Thirteen Myna Birds

13.

Myna Girl

I know I’m home when amid thunderous Viking hair, my glass eye droops

I know I’m the one clean thing—tear this website down with my teeth, find another inside of me

I know you expected tea light séance, not radioactive mist

I didn’t want my head to be so huge & flat

I didn’t ask for such adulation—really, darling, stop eating the hem of my dress; it’s plastic

I didn’t want this doll face with round wet mouth wound

because they are going to stuff me with donuts instead of spices from canopic jars

because they are going to make me into a religion, a new one, a cult built on my x-rayed bones

because the “remove bones & organs” sign on my chest is a reminder to myself about what I need

to do to break free

~Eileen Murphy~

12.

Duct Tape Dad

Dad, duct tape your heart

like you used instead of
Scotch tape to wrap Mom’s
Christmas present

Dad, duct tape your hands

like you lap over the insanely
sharp edge of the safety razor
you keep loose in your tool box

Dad, duct tape your fingers

like the fake ring you made me of tape
then threw out

Dad, duct tape your mouth

like you seal the fish you catch &
gut & throw in the freezer

Dad, duct tape your feet

like you tried to stick together my mug
I got from Grandma

you kicked on the floor & broke

into a million pieces
b/c you were mad at Mom

Dad, duct tape yourself

like my favorite doll--broken, you wound sticky
silver stuff all over
her—now unrecognizable

alien—like you

~Eileen Murphy~

*

11.

Abort Mission

you need collision

you need disaster

you need to stop thinking about the past

you need a shot of bourbon

you need another shot of bourbon

you need to clear your head

you need a lobotomy

you need collision

you need disaster

you need a stranger

you need to check ID

because anyone under 23

is simply too young

you need a shot of bourbon

you need collision

you need it again

you need a line of cocaine

you need another

and another

you don’t need another shot of bourbon

but drink it anyway

you need to forget the past

you need to be the disaster

you need collision

you need to run away

you need a plane ticket

you need a country with a language

other than your own

you need to find unknown territory

(you need to be the disaster)

you need to be uncovered

you need to be consumed

you need to be the disaster

you need collision

you need it all over again

you need the world to revolve around you

it does, but it’s not enough

you need to run

you need to keep running

you need to run away

you need to conquer unknown lands

you need flesh, untranslatable

you need to find a stranger

you need to be a stranger

you need to be 22

you need to be 35

you need to keep running

you always keep running

you always keep running away

you need to keep running

you always need

collision, disaster

~Alyssa Yankwitt~

10.

TRUMP AS A FIRE WITHOUT LIGHT #545

Everywhere is the distinction between the air and air supply. I have already been called

kindling. That is the language fire knows. That is the language fire breeds. Once again

we are all searching for the water’s edge. That’s fine. Stick your heels in the pool. Turn

to the flames. Move with the tide. Become the time. Keep breathing. Let the fear

drown behind you.

~Darren C. Demaree~

9.

Four Worn Out Wheels

Four worn out wheels and a beaten up padded chair.
A set of broken brakes and a pair of useless legs.
A man once full of hopes and dreams
now lives with the reality that
very few, if any, will come to fruition.

He often feels his existence is pathetic
and the autonomic worthlessness consumes him
as his independence is slowly stripped away.
No longer able to reach his goal,
doors and stairs block him from his destination.

People are constantly staring at him.
They stay away as if he’s contagious.
Children stare and point,
so do the adults.
Onlookers' whispers start and spread
as if they were the audience and
he was on trial for the crime of being different.
None ever approach him and ask the questions
that need to be asked.
If they did things would be different.
But they don’t and things aren’t.
The man is lonely and feels
like an outcast from the rest of society.

The man has many fears.
One consumes him every time
his eyes close or the lights go out.
He will never find that special person.
Someone who will look past the outside.
Someone who will love during the good and the bad.
He will never get married.
If he loved her why put her through
the same pain and torture?
And if he is to never marry,
then he will never have children of his own.
His kids can’t be disappointed in him
and won’t have the possibility of sharing
the same disability.

All that this man can do is dream and write.
He can keep on keeping on,
do what needs to be done,
and push his fears aside.
He waits for life to roll on
upon his four worn out wheels
and beaten up padded chair.

~Craig Firsdon~

Lily Water

A toast to Convallaria majalis—

Raise a crystal vase, sample humility, sweetness

and toxin—Our Lady’s tears or maybe Eve’s

when she was kicked out of the garden.

Bite the red berries, dig rhizomes running underground

mash fragrant floral bells and count to thirty-eight,

the number of cardiac glycosides decelerating our hearts.

Liquid shards of glass pierce the tongue, esophagus

and comprehension. Drops of the Return of Happiness

tattoo Ladders to Heaven on our chins.

~Jules Jacob~

*

On this Duvet

I have spilt ink:

for a second, it sat imperiously

on the downy surface

glistening; a perfect dome

before it fractured.

From a bubble trapped under a fragile film

blue rivulets burst forth.

The skin is cracked – fractal –

blue lines relentless – running over soft fabric;

soaking into the white cotton fibres

and marking each thread with a stamp of blue.

Royal blue.

Soap froths up – mad –

scolding each stained strand into a meeker,

less vibrant version of itself.

Yet still the ink remains –

relinquishing nothing but a blush,

remaining a blur of psychiatrists’ logic,

sitting there – frowning.

~Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe~

*

Tits on a Boy

Because everyone here is older than you,

means it’s your job to carry down the concrete saw

the mini jackhammers down the ladder

the wrench of your back, the quiver of your knees.

Because of thieves, you chain 40 hours of work to rusty I-beams,

the wet saw that numbed your hands,

the hammer drill that kicked you off a 12 foot ladder,

smacked the work ethic out of your wrists.

It’s not safe to wear a watch here, but you’ll know it’s over when they tell you it is,

when someone pulls a static radio by its tail

and Led Zeppelin stops playing. No one invites anyone to anything,

but you’ll know it’s Friday from the plume of exhaust,

the rattling trucks you’re meant to follow

to the bar you’ve never heard of,

sit next to a man who called you useless as tits on a boy, laughing.

Keep watching as their faces change with every shot they throw back

the next beer they buy you. They are smiling.

They’ve waited their whole lives for this

~Robert Walicki~

Persecution is a Team Sport

The potato sack over his head

reeked of potatoes

and he wanted to complain

to the flight attendant

but he spoke no English

and was pretty sure there was

no flight attendant

on this flight.

There was nothing, in fact.

Just the noise of the plane engines

for many hours.

And when it landed

he was wheeled into some kind

of air hanger

surrounded by many angry men

in uniform

who wanted to know

what he didn’t

know

for months,

electrocuting

his testicles many times

as if he were a

lightbulb

that wouldn’t

answer.

~Ryan Quinn Flanagan~

A Better Place

No corpse

just a box

with her ashes

in it

and her picture on the wall;

she went up in flames,

to wherever--

a dark-eyed over-sized priest

who looks as if he stepped

from "The Godfather" movie

says that she is in Heaven

with Christ;

my older brother gives a eulogy

that brings a tear to my eyes

and causes my sister-in-law to weep;

there is nothing else for anyone

to say

except for the priest

who insists that she is in

a better place,

to which

no one disagrees;

we put our coats on

and shuffle out the door

for the eats

at a restaurant which

none of us has been to

since the last funeral.

~Wayne F. Burke~

Dull Dolls

Unstillness needs to seep—

I’ve had my fill of dull dolls wearing symmetrical dresses

in and out of the parade always staying in focus

for the ubiquitous camera;

keeping a pasted smile, the wrought porcelain face

appearing lifeless; empty black eyes numbly staring straight

through, missing the core of compassion; the cheeks doused with rouge

to the point of partial red; pallor reigning suspiciously

supreme among the textures of existence,

with the darkest shade of motionlessness

simultaneously residing among the limbs, I notice their stride—

a broken march harvested in the name of lobotomy;

legs meeting each other’s pace— a seeming herd of lemmings

roaming a landscape of cliff-sides; fragile bodies

caped in the pretense of solidity; soldiers of the futile lifespan

of a June midnight; their frames glisten with a blinding pallor,

saturated in the colorless embers of stolid minds

growing densely blank with each day on the shelf—

fake hair dangles to its proper pose;

brushed to the side; keeping clear of the dust

that hangs in the air above their immutable oneness;

mandatory salutation keeps them in the onslaught

of similar greetings; the smiles always curved to the stance

of acceptable angles; hollow kinships emerge,

worn in addition to their dresses as an announcement

to the world that they are involved; hypnotic stillness

consumes their faces always blushing with an unpalpable personality;

blanketing their bodies kept polished

to a lifeless hue; defining their glass heads

propped on a strict spine; keeping their dresses unwrinkled.

as they imagine themselves to be in the meat of their lives;

these dolls with lifeless black-buttoned eyes;

so skinless and unflaked by the time turning in minutes of their unmoving perch;

I shake my head and say again—

unstillness needs to seep.

~Heath Brougher~

*

My Friend Nemesis

You are my hollow oak,

my left-outside-too-long staleness,

my crutch; I lean on you in bad times

and in good—you, the powder, the poppyflower, the wretch,

the thunderstorm inside my head,

always brooding, beckoning with that flash, that glimmer

always heavy with a bucketful of evil,

the tempt, the blade behind the smile,

tilting to one side, disrupting the balance.

Always there to console me as you nail me to the cross,

to keep in limbo my life turned lame,

burnt to smolder in the ash;

the nothingness you churn with a grinding grin;

the gentle fields, the massage of the thoughts,

the hoax, the vex, the vicious demon disease unshakable,

the makeshift savior, my lost spirit,

my powder, my poppyflower, my wretch.

~Heath Brougher~

*

DEAD SOUNDS

The creaking door of

an old farmhouse,

the sheep skull knocking,

the clap of shutters,

the sough of rotting

palings in the wind.

The thud of driftwood

on a beach at night,

the clack of shell,

the hiss of foam,

rattle of shark bone

on the wearied rocks.

~John Grey~

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