Literary as hell.

Category: Poetry (Page 4 of 20)

Poetry by Simon Perchik

You limp the way a stream

will soothe a single rock

and along the bottom

remembers this path

as darkness and dry leaves

though you don’t look down

–you hear it’s raining :the hush

not right now but at night

these cinders float to the surface

keep one foot swollen, the other

has so little and for a long time now

the listening in secret.

Continue reading

Poetry by Holly Day

The Next Day

 

The alarm went off and we found that the world

hadn’t ended, that all the ramblings of the church elders

weren’t true. My husband sighed and rolled out of bed

found there were only dirty clothes left for him to wear

sighed again, dressed, went to work. 

 

I could hear birds chirping in the yard

a squirrel on the roof, cars

passing on the road out front. 

I held onto my dreams of apocalypse

for a few moments longer, savoring visions

of the angels, the devastation

that could still be waiting just outside the door. 

 

Butterfly Cage

 

when I was pregnant, all of my dreams

were about snakes. as much as I tried

to dream only about baby kittens, baby puppies

human babies, my nights would be filled

with twisting pythons gathered in knots

inside me, their slick skin undulating

in the dark, pushing and bumping as if

trying to find a way out.

 

friends without children would ask me 

what it was like to be pregnant and I’d

have to lie. I was so worried that

imagining the baby inside me was a coiled serpent

in my stomach

meant that I was already a bad mother

meant something was wrong with my baby.

 

“It’s like being a butterfly house, ” I’d say instead.

“I’m all full of fluttering butterflies.” I’d put his or her hand

on my straining stomach as I spoke, whispering

“Can you feel them move? Can you feel it?

 

Isn’t it wonderful?”

 

The Light

 

We wait for the bombs to feel us out

pass the potatoes, say grace over the odd angels

that have watched over us for years

through the stained-glass windows of old churches

through the eyes of Orthodox iconography. This is a moment of peace

that will never come again.

 

Through the windows, the strength of distant concussions

fold trees in half, take grain silos and snap power lines. 

We turn up the gas, clear the dinner table

I put a knife in your hand, just in case.

 

The sky grows as dark as if seen through closed eyes

windows shake and fly apart. Hands

over their eyes, I stretch out next to the children

tell them it’s just the sound of His voice, there’s nothing 

to be afraid of,  it’ll all work out in the end. 

 

Dirty American Poem #3

 

the soldiers didn’t seem to care

that the hotel we were staying in

was haunted. they didn’t seem even a little interested

when we told them chairs were moving all by themselves

that we could hear voices whispering in the bathroom pipes

that the clocks had all stopped exactly at midnight.

 

the people in the streets outside

didn’t seem to care either, seemed more concerned with

pushing back against the soldiers, standing ground

in front of their own crumbling, possibly haunted hovels

seemed more annoyed than anything when we

said we needed to find another place to stay. 

 


Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Grain, and Harvard Review. Her newest poetry collections are Where We Went Wrong (Clare Songbirds Publishing), Into the Cracks (Golden Antelope Press), Cross Referencing a Book of Summer (Silver Bow Publishing), and The Tooth is the Largest Organ in the Human Body (Anaphora Literary Press).

“Shattered” by Marc Alan Di Martino


Marc Alan Di Martino is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author of the collection Unburial (Kelsay, 2019). His work appears in Baltimore Review, Free Inquiry, Innisfree, Rattle, Rust + Moth, Tinderbox, Valparaiso Poetry Review and many other journals and anthologies. His second collection, Still Life with City, will be published by Pski’s Porch in 2020. He lives in Italy.

Spring 2020 Contest Finalist: “Another Failed LDR” by Jennifer Ruth Jackson

Another Failed LDR

 

I taste him in your mouth, his name stretched

past three syllables on your frosted tongue.

Combination of lime & taffy dreams. Lipstick

 

on your teeth like perfumed blood. Kiss goodbye

blotted on the bathroom mirror. You hold

phones in place of babies & beaus. Condensed

 

love pressed to your ear like a conch shell.

It isn’t waves you long to hear, anymore

but merry message-chimes. Acronyms

 

absorbed into your workday. I’m shocked I hear

him in your voice, your disconnected overage,

the lack of hang-ups as you brush my gums

 

in your need to feel something IRL.

We all sound the same in text form. You won’t

even have to close your eyes & pretend.

 


Jennifer Ruth Jackson is an award-winning poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Red Earth ReviewBanshee, and more.  She runs a blog for disabled and/or neurodivergent writers called The Handy, Uncapped Pen from an apartment she shares with her husband. Follow her on Twitter @jenruthjackson

Poetry by Simon Perchik

*

What you open leans against wood

that is not a door you can muffle

put your arm around the only sound

 

when you knock on this kitchen table

whose corners were broken off

straight down, still lit, letting you in

 

circle her mouth not yet the room

left over and listen for the smoke

around the hush from small fires.

 

*

Just died and its rain

is already snow, comforts

the obituary page

 

with moonlight pieces

slowly circling down

as that star-shaped lullaby

 

small stones still look for 

–it’s this morning’s

though over your head the deaths

 

are hidden in silence

begging for water

that doesn’t break apart

 

the way each sky

is hollowed out for another 

–you make a sea

 

for these dead, each name

a boat, sails, the spray

midair and out loud. 

 

*

This tree abandoned at last

flows past as ravines and riverbeds

and can’t fall any more 

 

–it’s used to dirt and those initials

you carried along inch by inch

not in some stone letting you stop

 

for water –you were buried

in the afternoon, late so the light

could close the lid with leftover kisses

 

become an ocean, still burning

and between each wave the glint

from a clear silence you took for yes.

 

*

To survive you disguise each log

as the aromatic sun the mornings

can’t resist –even when naked

 

you hide some kindling close by

let it give birth in the smoke

that leaves with nothing, becomes

 

the emptiness though your eyes

never look up or warm –a fire

is feeling its way to your mouth

 

with lullabies and the small stone

falling asleep on the stove 

–you feed it wood as if your lips

 

still smell from milk and salt 

–an ancient, gentle art now lost

somewhere in those nightmares

 

set off by an empty dress

and along your forehead the light

begins to melt, wants to stay, keep going.

 

*

Even these weeds panic

circle around your fingertips

as if the stream they fasten on

 

knows only one direction –the dead

still fold their arms, dare you

to raise your hand, ask for salt

 

clear the ground before the no! no!

stops and in the silence makes room

for flowers and your mouth

 

sweetened by the warm breath

it still remembers as sunlight

struggling and the pull up! pull up!

 

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Gibson Poems published by Cholla Needles, 2019. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com

To view one of his interviews please follow this linkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8

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