Issue #22
Annie Blake
VENI CREATOR SPIRITUS
‘When a blind man and one who sees are both together in darkness, they are no different from one another. When the light comes, then he who sees will see the light, and he who is blind will remain in darkness.’ – Gospel of Philip
/ she was a cold case / for i’m cursed /
it’s so much easier to run
without my children / but i will ogee
the snake and grow her a spine /
sea clean / seam free / redemptive steam
or recidivism / semen tree / motivuum /
the witch will draw him out
and hand him a snapped branch / i sat with her
for whitsun / she decorated the table
with poinsettia / red leaves / when butterflies
are born / wet and white / their wings / garner
a sinuous rose / her arms and fingers /
like the river jordan / hay house and seed /
the wind / hairdryer hot / the shimmy
of her dark belly / navel apple /
winding mind and lightning / her thighs quivered
like snakes / her castanets / her hip
coins and chain / her tribal eyes and doors
are fountain throats / percussive / petals of geraniums /
blood and gold on my hands / ka youbi /
dies martis / to restore the dove /
she said for what i owe /
for i don’t even own myself /
/ it occurred to me that this school / where i had slept
and eaten / hark / how all the welkin rings / larked
more than one death / the doors
and windows were sealed and it was dark /
the flood and the ark and the conjuring / the sky
boils like the water in my mourning coffee pot /
clouds as curly as waves / my body shivered
so she gave me a lily in the palm of my hand /
at school i walked out of a class once / i couldn’t
watch her give birth / my abdominals
simply weren’t strong enough / a burning /
a reconstitution of her body / the balance of my dress strings
on a clothes hanger / now i see how i hang
like a woman / incest and church incense / death
smoke / sweet scent but evil eels /
/ i hid from faith / like a child
under the sheets when i saw both / shadow
and body / i wanted to touch her /
ostentatio vulnerum / but i asked for permission
first / she was autistic / for the coolness in summer
is not a coldness and she didn’t realize
she was dead / but i was curious
about what she would say about heaven /
incredulity of thomas / sola fide / because the only way
to give birth is to let her rock
her world / my body is not my fall / but i
became an observatory / short hair and mute /
like a prototype or a hologram /
/ but sometimes a volcano will stop spitting
and become a water well / my lily in the shape
of a cornucopia / in the shape of my world / rain
over my face like an uncut fringe / for this old
fashioned surgical school / pierced skin and blood
and water / for those who have been killed
will eventually wash up / foam in their mouth /
innocent white / // water wake like snakes //
THE EMPEROR’S NEW CLOTHES
‘O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven! / Keep me in temper, I would not be mad!’
(1.5.46–47); ‘O Fool, I shall go mad!’ (1.4.286) – Shakespeare, ‘King Lear’
/ internally a sweet young girl / a court
jester / is more poignant / pathos / i don’t believe
in group therapy / for only you can dish
what the soul will shed / my thoughts
look like penknife scribbles on my bedside
table / i saw my mom for the first time / fear
monger / she looked insane / i thought how could i
leave her like that / as long as she didn’t
make any trouble / as long as i was quiet /
i would still be allowed to go out in public /
/ the dog is barking / the pipes of the house
are expanding / it felt like a monday / clean sun
and washing day of my past / leather cranial cap
with copper mesh / jewish cap / pileus cornutus /
carocha / dunce cap / am i a wizard or a clown
/ stacks of hats / black velvet / horse
riders’ hats and magicians /
/ chocolate cupcake / patty cake paper around
his neck / an old woman’s veil / irrational man / choral
harmony / there are so many divisions among us /
i’m schizophrenic / your pride keeps me safe
from you / stone portal / cats swinging
off a horizontal pole / men gods with talons / feet
and claws / holding a spear / a rod / crown of peas /
birds with blouses with floral embroidered sleeves /
/ i weaved my line of vision / peered through
the aisles like the willow and air of a basket
or a case / orion correlation theory / orisis
and the pyramids / morphine during childbirth /
when i run forward i want my breathing to be deep /
i wait for my heart to pop like my ears /
when they’re full of olive oil / my post-partum
skin / dented like old tomato skin / my mother /
/ had a hand painted antique french dresser / lacquered /
year on top of year / no one bought
into it / who is my mother’s anger for / my
unthorning / shear by shear / my father used to leave
the doors in our house unrepaired so we could see
the words’ layers / stripping of a tree / stored inside /
there was corn flour with a 2021 due date / eggs
in a carton gone to waste / saturated napkins with blood
or butter after giving birth /
/ then i stopped caring about the front of my house /
i drove them back home / and one of my girls
told me she wanted that game out of my room / i climbed up
a chair and took it out of a high wardrobe /
i told her not to play it anymore / because games
get complicated / my children used to run away
when i used to open the doors of my house / we sat together
// at long last // // and ate them for supper //
THE HUNT IS THE HORN
‘I approached and saw, as if graven in bas-relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat. The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvellous. There was a rope about the animal’s neck.’ – Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Black Cat’
day / eternal summer house / tunnel of light /
even / especially in winter / holy
house of hysteria / jala neti / an asian man / artisan
of balance and focus / when he died / a candle
was lit / for satan / i blew it out / lit another
for christ / baked belly bread / the sun /
smudge-smoke / jupiter eye / storm in the kelly
cat / in the kleptomaniac / she was hanged off a tree
like a chime in the wind /
vacuous landscape of phallocentrism / they cut off her
head / her crop milk for me / a mask / venetian ceruse / spirits
of saturn / mineral cinnabar / painted vermilion cheeks /
perfectly round / maria / countess of coventry / injecting red
ochre into my nostrils / like cake cream
from a metal pipe / cocaine powder or the passion /
to the dust i shall return / so i can learn
to flow / carnival mask / the father of the marshalsea /
the dinner party and the masquerade /
but i can’t see the butter or honey anywhere / a big star
overnight / working for fame is wearing red /
she is the magi / synodic circumambulation
or the circumlocution office /
a black box is made conspicuous
when it shows out international orange /
zeugma and syllepsis / mineral mother / then morality
of the ubermensch / animal nipples / like brown sparrows /
moon orbit / the storm is not a symptom / my black
reserve / placental red / yoni / yolk of theotokos / cornucopia /
when the endometrium skin is shed / non-injury /
but an inquiry and internal vulnerability / humility
to care for my young / anne frank and my sweet secret /
when i’m most a mother to god / regular drum
of my rites / spin of her cycle / paramenstruum eroticism / stir
of her shaman / why is it when i sleep my eyes still feel
open / eyeshine of lions /
i was my mother’s scapegoat /
now capricornus / barbed wire flames / flicking tongues
in a windmill toy / are they sails
or are they blades / this rainbow world / markup
and my sins / whenever i don’t procreate / a death and a desire /
for the next birth / cauldron containing my anatomy / claws
and a warm snout /
i see myself / surety and periodicity /
that i will die and rise / geese of ice / icicles
in the sky / how they skate off the deck / their wings
are uterine fed / feathers spiral above the ground / my honey
coast / in the light / tapping the soft orifices of my house /
consecrated hands move to find who i am /
and the east has risen /
// ebullient fire // fine fields of salt //
Epiphany
for mein kleiner geist
blinking eye / oval hole / unfulfilled
oyster / marriage of infinite ovum / a pyx
to become whole / pleasure portal / a river rolls out
like a tongue / lactation / when you paint walls with milk
they become transparent /
he laughs at me / he shows me
that all i’m really doing is following
the directions of recipe books / he threw my banknotes
in the air / they hit the ceiling and fell down
to the floor again / blank musical notes drown the church /
hailstones / ice confetti / the non-life
of my arrangement of the bread and wine / archangel gabriel /
the orange ray of light / ointment from the ambry / embryo
from his lips / he tells me i must return /
instructs me to adjust the windows / the storm
is coming / a candle / i blew it out
to avoid a fire / i’m afraid of its light when i’m asleep /
that burns blood and the rising son /
he showed me the candle / how it was a cup /
i washed it clean in the sacrarium / water
and underground passages like the eternal throats
of snakes / a blaze for money / cravings
and carved me out with his hands / primordial gate /
the concealment of the sacrificial curtain / the congregation /
their heads in the knots in each other’s skins / sheela na gig /
apotropaic / warning for those who can’t read and walk in anyway /
dais to the ciborium / consummation
of the virgin bed /
aroscosolium / edicule of the tomb /
golden bowl of the church /
SHCHEDRYK
for my husband, my children
ubermensch didn’t learn how to fly / by running
in / up to the ledge of a cliff / and then the fall /
extreme unction / eccentric movement leads to greater
muscle hypertrophy / union of the longing
candle / how his blood creams
through his edges / cherry colors my lips so i can
go to the fair / fair is being available and open /
schorl cauldron / hot pink potion / carol of the bells /
circular four note ostinato / a swallow
comes and tells of our good fortune / harbor
of spring / the four seasons / vivaldi / systole and diastole /
i keep pacing up and down a treadmill grave / beehive
of jam / like peak hour traffic / coffin lined with parsley /
bolts of black affliction / his fingers / needles / thumbs
like spears / gripping whatever sky is falling
upon us / the spoil of fangs / a union is not
the halfway house / worms / splayers / table spreaders
for the mouth / hypnagogic / scabs fibred
with whatever i hide in my bed / o man on my cross /
nest of unskin-scars / the way i used to talk to you / game
of darts / eye of the bull and the matador /
sunned roots are branches buried like bones / coaled /
how their various voices / tessitura and passaggio / in me
i speak / schizophrenic shadowing / her moon love / forgive me /
forge of mother moon / rouse me whole / round
as agape / grape of my father’s vine / she stands
on a yellow globe with human feet / her violin / my nervous
strings attached / return of the repressed and sins
from my sea blue dress / her limbs /
willow branches pulling me in / her supple line for fish /
they swim like eden fruit /
ripe light / fire-engine siren /
// selene // // speak open your doves to me //
KINGDOM OF THE MATADOR
‘Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth’ Carl Jung in Psychological Reflections: An Anthology of his Writings 1905-1961
i’m sick of disappearing into my mother /
is it scar tissue or growth / miniature angels in trees /
marble white wings / feather shields
of red cloth / clerestory windows and a triforium /
their halos / golden oranges / my off the shoulder
dress / my mother burned / ascending hemline /
became a fan in the shape of a peacock tail / i eat clementines /
secretal union / moving sacrifice /
a flash is menstrual flow / poetics / a miscarriage /
their fingers of pan flutes / tendril hair / straw spinning
into gold / green leaves / a cross
their throats / like lapels / eyes / pips of forbidden fruit /
nests for crowns / the laying
of the golden egg / the laying of refractory tiles
and walking inside the interstices of twigs / bridges
like pretzels / the heart is salt / snake basking a cross /
the sun is baked / medieval furnace bread / the dome /
thighs and my entry arch /
i saw dome houses on the side of the road /
the place of the bull and the matador / one wrong move
and you’re done / divine predator / in the jungle / brushwood
like hair / with windows and a door /
even lace curtains / faeries adorned with lights /
then a beautiful italian tomb /
a common grave like the ones my grandparents are buried in /
acjachemen wickiup made of willow branches
and tule leaves / i’m the furnace of an igloo / catenary arch
and the even distribution of weight /
aqilokoq / then tlun / mead is honey and water / pour
of my body-milk / womb-warm /
swimming in a globe / rising light of the merry-go-round /
i look for the locals / they duck dive the cascades of waves /
stick their knees into the wax and push their boards
underwater / over their backs / one after the next / messages
out of gold / the color of wax / auditory canal / cauliflower
ear / helix and the honey hive /
// help the living live and let the dead die //
Annie Blake is an Australian writer and divergent thinker. She is currently focusing on in medias res and art house writing. She enjoys semiotics and exploring the phantasmagorical nature of unconscious material. Her work is best understood when interpreting them like dreams. You can visit her at her personal website and her facebook.
Kyla Houbolt
Freya in Poverty
“If someone comes along and starts talking, quietly shoo them away, you’re busy, you’re a poet
with a penny in your mouth….” – CA Conrad
|
in the city it is slightly cold in the morning, the sky clear with small floating clouds in the morning the imagination is slightly cold and cloudy with unremembered dreams in the dreams the memory is slightly cold, as though shivering but not enough to wake you in poverty it is slightly cold on the mornings of no dreams or sleep, sometimes more than slightly with no pennies to add to anything, the cold becomes a sort of friend in its slightly cloudy imagination of the pennies that are elsewhere than in your pocket or the small fountain in front of the chilly park bench who are slightly cold and sometimes freezing because some of them are in Iceland or New York winter where pennies are nearly useless but for their potential conductivity of venusian current and also idea of love as a form of poverty which is slightly cold but has a skin like the skin of an orange peel it and inside it may be slightly cold there also however the flesh is both sweet and tart on the tongue and being slightly poor but a poet you wish you had an orange or even a small sandwich even a slightly cold one or slightly stale and you know pennies are truly useless and it takes so many of them to buy a sandwich even a slightly cold or stale one they would weigh you down til your knees touch the slightly cold ground which is currently safely under your feet and the penny that you do have is not enough to run even the slightest current of venusian fire to warm you let alone buy you a slightly cold slightly stale sandwich and though it is slightly cold you know if a poet sings to you the pennies will listen and sing a call and response in their own language which is slightly cold but also full of poetry, poverty, love, and goddesses. |
Kyla Houbolt has been writing for years but has rarely sent work out until this year. New work forthcoming in the summer issue of The Hellebore. Kyla currently lives and writes in Wilmington, NC.
Hollis Teves
AS HORSES DO
You can see the gelding
from the road lying and
its eyes are glossy-open.
We pull off towards the
wire fence where it is
tangled mid-rear with its
mouth spilling teeth and
blood. It is too cold to
smell the death but we
have a large blue tarp to
wrap it in like it is asleep
and may still shiver.
There have been many
dead things recently but
at least it remains whole
and nothing has taken
pieces of it home for its
children to feed off.
But that means it looks
still like it may be living
and scream as horses do
and beat its legs against
the earth like huge drums.
In the distance there are
turkeys early for the season
playing not as vigil but as
audience for the show
we’re putting on.
We tie a rope round its
ankles and pull it from
the fence to the road edge
leaving a hallowed ring
of blood and frozen dirt
so that the people who come
to take dead things away
may come and take this
dead thing away.
NAMED
When I return from my shower
A– is stretched across the mattress
like a gull. Each brown arm-wing
hurtles away from each shoulder.
The whole bed rises with their
breath. The sheets shudder with
the idea of being sheets. Their
back is smooth-soft-new. Their
feet approach the white cliffs
but halt in socks. My own arms
open as wings and as that other
brown man, hanging in Brautigan’s
Golgotha. I edge their body to
one side. I kiss their shoulder
and I name them. We sleep.
Hollis Teves is a non-binary queer poet who lives and works in Orange, CA and San Diego, CA. Their work has previously appeared in Calliope, Sapere Aude, The Messy Heads, and elsewhere, and they are the editor-in-chief of The Fruit Tree. Contact them at hnteves at gmail dot com or on Twitter @unisexlove. They have previously published work under the names Hannah Teves and Hollis Teves.
Kristin Garth
Merder
Mermaids, man-made, in Lake Desire, catfish
blue swish, your father’s tales inspire a reef
beneath your balcony. You, feverish
with fantasy, submerge in childhood grief
(summer relieved of your belief in him)
with skeletons who used to swim — of fish
purchased to mimic fairytales, from whim
to rotting, rancid scales. You, accomplice,
a thousand deaths, all piscine corpses breath
bereft. Servants blame lack of oxygen.
In fever dreams, mermaids remade in death,
wrath, wraiths, avenging sirens who ascend
to starlit swim, their spectral school you spy,
foraging for vengeance in southern skies.
“Merder” is a sonnet from Kristin’s poetic novella from TwistiT Press forthcoming January 2020, Flutter: A Southern Gothic Fever Dream, a fever dream universe of a sixteen year old dying of scarlet fever in 1883 Pensacola.
Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Best of the Net & Rhysling sonnet stalker in magazines like Glass, Yes, Five:2:One, Occulum & more. She has six chapbooks including Shakespeare for Sociopaths (review) and Puritan U, a full length forthcoming called Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir, and Flutter. Twitter: @lolaandjolie; website.
Kara Goughnour
Crop Yield
I’m a homegrown jerk still gummy
in your fluoride-glazed teeth,
a jeering Jezebel of the parted cornfield,
a jester jilting hillbilly hides.
Which side of this husk of man
I’ve left behind is more endearing?
I’ll cross stitch this five o’clock shadow
into a constellation that forgives my
reckless life, that screams The stars
make it so, and then you die.
Kara Goughnour is a queer writer living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They are the recipient of the 2018 Gerald Stern Poetry Award, and have work published or forthcoming in Third Point Press, the Southampton Review, and others. Follow them on Twitter @kara_goughnour or read their collected and exclusive works at their website.
Isolda Dosamantes
(translated by Toshiya Kamei)
Moon Festivals / Las fiestas de la luna
At dawn the sky draws its curtains
the stars barely twinkle
like autumn leaves
they wrap moonlight with their apexes
before their infinite rays, men
have their brows clear like the wind
and you can see
their childhood spinning
like a firefly in the forest.
/~/
De madrugada el cielo abre sus cortinas
las estrellas apenas tintinean
son hojas del otoño
abrigan con sus vértices la luz del plenilunio
ante sus rayos infinitos, los hombres,
tienen su frente clara como el viento
y se les puede ver
la infancia girando irremediablemente
feliz como luciérnaga en el monte.
Disgrace / De la ignominia
I failed to seduce him.
The man burns, charges
like a cornered animal,
a needle on the altar cloth.
He turns, retreats,
and makes me dizzy.
Curled up between my thighs,
he tightens, throbs inside my dampness.
The man glows,
but his heart
remains crouched, out of reach.
/~/
No supe seducir.
El hombre arde, avanza
animal al asecho
aguja sobre el mantel de cruz
gira, retrocede
provoca el vértigo
se acurruca en los muslos
se tensa, palpita al interior de la humedad.
El hombre es incandescente
mientras su corazón
permanece agazapado, intocable.
Isolda Dosamantes was born in 1969 in Tlaxcala, Mexico, where she lives with her family. She is the author of several collection of poetry, including Paisaje sobre la seda (2008), Apuntes de viaje (2012), and Después del hambre (2017). Her poetry can also be found in La Canasta.
Catherine Owen
“What goes out is constant and inescapable, whereas what comes back is contingent and determined” : 2 monologues
Susan Stewart
1/What goes out
|
Heart-melt, certainly, relentless Anti-Arctic of looking at you until thorax/ gut/cunt clench in a pact of why isn’t every part of you in me, instantly, irrevocable, so even in the morning, we would be sweat-bound, dripped into each other’s fissures/ schisms/chasms, healing terror, or sweetness beading us, murmur – French toast? Road trip? the anything goes in the moment options of paramour-movement, the yes yes, yes of it. O be totaled by this, just a bit, Would you? |
2/What comes back
Well, no
there are fence-slats to tap in and a plan
for this n that
precluding gush/invitations/ the act
subsuming much,
a light & lusty interlude
was all, framed in the glaze
of why not but sharp,
ticked off on the list, clock
tocking the minutes allottable
for feeling’s concoctions –
there will be no swooning –
I can tell you that, nor smitten,
nor pitter-patter,
nor yielding to what ifs – all depends
on a mood rare as fruit ripening on Mars
so don’t hold anything
on my account, my slate
is full, from now until I
say so and likely not
to you, already-hunted,
too-easy hunger, flattered
really, but the parameters
are fixed and my happiness
is keeping indeterminacy/
chaos/potentially even
happiness
away.
Hot & Cold
Quite possibly you will never feel for anyone again.
Not like that.
According to prescription or misery.
Trained you early on.
To yearn for scald & suffer in the after-ice of him.
You repeat – “I know the pattern but I keep falling for the materials.”
He won’t eat your invisible meal or take you swimming in the virtual lake
Or meet your long-dead parents.
These were codicils only you fabricated.
And thus, to have him plunge all his action figures in your keyholes
You have subjected yourself to such sorrow.
Foolish Big Ethel with your gawky teeth & bones that clatter
In the drawer of Sports Day.
You were meant to be androygyne, mind and awestruck at the little crescent moon.
Instead you burn & freeze and all for no conclusion really,
Just the familiarity of the cycle, confusing this as stupid
Love eternal, writing agonized tributes to Malfunctioning Faucet Man.
O you still see him as a child aching for his mother to notice him.
Stop it.
Catherine Owen is the author of 13 collections of poetry and prose. Her latest book was inspired by an obsession with John Ashbery and is titled Dear Ghost (Buckrider Books, 2017)
Ty J. Williams
INVASIVE SPECIES, MY WIFE AND THE KRIO QUEEN
My wife speaks vigilance
against an invading horde
teeming across our borders
The poison ivy is
attacking our trees, our garden
our lawn and our fucking freedom!
Next door, Great Grandmother,
who hails from Sierra Leone,
tills her whole backyard
for growing vegetables.
Stooped in toil
from a chair, she moves
around the whole yard,
hoe and trowel in perpetual motion
My wife tries to talk to her
about the encroaching scourge,
Great Grandmother smiles
with the transgressing vine
in her bare hand, grinning
with intermittent teeth
and pantomimes
scratching her inner arm
My wife is incensed at her
apathy toward the
felonious flora
gatecrashing our otherwise
peaceful patch of green space
Great Grandmother
speaks little to no English
and only asks about the baby
How di pikin dey do?
To my wife, Great Grandmother
is a Krio goddess of
rebirth and pestilence
seated on a verdurous
throne, three-leaved epaulettes
on shoulders and nettled crown
cocked on her head
with a short hoe as a scepter
and a crushed bottle of calamine
underfoot,
teasing my beloved with
baited jewelweed
Ty J. Williams is a poet, writer, activist, mentor DJ, father and partner based in Columbus, Ohio. He balances family and far too many hobbies with being a middle-aged undergrad in English Education at the Ohio State University. His poetry has appeared in Columbus Alive and Fourth and Sycamore.