Tag: Poetry

the wreck[on]ing ball blue(s)

                                              / loud laughers in the hands of the state 

/ we are witness

& commotion is the atmosphere we swim in / we be drawled dialect

made new by our loud untamed uproar / we ebonic vernacular to

create everything from nothing / we gumbo ya-ya

                                                                 to survive the crossroads  

                                                       / shout fuck you fucking fucks!!

to complaints that Black folks are too angry / & like / you know /

need to stop yelling / we are a people who talk over one another / 

jumping in

& out of conversations / the megawatt sensory thrum in the room

when we know that we’re alive / & living out loud    

                                                                    we are an open people  

of candor in fellowship / the rock & a hard place / where we find

our diaspora of tribe / beyond the caution of our mouths frozen

wider than / what we really want to say / about It’s complicated / or

we can’t discuss an ongoing investigation /

about No comment! / which is a straight line

                     between the blatant lie / & the omission of the truth /  

between what’s real & / what we believe we saw / or remembered

what happened / that is most often

more one-sided than it is reported to be /

is what happened to us / but not what they did / the killings & our

dying [as the eye—such the object] tethered to 

the oppressive gravity of the outside gaze / the body behind the

body camera / is the eye only sees in each thing /

that for which it looks /

                 & it only looks for that / of which it already has an idea /

we are as legible as an enemy of the state / we are homicides trembled

together / en-flocked between the perseverance of a pendulum /           

                           & the destructive arc of a wreck[on]ing ball /   

Note: Italicized fragments by William Blake and Alphonse M. Bertillon.   

henry 7. reneau, jr. writes words of conflagration to awaken the world ablaze, an inferno of free verse illuminated by his affinity for disobedience—is the spontaneous combustion that blazes from his heart, phoenix-fluxed red & gold, like a discharged bullet that commits a felony every day, exploding through change is gonna come to implement the fire next time. He is the author of the poetry collection, freedomland blues (Transcendent Zero Press) and the e-chapbook, physiography of the fittest (Kind of a Hurricane Press), now available from their respective publishers. Additionally, his collection, A Non-Violent Suicide Poem [or, The Saga of The Exit Wound], was a finalist for the 2022 Digging Press Chapbook Series. His work is published in Superstition Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, Zone 3; Poets Reading the News and Rigorous. His work has also been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

Alstroemeria

You sprouted these Orange King Alstroemeria from seeds
twenty-five years ago.
Gently you placed them
between strata of moist paper towels,
and when shoots appeared
you poked them one by one into the soil.
They bloomed only once, and afterwards—
nothing.


Now, after two successive springs
fluent in rain,
they’ve suddenly ripvanwinkled.
Many blossoms
pop up from the ivy ground cover
eager as fledglings
greeting a parent bird bearing morsels.


I’m so glad that alstroemeria know
how to alchemize leaden skies
into golden petals
without any help from us
because we’re far from nature’s most dependable friend,
and long after we’re gone, flowers will rise up
toward brightness and starlight
and the muck of puddles.

ZACK ROGOW is the author, editor, or translator of more than twenty books or plays. His ninth book of poems, Irreverent Litanies, was published by Regal House. He is also writing a series of plays about authors. The most recent of these, Colette Uncensored, had its first staged reading at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and ran in London, Barcelona, San Francisco, and Portland. His blog, Advice for Writers, features more than 250 posts on topics of interest to writers. He serves as a contributing editor of Catamaran Literary Reader. www.zackrogow.com

Santa Fe

You with your

piñon dry air,

brittle brushes of sage,

unfiltered sun glaring

against a painted

blue sky. Your harsh light

fed me, incubated my frail frame.

I thought—

when I came to you,

a ghost husk of a self

with turquoise soul unmounted,

hanging from ribs,

I thought—

when I bowed before your cross

of martyrs at sunset,

when I fell at the alter

of your clear stars—

I thought you could kill me.

Dehydrate my heart,

shuffle it under

your shifting sands, cover my name

in forest fire ash.

Instead, you let me drink

from speckled watermelon

breasts, infused me with blood

of Christ-the-Mountain-Man.

You rested a yellow

cactus flower

beside my bleached

white skull

and called it art.

ALIYAH WARWICK is a student in Maharishi International University’s MFA in Creative Writing program. She enjoys dabbling in dance, puppetry, Dungeons & Dragons, and languages like Italian and Swedish. You can find an essay she wrote about her experience learning Italian in Zenith Literary Magazine. Her poetry was published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal and will be featured in the forthcoming anthology, Conestoga Zen, Issue 2.

Ferning (Kvinna)

Embroidering in Clara’s language,

my ovum, my egg, sheds its snakeskin follicle

and throws itself into my darkness.

It is the fertile crescent tonight, and it’s my

great-great-grandmother’s fingers that reach out

to the oval shimmer,

fimbria pulling the delicate pearl into my cistern,

my red sinew.

I can see the Tor from here! I shout,

climbing mound after mound of the Green Mother’s body.

The Earth is fertile. And I have my poppy seed.

It is symphonic and delightful.

Eat the water, my pearl, my shining descendant,

I say to star in my belly,

eat it with your hands.

This egg tells me that ova need more than water,

that they desire fruit like their other mother.

I am an orchard woman now.

Blastocyst, zygote,

cells dividing in their miniature geometry.

In a library of embryos, this one would shine

and sing upon me–

unfolding like lace made of light and new flesh.

She is the animal, burrowing, and I am the dirt,

and I am already full of her;

her scent, her texture.

She looks at me in the dark,

and I think, there is no country, no volcano

wide enough to hold this child.

I call out anyway:

Come to me now, in these startling millennia,

and show me your first, truest form–

scarlet, sharp, and female.

ALORAH WELTI is a nineteen-year-old Minnesota-born feminist, synesthete, and emerging poet and artist. Her work has been featured in the anthology Re-membering with Goddess: Healing the Patriarchal Perpetuation of Trauma (Girl God Books, 2022) and is upcoming in Allium, A Journal of Poetry & Prose. She currently lives on stolen Mohican and Wabanaki land, now called Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with her family.

Two Poems

ALTON BAY VILLANELLE

Flimsy butter and russet leaves

twirl in eddies, like palms, indexes and thumbs

interlace.

Thwack of wood duck’s striated tail.

Flitter of sunfish. This lake ebbs and bubbles and hums.

Flimsy butter and russet leaves

coat the grease that spills from motorboats. Toads sing

with puffy glands. Spur-throated insects jaunt in mud,

interlace

their spindly legs. Ting.

Wind sharpens, the thumbs

of flimsy butter and russet leaves

join in whirlwind dance

atop dusk-light on water. The lithe swan

plucks at plumes, white bits interlace

and swirl as if writing. Spinning in gusts, wings

and thumbs

of flimsy butter and russet leaves

interlace.

Collector

attic scattered hay

searching beneath snarls of wood

for words unfurled purred

(in the y of yes,

and circle e, one arm curved

with flowers, and s)

in broken shingles.

rain gurgles, beams stow moisture.

I have spent my life

(Stuck in the twilight

is a tumble of bright stars

that blink up and down)

searching famous homes

–palms over smooth floor sanded

down to a softness

the side of your thumb–

carriage house in franklin rumored

to have housed him

(in the bottom drawer

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s bureau

gauze holds baby teeth)

said to have held her

(munch’s girl, signed lithograph

her frayed hair —)

void of memory,

useless tasks, I do not grieve

for my father.

ROSAMARIA is an experimental playwright, poet and screenwriter from Boston, MA. She writes for both indoor and outdoor stages, and is an alum of Company One Theatre of Boston. Her latest poem, ‘Aunt Mariana’s Dream,’ was published in Truancy Magazine in 2019. Her short play, ZOE AND EDDIE: ZOOM, was included in the Smith and Kraus Anthology, Laughter is the Best Medicine, December 2021. Rosamaria is currently working with Nuisance Barking Productions filming her new project, a short horror, ‘Viola.’

Two Poems

i want to tell her dead girls don’t get into harvard

sometimes i feel like every door in the world could be locked and i wouldn’t know the difference. like how many sides does a window really have. why are there so many tree trunks in my front yard. / mom, did we buy a hatchet? a liar is always a mouth but a mouth is not always a boy.

actually, i’m sitting in a bathtub and and some woman is getting paid to tell me water doesn’t exist.

teenage girls love to say hometown like we didn’t watch it burn. your guidance counselor loves to say suspension like you started the fire. sometimes, all it takes is an afterparty. the balloons deflate and you are on a boat in the middle of his basement. administration tucks you in her file cabinet. someone will “look into it”. the men flip our stories like an hourglass.

how many of us will leave screaming before the door slams?

somewhere in a small town, there is a girl who can’t say her own name. in july she will say what she should’ve said in january.

i want to tell her graduation and a house in the city

what is left here but a nickname you wish they’d stop calling you. a prom you never attended but remember so well. there is a summer break hung in each of our closets.

sometimes, all you have to lose is your own hands.

things the kids [didn’t know]

when it snows in nevada [when grandmas body has begun to freeze]

she crosses the stateline with a hammer in her bag. [she doesn’t carry a knife anymore, lost it somewhere in her last marriage]

when she shows up at our door, the oven is buzzing and the dogs are barking and my mom is yelling about the pipes and [my grandfather is telling my mother that we will only ever be women] and the news is reminding us that a body is [temporary], i never know how much i will miss this noise. until i do.

when it snows in nevada, grandma writes her [will] in front of our fireplace “it’s really just that pair of earrings and my bible” and “i hope rod will give the knife back so that you girls can [protect yourself] when im gone”. she chuckles as the hospice nurse changes her dressing. i want this to be a metaphor. but grandma is gone, a year this spring. she asked me to build her a house. and now, i write her into every story i tell. look how honestly we can live [beneath my fingertips].

when it snows in nevada, when grandma [and her care team] are moved into my room, we begin hanging her life from the walls. old scrapbook pages and [clothes she grew out of and then back into]. she wants to say goodbye but she doesn’t want a funeral.

[when the pain started spilling from under the welcome mat. when her stomach was filled with fists. when none of us left the house. the women gather around her like we are a pack of sorry animals. in our living room, my mother speaks with certainty. it is the first time in months that the birds leave her chest. my grandfather still doesn’t know].

i am only a child for as long as i can hold my breath. i only know what is whispered into my door-hinge. i only know what the police report says. i only know-

[loss like this].

MYA RIGOLI is an eighteen year old poet. She loves iced coffee, reading with her dogs, and true crime. Her work has been featured by Button Poetry, the California Endowment, and Get Lit Words Ignite. She has competed in the international youth slam Brave New Voices, as well as winning the Classic Slam. She is pursuing a veterinary degree.

Caesura

Within this ellipse

recall that it’s a process.

A glimmer of hummingbirds

circles the feeder, peacock, rust.

Beaking nectar, they hum back

to the rain-wet maple, still

bare-limbed, no leaves,

just buds waiting to open,

seed pods falling

in the yard below.

Inside, my piles grow—

today I’ll fold the clothes

that comprise the bedroom

desk-pile. The weight

of all my coats

hovers somewhere

between heft

and feathers.

Right now these coats

are my boulder:

a godsend.

CALEB NICHOLS is a writer and musician from California. His poems have appeared in Unstamatic: A Micro Lit Mag, and his music has been featured on Paste and Out. He records music along with his husband as one half of the indie pop duo Soft People.