color inside
only, and only in the most
muted of tones. Show ID.
Please keep all limbs and
appendages inside the
vehicle. Control all spon
-taneous laughter. A proper
level of decorum must be
maintained at all times. When
you’ve had it up to here, secure
the perimeter and batten down
a hatch or two, paying particular
attention to not getting finger
-prints on glass ceiling.
Don’t grasp at first or last
straws, or allow them anywhere near
that camel over there. Use sunscreen.
If we unscroll this thing, give it syllable
and song, taste it along our torn tongues,
our dialect is horses, hooves pounding
forward, manes flinging salt water to the
waiting wind. Our floating hope is a tiny
bird’s crest, conjugated in cinnamon and
sage, aged carefully, held with ginger hand.
If we stand, on this, one last promise, we
are archers heading into battle, quivers of
anticipation and rage and unsheathed
joy. If we toy with noble wisdom, crack its
solid amber shell, pronounce it loud and
well, this cant, with all its quiet meditation
and clasped conjugations and implied con
-jectures, this language of our hearts might
live and breathe and brave this aged place.
by De Jackson
De Jackson is a poet, a parent and a Pro Crastinator (not necessarily in that order) whose heart beats best when accompanied by inky fingers and salty, sea-soaked toes. Some of her work has has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Sprout, Red River Review, Bolts of Silk and Indigo Mosaic.
umbilical cord, my mother’s kite string.
pine tree bark, the saw blade hungry for heat.
foreskin, our first offering, sin, sacrifice.
birthday cake, the sugar’s tragic reminder.
hair, this should be more difficult.
wrists, plump with fear.
bread loaf, thins slices of salvation.
wing tip, the caged animal’s final passport.
I cried myself to sleep last night,
the morning landed softly, light shone
through the dust that ain’t gone neither,
my prayers ain’t been workin these days,
my sins musta been too deep to be unearthed
from this hell, I knew ma and pa been waitin
for me, I hope they heard it’s been postponed,
I ain’t packed no clothes, just a plastic bag
with ma’s favorite dishrag, she loved this kitchen,
when I was little I’d swing from the big oak tree
out in the front yard, sometimes I’d catch
her eye from the kitchen window,
she’d smiled like I was her pride and joy,
she’d used to say “be careful up in that tree
honey, I ain’t ready to lose my only son to
gravity,” one time when I was much older
I fell from the second highest branch, right
on my back, I sat up and looked right over to
that window, expecting to see ma’s scared face
but that window’s been broken for almost
two years now, one day when I was boiling
sum water, a bird flew right into the glass,
I ran outside to see if it was alright, it was
a red bird, it laid still but looked like it was
going to be okay, I put its body on the highest
tree branch, so when it woke up it could just
fall and fly, I haven’t looked to see if it woke yet,
my pa buried our dog in the backyard, I packed his
pipe in the plastic bag too, if I know him he’s
been cranky without his tobacco all these years,
the sun is starting to go down, I’ll leave the plastic
bag on my nightstand tonight but take my shoes
off this time, the house is quiet and cold tonight,
I wonder if I should have buried that bird?
Ryan Hurley is a member of five National Poetry Slam teams from Wisconsin and has been featured in multiple national publications including The Progressive, Dream of a Nation and Positive Impact Magazine. Ryan is also an elected member of the Emerging Leaders Council with Americans for the Arts, the largest arts advocacy organization in Nation. Ryan is dedicated to using the arts and creativity for community development and engagement.
For Peter Lake.
I still see you — haze of tweed, loafers, and cake
running towards the pub, rain pelting your back,
hair already fading white when I blew out the candles
how does it feel to be young; I could not answer
that night — noise, free beers, every man watching
me in red, a dress you bought but, I could only
see you, so handsome with your face alcohol-lit,
you, who quoted Cocteau, Whitman, Proust,
carried me home in the storm and laid me down
in your quiet room, four o’clock, I woke to puke;
found you on the couch, chest rising tiredly under
the weight of a book; I wrapped you in a quilt and
said a prayer — for longevity, past the red dress,
past numbering candles, to when I am wrapped
in a blanket, book on my lap, grey in my hair.
Jacqueline Thomas is a Literature major with a Creative Writing focus at Ramapo College of New Jersey. She intends to continue on to a Graduate-PhD program and receive her PhD in Comparative Literature.
You are a memory.
Like a wildflower
in the pages
of an old book,
like a monarch
hanging in a shadowbox
above the fireplace,
like a Polaroid
in an album
under the bed,
like paisley wallpaper
yellowed with smoke,
like sand between our toes
where a mountain once stood,
like an old star
in the summer nights sky.
by Doc Marek
All summer I wander the cemetery
between the fenced-in family plots
and the ornate stone mausoleums.
Occasionally I find my way to the nameless
resting in the north corner;
orphans, tucked away
a century before
in that one place where
the sod struggled to take root.
There the markers are
little more than sand;
birthdates once carved
reduced to shadow,
as if those dates
were as inconsequential
as the bones tangled
in the roots below.
I wonder if their caretakers ever came
without planting another,
or if they sneer at them, even now,
through the white fences of the
manicured family plots across the path,
convinced that, as in life,
they were destined to make better dirt.
Along the perimeter,
an overgrown pyracantha
swallowing the black
of the wrought iron fence,
so that only the speared tips stretched
from the thorned belly,
every sprig in late bloom;
fragility falling, fair petals
loosed from the branches
to which they cleaved,
spreading casually
where the headstones met the earth
as though there were some covenant
set to celebrate the value of their flesh,
so fleeting, so forgotten,
but so much more to me than
those who busied themselves
buying implied comfort
that will never delay the inevitable.
What if he comes asking?
Every now and again I pause to consider—
what? Possibility? Odds are he might come
with tempest blessings, bearing
questions of creation, divine inception, asking how
he came to be in that womb, at that time, and he will know that
we share more than consequence; what then will I do?
Answer the bleakest of his ponderings, unfiltered, uncensored,
the untruth utterances that are not fit for the moment, or
condemn him to know that all men make faults
and my faults made him.
When the time comes,
we will choose whether or not to walk the curves
of the Mobeus strip together, to rehash inches lost and gained
with each rotation, to sift through the honest sands
of hindsight; perhaps then I’ll know
whether or not to share the tale of how our lives
were one day woven, torn, and mended;
but which truths will I tell?
From the symphony of sorrow and joy colliding, it is clear
that all truths are just the sound of the innocence dying.
It comes in flashes,
blurred as the world on the other side
of stained glass;
back deck in disrepair,
untreated, crippled and rotted;
across the threshold
mound upon mound upon mound,
dog kennel buried beneath,
Rubbermaid barrel
brimful with nasty;
compost stewed in pots,
sink full with dishes, water,
and week-old potato peels—
black something steaming with fruit flies;
hallway carpeted in clothes
wet towels mildewed
on disintegrating tile;
half the living room
occupied with cabinets,
ten-year-old renovations
not yet begun;
a shag carpet path,
stained and matted with fur,
weaving through the gauntlet of the unidentifiable,
puerile trappings
frozen in the periphery
decimated by hackneyed chaos;
and beneath it all,
the petals of the lotus
crushed to potpourri—
a reminder of good
long lost.
