May & June 2020
Vol V No III
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!
Tip: if it is underlined it is a clickable link.
Note: drop downs from the menu below sometimes take a few seconds to load.
Published bi-monthly
Free Verse Poetry Page with Suzanne Robinson
Use links at the bottom of this page, or the drop down menu above, to connect to our other poetry pages.
things only mania can do
chilly in my brain I
haven’t
had anything cold to eat
my hair is pushing
back from the front
unnaturally a woman
standing in the library
reminds an old
roommate I
wish I’d made amends
but here it has
pink sputtering
our bedroom walls
I want nontoxic
love a snowy house a
real skeleton peeking
pelvic cups something
wriggles beneath
my skin I feel sick, but
still haven’t eaten anything toes
are skipping a beat
this new song bottom
half of my face sticks
out from the want
Natasha Sharma’s poems represent growing up in the American Midwest as a second generation Indian, and touch on mental health issues, trauma, and ecstasies of the everyday. She holds a Masters in English and is working on her first chapbook.
Coefficient
Per usual what’s vilified is very vilified,
with all the plumbing and electrical behind
this temporary door and when all angles
are subtended bring the atom up,
and solar system down,
to scale. I’ll step them off and snap them up
and I’ll be equal to my thoughts,
occasionally in alignment,
thereby I may be contingent.
To what do I owe this honor?
To what honor do I owe? What do I owe?
A shiny object of contention or affection
won’t change state until it’s acted
on by some external force.
It’s too good to be true or false,
impossible or necessary,
until fossil footprints settle.
It’s T-minus thirty-seven, minus twenty-seven,
minus seventeen then minus seven,
but who’s counting down.
I’m crying to the bank, i.e., not crying —
this remiss is just my size.
This coefficient is for now a coefficient
not of friction but of bliss.
In a past century, Heikki Huotari attended a one-room school and spent summers on a forest-fire lookout tower. A retired math professor, he has won two poetry chapbook prizes and published three collections, the most recent being The Dog’s Meow, Uncollected Press, 2019.
London, Gatwick
Little red suitcase, four wheels,
Mouse-point: feet scurrying,
Whipping hard floor heels and mud-stained trainers . . .
Transatlantic flights are so . . .
The rhythm of the dance,
So many soles passing over, passing through,
Your boarding pass please.
Conveyor belts for bags and people,
People and bags,
Bags and people,
Bags in clothes of film,
Seal your suitcase;
Contactless preferred.
People in coats of deception,
Paint and make-up,
Every airport has Boots,
And ’Smiths.
Transported everywhere,
Limitless destinations,
Find your dream holiday,
A world at your doorstep.
Feet in line at immigration,
The straight lips, an inch above uniform,
Drawn on with a ruler,
Children’s art,
Politician’s games,
Culture in the hands of infant ministers,
All artists are amateurs once,
Beginners, novices,
First-time flyers,
Butterflies in the stomach,
Briefcase in hand,
Economy class sir?
Departure lounge of diversity,
At the end of a long and winding corridor,
It all looked the same,
Different coloured passports,
With different stamps,
Different ways of labelling,
Documenting,
Authorizing,
Controlling,
Dominating,
The same:
Tied to a little red flag,
Football hooligans
Are bringing it home,
To the same,
Again and again and again.
The little book of identity:
The triumphant compass,
For a globe distorted,
Or perhaps too flat,
Colours dance across it,
Aurora Borealis,
It’s art,
It’s real.
Gate closing.
Cartographers believed in its beauty,
But pencils believed in borders
And shades,
And weapons,
Never blame the artist,
It’s a faulty design
On the runway
With its broken stripes,
The plane in taxi,
You know you’re late,
But the time zone will amend it all,
The division will suffice,
A temporary solution,
How long is temporary?
The seatbelt sign is now on.
The lights lock low,
Window blinds are up:
You can’t see anything but clouds,
You can’t touch water,
Besides, the vacuum would kill you,
This is a deadly business,
Do not inflate the life jacket inside the cabin,
Meticulously tested,
You are perfectly safe,
but we’re avoiding THAT airspace;
there’s turbulence below.
Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.
Okay, I will.
In 2012, you had a bunker;
I had a faded photo of the sixties,
And before that . . .
As you watched the burning fires of the millennium
Sparking in the sky,
I had a camera,
But it couldn’t capture it:
The transient beauty of explosion,
Eruption,
Pompei,
Hiroshima,
Hiroshima,
Pompei,
Explosion,
Eruption,
Please peruse our in-flight magazine.
The lights dim;
The cabin crew crawl behind curtains,
Comatose.
The sky outside is navy velvet,
And it looks like the stars are down below,
Merely scraping the sky,
Those urban silhouettes,
With many windows looking out at many more,
Everyone is asleep now,
Even the pilot,
An automated message:
Prepare for landing.
Amber Natalie Kennedy lives in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. She is a student of English Literature and has been a member and leader of a number of Creative Writing Groups.
Talking to My Sister On A Cool Afternoon
Look now here in this photograph
we are all posing in the streetlight and moonlight
on our old street in Oakland
and look how me and you are wearing
the same kind of hat
except yours is the color of fresh
mahogany wood
and you’re holding the front edge of it
with your fingertips
and look how then
we didn’t take pictures
with arms around each other
I remember then you kept your hair
with the tone of a sun-kissed penny
Sister remember
how boys wouldn’t stop calling you
and the right boy
that I really wanted never wanted me
he kept glancing at you
and remember before we left the house
we relied on mirrors
to tell us how we look
and shortly before the photo was taken
we bounced down the street
singing a part of Destiny’s Child lyrics
I remember you were the one
that started it off
with the sexiest verse in the song
but oh wow look how in this photo
our bodies are facing more
toward the camera
none of us is showing any body skin
and our friends
are much bigger than us
haha isn’t that funny
First published in Conceit Magazine.
Victoria Hunter is from Pennsylvania. In October 2019, she appeared on the cover of Conceit Magazine. Her work has appeared in The Writer, Sparks of Calliope, WordFest Anthology, and other publications. She manages a YouTube channel dedicated to the craft of poetry.
Back To Herself
I see my daughter there as I walk by that room.
It was her bedroom years ago
but now is her studio.
She is painting Eden.
She needs a ladder to reach
the grandiose heights of the canvas.
The bright colors of a lost garden.
“Ayeka?”
G-d said to Adam.
“Where are you? Where do you stand?”
Where did she go after the birth?
What was so hard? I ask.
Just a baby, non-stop crying, full
breasts, spit-up, endless
dirty diapers, sleepless days, sleepless nights.
Was that why she dissolved
into a heap on the couch, seeping
into the cushions?
Is that why she left that room,
that studio, those babies,
me?
To become transparent,
diaphanous, floating through
some reality of her own making
and though I, her mother, tried to hold her,
she pulled back and
remained secreted,
buried in her own breath.
Where she went I cannot know.
The brown cushions hold her secrets,
like the canvas holds the paint,
like the colors hold the shading
like the sky holds the mystery of Eden
in its shimmering, cloudless blue
like the bed holds the dream
like the shell holds the promise of life
like the garden holds the buds
but now she is once again
painting
now in that room.
Now, she is back.
Tova Hinda Siegel’s work has appeared in Salon.com, I’ll Have Wednesdays, On The Bus, and several anthologies. A midwife, cellist, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Tova lives in Los Angeles with her husband.
White Lies
They say children learn by example,
So we tell them, “Do as I say, not as I do!”
But we know that is not enough,
Because enough is never enough,
And we are old and wise, and the
World never slipped through our
Fingers, so we lie those sweet little lies,
And tell them grownups never do:
Fairies barter in teeth and elves in toys;
Babies are born on the wings of a stork,
And a fat man can pierce that narrow divide
Between Heaven and Earth as long as he
Has a sleigh and a bright red coat,
But these are not the stories we want them
To believe, innocent as they are.
Oh the secrets we keep as they are nestled
In their beds, too tired for such tales we
Could spin, but one day they will listen
So very, very well, and then such secrets
They will have to tell.
Sean Ferrier-Watson is a professor of English at Collin College in Frisco, Texas. He has published poetry in Forces and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and he has published scholarly articles in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts and others.
Dec. 1st, 2019
write to me,
like you remember me
from a past life,
like you’re still here,
like i’ll walk into the kitchen
just to breathe in your neck,
to have you fold in my arms,
to leave my hands imprinted
on the small of your back
tonight i’ll write to you,
like i’ll remember where
your lips begin,
like you never left,
like you’ll be in my bed later,
kissing me in places
you somehow knew,
laughing in a way i never have,
with my hand on your neck
with no way to tell
who we are.
Kyle Walsh is 26 years old and lives in St. Louis. He never knows how to communicate who he is, only the romanticized version of the best parts of him that he puts into his work.
Archive of Free Verse Poetry with Suzanne Robinson by issue:
March 2020 January 2020 November 2019 September 2019 July 2019 May 2019
March 2019 January 2019 November 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018
March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017
August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017
December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 June 2016 May 2016
Archive of Free Verse Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch by issue:
March 2020 January 2020 November 2019 September 2019 July 2019 May 2019