Protection

A year ago if somebody had said AstraZeneca

I would have thought

South African tennis player, German sports car

the hot AK47 toting freedom fighter

that was my imaginary, Nazi slaughtering, girlfriend

in a war I was never in

 

Even the smugly lensed boffins in Oxford

dipping their Hobnobs, hypothesising

over the powerfully entitled thrust of

Boris Johnson, their sly Megan phantasies

would have calculated a blank.

 

I was lucky to get it

walked into the no name pharmacy

between anonymous suburbs

on an early spring day

 

for a grumpy old white man like me, to

stab me with a needle

then mass stab a line of other old white dudes

perhaps thinking, I hope, like me,

 

we had given another chance, this entitlement

will give us time to understand, what it is to live.

 

Alan Hill

Alan Hill is the former Poet Laureate of the small City of New Westminster in western Canada. He came to Canada in 2005 after meeting his Vietnamese- Canadian wife to be whilst they were both working in Botswana.

mer fidei

you go bats

in bone dry

dry flood

of night light

 

night night

 

there’s no need

now now

to be so shy

come and feed

 

the banquet

in the tower

 

the table set

w/ black flowers

(the pollen

is rust)

 

& great eggs

cracked open

a silver plate

and bowls of blood

 

raise the ghosts

from holes

i cut in the floor

 

holes i cut

with a sword

 

more more

 

 

Steven Turrill

Steven Turrill is the author of five books of poetry and the editor of Pine Peak Press. He lives in Los Angeles, CA. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter @turrillsteven.

Perspective

In the interest of time mothers move

 

stepwise and as for her a lingering in Mexico City

we lost touch some time ago, my mother reflects moodily. it is a

 

Monday afternoon and my world’s gone positively Popsicular

 

the grass was this euphoric entanglement of judgment

as I a king sat in the soft grass

 

And someone brought me watermelon sliced into precise little cubes

 

and everything felt round.

well that’s one version of it she says evenly

 

In some panhandle cabin the moon but a rakish visitor

 

stopping by for cookies. Her mother commanded her at the sink,

stop howling but she hunting for interpretive freedom

 

Splintered the task. Brought old light to new deeds in calling

 

attention to the weariness of form, a realization

which frankly undid me. And her taking a ticket to

 

The reeds of some unknown city where love was.

 

Caroline Fernelius

Caroline Fernelius is a writer from Texas. Her work has appeared in Storyscape Journal, The Decadent Review, Faultline Journal of Arts and Letters, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets College Poetry Prize. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, where she is a doctoral candidate in English.

An Index to the Eating Disorder Spectrum

Abnormal, a condition; a way of life; an indicator of otherness; you.

Achievement, you are the aggregate sum of these.

Anorexic, the condition of your identical twin sister in the seventh grade. You are the “fat twin.”

Appearance, how others may tell you your story.

Boston Marathon, a highly competitive race for which you qualify. You are still fat, however.

Bulimic, your condition in high school/college; your condition now.

Clean, the toilet. Thoroughly.

Cross-country, an unhealthy obsession; you are the slow twin. See Running.

Cry, on the bathroom floor. Be ashamed.

Cuts, on the first and third knuckles; see Reye’s Syndrome.

Cyclical, your behavior; other people’s behaviors; human behavior.

Dental problems, increased cavities, extreme sensitivity to hot and cold, wearing away of enamel, chipping of teeth. You have lost one tooth, to date.

Disorder, eating, familiarity.

DSM-5, a formal system of naming otherness; a reference book that cements your identity.

Eating, sin.

Exercise, over–, something you do that you do not realize until others point it out to you.  Your husband tells you that it is abnormal to be on the treadmill at midnight.

Fat, a sub-elite state of being; indisputable proof of people’s laziness/gluttony/inferiority; see Appearance.

Hidden, everything.

Hunger, known.

Insist, that you are telling the truth.

Intervals, on the track. High school. You push until you see spots. You collapse in the grass. Your heartbeat nails you to the ground.

Jokes, junior high, Is your sister anorexic? Are you the fat twin? Ha, ha.

Kneel, before the toilet, a ritual.

Label, a human tendency.

Love, self–, elusive.

Lying, an art. You are good at it.

Medicine, Abilify, Clonazopam, Klonopin, Lexapro, Lorazopam, Orlistat, Phentermine, Prozac, etc., etc.

Nancy, For the Love of, a TV movie you are made to watch in junior high. It depicts Tracy Gold’s struggle with anorexia. Everyone in the room stares at you and your sister.

Overeating, a coping mechanism. You try this after your sister’s suicide attempt.

Overweight, you become this post-Boston Marathon, shocking everyone.

Perfectionism, elusive.

Performance, everything.

Purge, a skill. You do it well, and quietly.

Quacks, all the doctors. The therapist, the psychiatrist, the eating disorder specialist, the dietician.

Questionnaire, for the doctor, fill out. Lie.

Quiet, keep.

Racing Weight, a book by Matt Fitzgerald on how to get lean for performance.

Recovery, a visade.

Reye’s Syndrome, a chronic truth-teller.

Running, a tool; a compulsion. Something the eating disorder specialist says you must give up.

Scale, a taskmaster.

Secrets, many. Your sister’s suicide attempt.

Spectrum, eating disorder, you’ve dappled in it all.

Therapy-resistant, an accusation.

Unicorn, the logo of the Boston Athletic Association; see Perfectionism.

Void, feeling, the result of all your achievements.

Vomit, disgusting; abhorrent; do not talk about this.

Weight, how people may be judged and ranked accordingly.

Xeno–, other; different in origin; you.

You, lent your identity to an illness.

Zenith, the highest or most acute point of a condition. You: 96 pounds. Your sister: 84 pounds. Remember, you were always the fat twin.

 

Natalie Coufal

Natalie Coufal is a nonfiction and fiction writer from rural Central Texas. She is pursuing her M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing at Sam Houston State University where she has received a fellowship. Her work has appeared in Glassworks, 100 Word Story, Passengers Journal, Touchstone Literary Magazine, Prometheus Dreaming, and others.

Late October Air

Up the bent walk to

the house door, stops

at the steps, smells

the dryness of fall in

the late October air.

 

Remembers something

as the breeze tousles

his hair and forgets

for a moment the key

in his hand.

 

Something a young girl

said, maybe, or a

woman standing, breaking

a sprig of lilac,

turning: eyes damp.

 

We cannot know what

stops him, what holds

the key suspended in

his hand, his head

turned as if to listen.

 

As he would not say,

locked on that moment,

his face expressionless

to tell joy or grief,

tempered, far away.

 

Trent Busch

Trent Busch, a native of rural West Virginia, now lives in Georgia where he writes and makes furniture. His recent books of poetry, “not one bit of this is your fault” (2019) and “Plumb Level and Square” (2020) were published by Cyberwit.net. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Poetry, The Nation, Threepenny Review, North American Review, Chicago Review, Southern Review, Georgia Review, New England Review, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Northwest Review, Kenyon Review, American Scholar, Shenandoah, Boston Review, and Hudson Review. His poem “Edges of Roads” was the 2016 First Place winner of the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize.

The Absence of Joy in Love

Heavy weighted blanket, legs half-out, rain against the window,

you whispered, “what if it gets old? what if you get bored

with me?”

“It won’t and I won’t,” I said.

“But if.”

“If?”

The smell of warm linen, chest swelling

like infatuation.

Oh honey, it would be a blessing

to grow old and bored with you

(just to be with you),

and should there be a loss of love

(I write love but mean passion, puppy-love)

in the years to come—

no wild nights into sleepless mornings, no constant hand-on-thigh,

no attentive eyes, no planned dates—

I would learn it again,

remind myself, reread my letters,

grow curious afresh,

in body, soul, and mind,

in duty and promise,

in decision and action,

even in dry periods with no joy,

Love you.

 

Alexandra T. O. Cooley

Alexandra T. O. Cooley is a poet and graduate student from Alabama. She is currently a pursuing an MA in English from Jacksonville State University and hopes to pursue an MFA in creative writing after graduating. She loves making lists, petting animals, and planning vacations with her husband, James.

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