13.
Paper Woman
She’s
a processed tree
to
be torn and thrown
towards
garbage cans,
it’s
nothing to be paper.
It’s
July and the heat is fierce
on
sidewalks, on roads,
on
her paper white skin,
her
vacant lines.
A
grinning man is
ready
to make her his paper
doll,
new dresses with stiff tabs,
ready
to fold—over and over.
She
wants to be a love note.
Written
on a whim with
memories
of desire, folded
neatly,
she waits for the surprise.
(this poem also
appears in Sarah Lilius's new Blood Pudding Press poetry chapbook,
"Thirsty Bones", available here - https://www.etsy.com/listing/522718674/new-thirsty-bones-by-sarah-lilius-2017?ref=shop_home_feat_2)
*
12.
PUBLIC POOL
The public pool is the gaping socket
where a baby tooth has been extracted,
where a baby tooth has been extracted,
enamel sold to a higher power.
All the water has been drained,
along with swarms of splashing swimmers,
reveling in their youth.
along with swarms of splashing swimmers,
reveling in their youth.
There are black halos on the fences
left by the life preservers packed away,
protecting them from the dead of winter.
left by the life preservers packed away,
protecting them from the dead of winter.
The deep end is filled with lost water wings
and piles of brittle leaves that crackle
like a thousand lost birth certificates.
and piles of brittle leaves that crackle
like a thousand lost birth certificates.
Congealed dirt lies on the bottom,
like a thin crust of coagulated blood.
Everything about this scene makes
me shiver, makes me feel as if my bones,
are going to rip out of my skin,
me shiver, makes me feel as if my bones,
are going to rip out of my skin,
join the water wings in their final
resting place on the muddy bottom.
Until the full moon crests above the clouds
like a brand new tooth, poking through
like a brand new tooth, poking through
a thin layer of flesh,
as if to say, this absence was made to be filled.
This is not a gravesite, my coffin isn’t needed.
Youth will return, my children will swim here.
This is not a gravesite, my coffin isn’t needed.
Youth will return, my children will swim here.
I realize I don't have
to renounce
everything I love—my heart
is a swimming pool filling with grace.
~Christian Sammartino~
everything I love—my heart
is a swimming pool filling with grace.
~Christian Sammartino~
*
11.
AFTER THE RAPTURE
This
is the kind of night we'd break
Into
the mall parking garage and stargaze
Constellations
from the rooftop,
Because
they explode like fireworks,
Burning
more brilliantly then our fear,
Even
as they die light-years away.
I
can smell the good weed on your jacket,
See
you blowing smoke in the eyes of security
Cameras
so guards can't see your face.
Witnessing
our breath leave our bodies
Rapidly
freezing and thawing, tempting
Impermanence,
reminds us we are still alive.
You
and I aren't all closed casket memories
And
eulogies yet—we can see all the roads
Fanning
out of town into the body of the world.
You
watch the traffic lights flash green,
Swearing
they will be more than quiet
Signals
to your graveyard shift soul.
One
day you will cruise beneath their spotlight,
Full
tank of gas, heart pumping one-way wanderlust,
Flip
off our hometown in the rear view mirror.
Where
did you go after the gaslighting?
Did
you shed your skin into a dumpster until
There
was nothing left to collect?
You
owned the shape of your disappearance,
Like
fog evaporating from a windshield,
The
most precious gift since your hospital blanket.
I'm
talking to myself again, like this tin can
Telephone
has the signal to reach your ears,
If
only to say all the lights in town are green.
I miss
you, my blood, my sister.
Drive
with the wind in your hair, drive until
You
are the stranger, until you are visible.
10.
Woman-crisp
Can we speak together over time and space
as if we swam naked of our names?
This is crazy
I am crossing the boundary of all
propriety
I'm growing fins to swim out and meet you
Say yes: this is what writing is,
this is transformation, this is poetry
My skin is slipping away
Yesterday, I misplaced my Self
You have been given something
to give to me
I am ready
Can I come now?
Can I come yesterday?
Text me from your galaxy
Message me from inside the sun
in your apartment of fire
Hurry! answer me
I need a voice to jump toward
so I won’t break in two
from the middle of my spinal cord
and dangle in the sky, a broken crescent
Here I am now,
shaking off the lie
Blue sparks are flying from my hair
My fingernails are curling off
leaving my fingers spouting blood called
poetry
This state I’m in may not repeat itself
You know about these states
I am sizzling
in the round black frying pan of space and
time
Hurry! before I fry
into a burnt woman-crisp
There is not enough
blank paper in the world
for what I need to write
and all that needs to be written
is a single word
~Mohja
Kahf~
*
9.
Meditations
on the White Cat
The
white cat has come
to
paw at my pantleg
She
is pretty and my daughter fed her once
so
she thinks she has license
to
claw my porch chair
and
complicate the cloth on my knees
That
damned albino cat
is
here again like desire,
unbidden
and lovely
The
white cat arrives like a queen
Ginger
and calico cats
gather
to hiss at her
but
only from under the blue sedan
The
white cat, when I ignore her,
settles
her backside luxuriously
on
my red porch chair
That
white cat has settled
in
some crease of my mind
and,
for all my hissing and clapping,
won’t
leave
The
white cat
is
making the neighborhood dogs
whimper
and whine
You
are the white cat
of
my dog soul
I
can tell the white cat has been here
See
the white hairs on the dark blue
cushions
of desire?
The
white cat sniffs my cigarettes
experimentally
but
decides she is expecting something
I
do not have
The
white cat is ruffled today
Which
of my friends
did
I offend last night?
The
white cat startles easily this morning
My
porch chimes make her jump
A
war is beginning somewhere in the world
The
white cat lies across the flagstone path
as
if she owns the flagstone path
as
if she has owned the flagstone path since time began
It
is my flagstone path. I know this
but,
for a minute, I doubt
and
believe only
in
the white cat
~Mohja Kahf~
*
~Mohja Kahf~
*
8.
My Head Lives #2
My head lives on the
top floor of a casino overlooking
the
Gulf of Mexico;
it looks like a
whorehouse, all hot pink velvet and gold brocade, sticky smoke.
My lungs live in a beehive
in back of the
building. The bees sting my lungs on Sundays and holidays.
For ages, my stomach and guts
lounged around the
beach, sipping salt water and playing in the sand.
Lately, they are hiding in deep
water, tangled in
seaweed. They churn and twist.
My hands have always hung out
at the mall. They grab
shoppers, bundle them up, lug them home
for
my head to interrogate.
My genitals and legs
are buried deep under an abandoned sand castle—
only
my feet are visible—they wiggle at passers-by—
And my heart—I can’t
find my heart.
My heart got stung by a bee, only once, but it was a bad
bee.
~Eileen Murphy~
*
7.
Thing
At
eight years old
I
was lice infested,
dirty,
full of mud
with
big feet and
scarecrow
legs.
The
little boys
and
girls called
me
the ‘thing
beyond
the door’
as
I stood in my
doorway
tear
streaked
with
yellow
stained
buck
teeth and
lizard
green eyes
and
picked my
nose.
~Donna Dallas~
*
6.
All
the houses are connected on this block, a long spine of squares with flat
rooftops. They have infected each other
with an STD of bugs and mice over the years. I park in front of the old German
woman’s home. She is still alive, at
least 100 years old by now. Sitting in
her wheel chair at her front door she waves to me, a glimmer of memory lights
up her face and she seems younger. She
speaks to me in German, holds a complete conversation on her own. Perhaps she is speaking of when I was a
child, or the many dogs I walked past her home over the decades. Or the time she saw me laid out on the front
stoop half naked, bug-eyed, crawling through a heroin implosion that left me
half dead. I walk up the cold cement
steps into the eighty-something year old house. Like the rock of Gibraltar, it
is endless, solid and aged. Dark wood
floors captured the nicks of cheap stilettos throughout the years. The walls are stucco white and forbid you to
lean against their sharp pointed tips. The house is an arc, it envelopes me in
silence, I sit and stare at the fireplace that is empty and barren, same as my
head. I stare out the windows I peered
into many times trying to pry open the frame and shimmy through in search of
money or anything worth selling. I look at the top of the stairs where my lover
hung himself and rocked there, sprouting death in its blackened glory while I
laid incoherent nursing a very near overdose.
Comatose for perhaps a few days, I awoke to his rotting corpse while
fermenting in my own shit. I become the old Victorian mirror, white flowers
etched in circles around the frame. I
see the bones of myself, trapped again, still alone in the box of a house.
~Donna Dallas~
*
*
5.
Generations
When you walk in the
woods, it’s always best
to see everything, set
your body to rewind,
in case you miss
something. If you stay too long,
you might realise you
are nowhere, the footprints
you deposit mean little
to the tree’s arching body,
where nothing is off
limits; is this what freedom is?
Held by four directions,
form painted with earth
and held in its birth
suit, the bone stag sees you,
every mark, every
design, and trees reveal secrets
before we know them, the
faceless year disappears,
like a once trusted
friend, stealing away,
stuffing ideas into deep
dark pockets.
When the sun wakes, you
are older,
and count on things
more, there is a new mother,
three flowers to the
wind, and black skeleton branches
touch out for
acceptance. The struck tree
sees years come and go
like lightning,
the bone trumpet sounds
the winter’s stretching
drum skin, and strips
the body raw.
The stag waits in the
thicket, knowing the ways
of wordless stories,
dreaming to break ice again.
*
4.
Untitled
Autumn orchards are
hysterical;
A scarlet alarm,
Where his hands
scattered you like seed.
We shed our footprints
with the thaw.
Now boned trees erupt
Through frost skins.
Clouds pile up like
sullen beasts.
Our neighbours, locked
in yellow houses,
Have a shrouded illness:
Blood and stone.
The night,
Evocative of dead
leaves,
Seethes in torment,
Touched by a breeze
Without moisture or
comfort.
Your arms form ribs
around me.
They keep me.
~Natalie Crick~
*
3.
3.
a new orleans sadness
It was mardi gras in my mind.
It was mardi gras in the bras lined up on
clothes lines, up on close-line, close-view clothes lines
where
my mother rested best in bras and underwear--
don’t care ‘bout Father!
Farther, farther,
receding farther, Father ran like Hell, he ran like
he could see the panties in our
shantytown express-dry on our clothes line where they
dried and fried in sunlight we would show him if he
tried to see it.
He was always one for humming tunes,
the blues were favorites.
The blues were shades of
bras and underwear we hung in rungs of Hell where
Mom and I resided.
Clothes lines were our shantytown express-dry,
and Mom cried her eyes out nightly but we lied together
side-by-side
on blankets in the darkness in the only bed we owned
we looked outside
and as the panties dried
on clothes lines as they swung like bodies
bodies hanging, not worth saving
Mom and I can’t sleep
~Sarah Valeika~
*
~Sarah Valeika~
*
2.
Uncle Vanya, Vanya (inspired by Chekhov)
Uncle Vanya, you look like Uncle Vanya.
You ask Mother if she has any wine in the house and
“no, I don’t want any casserole”
but
“you should eat something,
you should you should” Mother says but
“I don’t want any casserole” so you let the blood-red
twinkle along into your cup but the sight isn’t a novelty,
you do not like this wine because it has not aged enough
but
Mother only just got it for her birthday.
Just got it for her birthday.
Did you remember her birthday?
yes
yes you remembered, you insist,
yes
and you look like Uncle Vanya when you say that because
your lips waggle a little but you didn’t remember,
so you slosh a little wine down your
throat-choke-throat-choke
tubes up there in your throat-choke-throat-choke
coughing wine just a little little so you can remember your
own mortality,
I guess,
you want to remember that wine could kill you but
won’t.
~Sarah Valeika~
*
1.
The Hernia Poem
My dad and I both have hernias
my dad’s is somewhere along his back
mine within my pelvic area- just above my
cock
decades of warehouse work will get you there
both too stubborn to go to a doctor
avoiding surgery and mesh
one day- a disc shall rupture in my father’s
back
he will yelp in pain- begging for aid
and somehow for some reason
my pelvis will substantially be involved
in my getting out of bed
only there shall be a rip and tear
with my genitals spilled on floor
what a mess- with no one to help
