December 2017 Vol. II No. XII
Not your ordinary poetry magazine!
If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you!
General Poetry Page with Suzanne Robinson
Use links at the bottom of this page to connect to our other poetry pages.
Emerson
If Emerson was right that the earth
Laughs in flowers, then it must cry in people.
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Michael T. Smith​
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The Just Before Dying
Ten days remembered—the pressure
from his hand, a flow of nurses,
the damp swabs dipped in morphine.
The woman who played a harp
in his room. And the last breath,
the last beat against my palm,
conjuring, the fleeting—
the smell of my children’s hair
as infants, fireflies,
a slight sliver
of a moon. Small eruptions—
pebbles of rain on the pond.
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Sarah Dickenson Snyder has written poetry since she knew there was a form with conscious line breaks. She has two poetry collections, The Human Contract and Notes from a Nomad. Recently, poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Stirring: a Literary Journal, Whale Road Review, Front Porch, The Sewanee Review, and RHINO. In May of 2016, she was a 30/30 Poet for Tupelo Press. One poem was selected by Mass Poetry Festival Migration Contest to be stenciled on the sidewalk in Salem, MA, for the annual festival, April 2017. Another poem was nominated for Best of Net 2017.
https://sarahdickensonsnyder.com
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Hospice
Caught in the snare of She'ol, dew gives brief life to dust
as they pull the tubes loose, hand me a bag of pills.
In the wake of disaster, we drive home from the hospital.
I dissect the memories for her, one last time
alphabetize faces in stacks of photographs
with the passionless objectivity of a grunt laborer
excavating layers of ash-buried Pompeii. I dissect the memories for her
as they come, unbidden, help catalogue
and file our stories away impartially as
a lab tech methodically filling slides with samples of cancer, she
mutters, "so that's where we went wrong"
too many times for comfort.
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Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center
in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Tampa Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle, and her published books include Walking Twin Cities, Music Theory for Dummies, and Ugly Girl.
A Mass Casualty Event
When I see photos from our opioid crisis
I see what we’ve lost- heroes, heroines-
the folks choose heroin instead.
Not surprising, the place we’re in.
Come on. We all want something’ bigger
to believe in. Else we wanna quit, else
we wanna throw in the towel,
up and leave a life that don’t seem to
give a damn, anyhow. Collapsed towns
hinge on a life once was. Industry
before automation. Too much too fast and
the rust belt gets the dust. Young men
in track shorts and sports socks with burned out
holes stretch by coffee tables, next to La-Z-boys
but these ain’t lazy boys these are boys
without hope, these are fathers and sons and
brothers and dreamers who once had a hero (or two)
now lookin for the pop of a vein to take the place
of past promises and goals. Gone Fishin’. Out To Lunch.
Leave a message at the beep. No body’s home.
A generation decides checkin out is the safest place to be-
just put me out of my misery- one from Dayton might
say, recovery’s too hard and life don’t care.
Where have all the flowers gone? Abandoned trailers everyone.
Foreclosed houses, mountains of debt. Make me disappear
is what they want and (sadly) get.
Tranquilize like an elephant. That’s how big the pain.
That’s how deep this river runs.
Money talks. A generation dies. Out stretched arms
don’t even make it ‘cross the threshold, once reached for the sky.
Now the sky don’t even care. The sun don’t shine on everyone,
don’t ya know. And who can blame them.
The morgues say they can’t keep up. Who will stand up?
Roll back sleeves, lift the pain of our creation,
inject meaning into lives, drop in the angels, hold out
for a hero, insert a heroine, give ‘em hope not dope.
Transmute the pain, it don’t seem to be goin’ away.
What’s at stake? The country we made. Woman,
man, the country we made.
​
How I Like My Quiet
I love quiet that lets me hear the house talk.
Intermittent shifts and shuffles.
A random thud.
We sit together, trading stories.
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​
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Lilly Bright is a filmmaker, writer, mother and performing artist currently living in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in the Huffington Post, The Establishment, Mutha Magazine as well as in public readings around the Los Angeles area. She earned her BA from Goddard College in 2001 with a focus on dance and woman’s studies. When not standing at her desk, typing, Lilly can be found in the kitchen, baking.
Turned and Gone Away
For my loved sister, Jean
Your house,
gripped by flood,
floats from its foundations,
sinking ever lower.
You sit on the roof.
I cry out to you,
swim, throw a rope,
beg you to leave
but you can only wring your hands,
turn and float away.
Small and diminished,
you tremble before a precipice
filled with darkness.
I cry out that I understand
your fears of age,
diminished powers, loneliness,
the horror that shuffling dependency
may lead you into actions once unspeakable
but you can only wring your hands,
turn and step away.
In deep denial you reel
from the mirror, truth.
You close your eyes
and cover your ears.
I cry out that I understand
how time and circumstance have trapped you,
that you have grown far too old for truth,
that you need to pretend you still are
the wonderful person you once were
but you can only wring your hands,
stagger and flee away.
You shuffle
down a long corridor
in the slow and painful way
of your last years.
I cry out that I understand
how extreme age forced you
into secrets, deceptions,
and, much worse, sad betrayal
of some you so loved.
I shout I love you and forgive you
but the words echo and bounce
down the empty corridor.
You have ceased wringing your hands.
You have turned and gone away.
​
Neil Creighton is an Australian poet whose work as a teacher of English and Drama brought him into close contact with thousands of young lives, most happy and triumphant but too many tragically filled with neglect. It also made him intensely aware of how opportunity is so unequally proportioned and his work reflects strong interest in social justice. Recent publications include Poetry Quarterly, Poeming Pigeon, Silver Birch Press, Rat's Ass Review, Praxis Mag Online, Ekphrastic Review, Social Justice Poetry and Verse-Virtual. He blogs at windofflowers.blogspot.com.au
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Odd
One morning I decided not to make
his tea. Then I stopped counting out
the vitamins. He was late for work,
but he made his own ham sandwich.
I stopped buying the ham he liked, and
he made do with salami. I quit going
outside to wave good-by. I didn’t
watch his face, blurred by the wind-
shield, already concentrated on his work.
Sometimes I feel guilty writing poems
while he bobs around the kitchen, even
talking to himself because he’s in a
hurry and will probably forget his wallet
or his phone. Writing requires privacy,
a cell of quiet, drained of his requirements.
It’s neither selfish nor unselfish to want
to be alone and think. Some of us go
out in the world, some of us bring it in.
He doesn’t miss me much, or at least
it doesn’t seem that way. Odd that
I’d want him to complain. Writing is
invisible work. What am I doing?
He’s ready to leave, and I’ve already
planned that it’s okay if he forgets to
kiss me. Who am I kidding? This is
about the silence after he’s gone.
Birth Control, 1975
The rain falls in lead pellets.
Today you are seeing the doctor.
He is old and his hands were made
for swinging blunt instruments,
but he flattens one palm on your
stomach, and stretches you wide
with the other. Your knees resist,
you say sorry to the wall. He swabs
his gloved fingers with petroleum
jelly and puts them in places you are
still yourself unsure of. He
scrapes a sample from inside you.
Now the rain falls in dollops
and blisters the treatment room’s
windows. He pinches your nipples
as if they were guilty.
The clamps of the speculum are
collapsed—you are entire, not
a room to be inspected. He never
looks you in the face—he’d know you
are the same age as his daughter.
The lady at the desk gives you a bag.
You're young enough that it’s exciting
to open it although it’s just a pamphlet
and a metal tube of something greasy.
Outside, it’s still raining. You light
the cigarette you stole from your mom.
There’s no one to tell about this.
How he inserted one rubber disk
after another, sizing you as if for
a special shoe. A nurse was supposed
to be there, but she never appeared.
He looked at you as already damaged
beyond recall, a cause lost without
a fight, a wound he couldn’t heal.
The raindrops drop like petals on
the sidewalk. You wonder if the boy
will call tonight.
​
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Janet Smith