July 2018 | poetry
after Anne Sexton
Some women rent cabins.
It’s another kind of solitary craft; it has structure,
a purpose, an off-kilter form.
The walls are mud and mindful of hands.
See how she stokes the stove all day,
relentlessly urging heat.
All others have been banished; outside, the black cat
curls like an obsidian shell on the sisal mat.
A woman is her own snow.
That’s the storm inside.
by Virginia Barrett
Virginia Barrett’s books include Crossing Haight (forthcoming, 2018) and I Just Wear My Wings. Barrett is the editor of two anthologies of contemporary San Francisco poets including OCCUPY SF—poems from the movement. Her work has most recently appeared in the Writer’s Chronicle, Narrative, Roar: Literature and Revolution by Feminist People, Ekphrastic Review, Weaving the Terrain (Dos Gatos Press), and Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice (University of Arizona Press). She received a 2017 writer’s residency grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, NM. Her chapbook, Stars By Any Other Name, was a semi-finalist for the Frost Place Chapbook Competition sponsored by Bull City Press, 2017. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
April 2018 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
i.
I know that statistically, some of us are meant to be stabbed. But first there is only
a slight pressure, a metallic taste where my mouth could be. And some muffled sounds
I have learned are cuss words. Or the shaking they do in frustration.
If that doesn’t work. If that doesn’t render me in their hands, there is a blissful pause.
But I know they are looking for something sharper. When they find it, they will pierce
what protects me, even if it makes them break a sweat. They will get to me.
When they do, sometimes they are wheezing;
their breath belabored. They look at me like
I am supposed to cure them, relieve them
of something.
ii.
The dumb one is leaking and then swallowed.
We are difficult in our packaging, these bodies.
These round, silicone drug-filled things.
iii.
Her hand was shaking and I fell from it, so giddy I bounced. Rolled
on the uneven hardwood, fifteen feet from her grasp. I listen to her
suffer. I heard the echo of her fuck and then an oh and I knew
she wasn’t coming for me.
In the middle of this night only half of her can breath,
half of her filled with a corporal cement. The kind nature
designed to suffocate things. Her chest congested
with common things. I could have helped, but why
enable a good rest.
iv.
I am faulty; what they advertised.
A real plague
is coming.
by Natalie E. Illum
Natalie E. Illum is a poet, disability activist and singer living in Washington DC. She is a 2017 Jenny McKean Moore Poetry Fellow, and a recipient of an 2017 Artists Grant from the DC Arts Commission as well as a nonfiction editor for The Deaf Poets Society Literary Journal. She was a founded board member of mothertongue, a women’s open mic that lasted 15 years. She used to compete on the National Poetry Slam circuit and was the 2013 Beltway Grand Slam Champion. Her work has appeared in various publications, and on NPR’s Snap Judgement. Natalie has an MFA in creative writing from American University, and teaches workshops across the country. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter as @poetryrox, on her website, and as one half of All Her Muses, her music project. Natalie also enjoys Joni Mitchell, whiskey and giraffes.
April 2018 | poetry
I am sins of decades
despite duck and cover
and breathing mushrooms
of imagination
draft age wars
jungling heart attacks
in the genes
and pollution in
bottled water
fires in the belly
stringing the lobes
in spider webs
aromas and penstrokes
a mess of bedtimes
numbering thousands
no need to pull a Roman
when Broca has forgotten
by David Anthony Sam
Born in Pennsylvania, David Anthony Sam has written poetry for over 40 years. He lives now in Virginia with his wife and life partner, Linda, and in 2017 retired as president of Germanna Community College. Sam has four collections and was the featured poet in the Spring 2016 issue of The Hurricane Review and the Winter 2017 issue of Light: A Journal of Photography and Poetry. His poetry has appeared in over 70 journals and publications. Sam’s chapbook Finite to Fail: Poems after Dickinson was the 2016 Grand Prize winner of GFT Press Chapbook Contest and his collection All Night over Bones received an Honorable Mention for the 2016 Homebound Poetry Prize. In 2017, he began serving as Poetry Editor for GFT. www.davidanthonysam.com
April 2018 | poetry
Once upon a time on an outskirts bus to center Paris,
I found her rapt in a magazine. She shared with me
a photo: a wooden sculpture, an Afghan treasure,
once stolen, carried place to place,
a beautiful river goddess – flowing skirt, tight waist —
(a noticeable backside crease).
She spoke in slow French, for me, how the stolen treasure
exposed a new opening into Asian mystery.
A perfect piece, 1st century, recovered
intact in a sunken ship off Indonesia.
Ambling along the Seine, she also shared regrets
— her boyfriend killed in war’s affairs.
To make it short, I blurted out, “Je voudrais te baiser,”
meaning ‘to kiss’ her, but the word I used – I learned,
translates to fuck. She corrected my French — laughing
later in my concierge-guarded hotel room.
Maybe it was because when goodbyes came,
and she whispered, Ne m’oublier pas, that I remember
the hunger hard in her taut curves, her stirring
deep as wreckage. The stuff of fairy tales,
when treasure lost then found, rises to the surface.
by McLeod Rivera
McLeod Rivera has four collections of poems: Café Select (Poet’s Choice Publisher, 2016); Noise (Broadkill River Press, December 2015); The Living Clock (Finishing Line Press, 2013); and Buried in the Mind’s Backyard (Brickhouse Books, Inc. 2011). Rivera’s poems have been published in various poetry magazines: Innisfree, Broadkill River Review, The Broome Review, California Quarterly,Gargoyle, Recursive Angel, The Curator Magazine, Third Wednesday, Lit Undressed, Blazevox, 2River Review, Loch Raven, as well as The Nation, Kenyon Review and The Prairie SChonner.
April 2018 | poetry
Audio from some movie playing in the next room
You wake up to the sound of it
Without remembering having it on before you fell asleep
Sound of an unfortunate sequel
In an unnecessary series of films
Rom com or dramedy or buddy cop action
It continues in the background of the morning, like wallpaper
You wonder if you can’t understand it because you didn’t see the first one
Doug McClure*’s performance is earnest but unconvincing
*You can substitute the bad actor of your choice
Should have had his lines fed to him, like Brando
Fed to him by Brando might be more effective
Feeding him to Brando might’ve been most useful
More spam than ham, though
You wonder if someone turned it on as a joke
Climbed in the window, or set it on a timer
But it doesn’t seem to matter
Its unbidden endurance fits in the wasted hours
Fills the emptiness of your thoughts
As I fill the softness of my easy chair
Technicolor lack of action clouding your eyes
Charged by the static of stasis
You cannot turn your head away
From the hours that steal you from your dreams.
by David Lawton
David Lawton is the author of Sharp Blue Stream (Three Rooms Press), and has had his work published in numerous journals and anthologies. David is a graduate of the theatre program at Boston University, where he was also a Guest Artist in the graduate play writing classes taught by Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott. For ten years he was a background vocalist in the New York underground band Leisure Class. At the band’s de facto headquarters in the Chelsea Hotel, he befriended Beat godfather Herbert Huncke and San Francisco poet Marty Matz, and was inspired by their embodiment of the written word. David also serves as an editor for greatweatherforMEDIA, and collaborates with poet Aimee Herman in the poemusic collective Hydrogen Junkbox.
April 2018 | poetry
never planned for much, really
money is nice
not spending much of it
gets to pick roles now
monogamy being one
still lives on south side, one bedroom
no car
has to show up
jamming with friends
playing transports
former second stringer
to starter at rolling stone
his soul releases its fears
stage fright still problematic,
inherited achilles heal
like his immigrant family
son of serious evangelicals
rebelled, as all do,
abandoned the faith
after screaming arguments
acting like it never happened
on his way to hell, then
malevolent storm destroyed his home
with him in it, reformed
demons driven out
ran away to just be
actor he always was
able to transport even others
to his frank reality
making them see
what they are not supposed to
“An artist is somebody who produces things that people
don’t need to have.”- Andy Warhol
by Dan Jacoby
Dan Jacoby is a graduate of St. Louis University, Chicago State University, and Governors State University. He has published poetry in Anchor and Plume(Kindred), Arkansas Review, Belle Reve Literary Journal, Bombay Gin, Burningword Literary Review, Canary, Indiana Voice Journal, Wilderness House Literary Review, Steel Toe Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and Red Fez to name a few. He is a former educator, steel worker, and army spook.. He is a member of the Carlinville Writers Guild . Nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2015. He is currently looking for a publisher for a collection of poetry.
