Issue #43

Boloere Seibidor

reminisce

today, i journey through memory lane & recollect images
10 years ago / from the funeral of a man whom i’d
never met / i learnt that there are ways in which the mind
cuts its flesh, nulls the sting with a hymn from a canary’s chest. &
the reason wounds leave scars is so a pathway to a past
pain is never forgotten / in a starless, hollow room noisome with
the stench of death on everything my grandfather touched, i remember
seeing him; eyes closed in eternal reverence to his maker,
body muffled in white talcum — an exaggerated effort
in proving his innocence to heaven / i remember father,
cold as the air that freezes a corpse, shedding tears beneath
a frown. a room full of people who share the same
blood as i, praying that god brings him back.
life is but a passage to death, a bus ride before your final
alight, the pastor says as the adults take turns in
sweeping sands into his grave. yet another awkward ritual.
i reach into mother’s purse for her phone & she pulls my ears
as a reward for my misconduct / or because it is only i who hasn’t
yet shed tears. a relative smiles with a tenderness that
spills warmth inside my head & offers me a handkerchief.
years later, my father still reminisces on how terribly i
wept at his father’s funeral; wonders if i’ve rebound
from the grief / pain is a shadow you can never outrun,
he says / i never told him it was mother who pulled my ears.

plop / the sound of an unbecoming

picture this:
a boy unfolds before a river that roars
& settles into a promise of tranquility. there, he
unbridles himself from the stifled emotions latched in
his throat & groans in the voice of a flightless bird.
he dips his hands, like a bucket sinking into a well, like a god’s
scrutiny on his people, & rinses his already mud-bathed face. here,
everything is unclean: hope flecked by daily tragedies / think of
a child bleeding across snow-masked earth // faith
that continuously slips from his rake-like hands as he gropes for it.
he picks up a rock with an anger that shits bitterness
on his tongue & shatters the glassy surface of the river
because the fastest way to god, to anyone, is by hurting
his creation. but there is only a plop, then silence.
three days ago, a man had stood by this same river, offering
his tears as early seeds to grow it into an ocean. he screamed for god,
violated the sky with violent thrusts of protests that now
lie beneath closed wounds. & when god wouldn’t answer
by his name, this man decided to swim to him. plunged himself
like a whale returning from a peep at the sun. only, this
time, there would be no rebirth. no sun days.
plop, then silence.
& every end is a journey to a greater beyond.

Boloere Seibidor is a Nigerian poet & writer, with works on numerous magazines/journals. She emerged winner of the Glassdoor Poetically Written Prose Contest 2020. She is greatly inspired by true life experiences, music; especially of Ed Sheeran & James Bay. She tweets @boloere_sod

Robert Whelan

BYE LINES

At the end of all these words I place my name,
As if it really matters I am known.
Should my ego seek the glittering of fame?
Should a farmer sign the seeds that he has sown?
Do leaves fall bearing signatures of trees?
Might a snake profess to own the skin it’s shed?
May the eye own every image that it sees?
Is the body named long after it is dead?
Must identity attach to what I say?
Should my offspring recognize I’ve walked this earth?
Is this need embedded in my DNA,
As the sin of pride imprinted at my birth?
In the end it seems these questions are absurd.
A name is just some other dust of words.

Robert Whelan is a poet, playwright, and essayist who lives in Rockport, MA. Believing poetry began as spoken word he frequents open mics in Boston and the North Shore. He organizes and presents the annual Rockport Poetry Festival. Robert supports his poetry addiction as a professor of Philosophy & Psychology.

Sophie Ligaya dela Cruz

I Have Now Hallucinated Heaven

At the request of my fire-and-brimstone
father. If seekers ask, I’ll say I saw lavender clouds,
creeping over the beach and a tired sunset.

If seekers ask, I’ll say I saw
endless rows of violets, geraniums,
and myrrh, like pink schoolchildren

awaiting a jubilant command. If seekers ask, I’ll
say I saw the shiny, smiling teeth of a girl my age
named Great-Grandmother, her hair like Roxie-ringlets

down her back. If seekers ask, I’ll say I saw
a man, very tall, like an actor, historically-unsound,
with a red sash wrapping his long, white

garment and his hair brown
just like the iconography. When seekers ask, I’ll
say I saw love —— love itself: polished,

smooth, and wonderful. Did you see the
sky? my father prompted. He pointed at the
veins of the goodnight stars. They weren’t like

this —— were they? They were different. And I said, Yes.
Tell me that you saw the flowers, my father implored.
They didn’t look like normal flowers, right?

They were awe-inspiring. And I said, Yes, they were.
Is this the girl you met? my father fed,
holding a black-and-white photo. She was young,

correct? And I said, That is correct. Who else did you
see? my father shouted. Love, he reminded me.
You felt love incarnate, and it was good.

And I said, Yes. And it was good.
He smiled. Did you see someone wholly
special? I said, I did. He was

just like you. In my mind, I saw the Promised Land
clearly, like the unshaded outlines of a
coloring book. But truly, I remember women in

white coats, and needles and tubes, and numbers over
numbers over lines. When I closed my eyes, I saw
the face of someone like myself, and then I

saw nothing. There was nothing before
me and nothing after. I had fallen asleep.
The only love I felt was my own.

Sophie Ligaya dela Cruz is an Asian-American em-dash-enthusiast located in the smoldering state of Texas. Their poetry has been published in international journals such as Polyphony Lit. Find them and their work at https://sophieandherstories.art.blog/.

Terri Linn Davis

The Last Rite

I asked him, ‘What color were your mother’s eyes?’
What I know about loss
I learned from my father’s silence—
To be forgotten is the final ceremony of dying.

Terri Linn Davis is an MFA Candidate for Poetry and the Editor of Noctua Review. Her poems appear in Belletrist, Orson’s Review, Ghost City Review, Persephone’s Daughters Literary Magazine and elsewhere. You can find her on twitter @TerriLinnDavis

SG Huerta

Grief Poem #33

My grief
is a freight train

barrelling
through San Marcos,

horn blaring
at 3 am

when all I need
is sleep

so I can see
him again.

The phone calls stop—
the train doesn’t.

SG Huerta is a Chicana poet from Dallas. They are pursuing their MFA at Texas State University and live in Texas with their cat Lorca. SG is the author of The Things We Bring with Us: Travel Poems (Headmistress Press, 2021). Find them at sghuertawriting.com or on Twitter @sg_poetry

Mara Lee Grayson

Glasgow Scale, 6

For B.A.S.

Without tall trees or driving snow,
I’m dreaming of the wilderness.
My life passes by the window,
While I’m here inside the stillness.

I’m dreaming of the wilderness
On the barren third floor ICU,
While I’m here inside the stillness
Watching Madison Avenue.

On the barren third floor ICU
My mother’s planted by my bed
Watching Madison Avenue
With one palm pressed against my head.

My mother’s planted by my bed
Waiting for some slight reaction
With one palm pressed against my head,
Cool, exanimate inaction.

Waiting for some slight reaction,
Doctors loom like clouds above me,
Cool, exanimate in action,
But my heart still beats inside me.

Doctors loom like clouds above me.
They cannot hear my urgent calls
But my heart still beats inside me,
Surrounded by these bare white walls.

They cannot hear my urgent calls.
Without tall trees or driving snow
Surrounded by these bare white walls,
My life passes by the window.

Mara Lee Grayson’s poetry and prose have appeared in Mobius, Fiction, Construction, The Ilanot Review, Columbia Journal, English Journal, and other publications. Grayson holds an MFA from The City College of New York and a PhD from Columbia University and is an assistant professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Twitter @MaraLeeGrayson; site.

Kathryn de Leon

The Purple Blouse

She’s wearing her favorite blouse.
She’s in her house, my childhood home,
the last place I saw her
fourteen years ago.

My sister is talking with her, casually.
She is not surprised
as I am to see our mother.
I’m listening but not joining them.
I’m afraid I’ll knock the dream over
like a fragile glass,
spill my mother
like a fine wine
the deep colour of ripe plums.

But…
How can she be here?
Didn’t she die fourteen years ago?

It’s the blouse.

I have fallen for it again.
It fools me every time.

I believe in the blouse,
in the sincerity of its long sleeves,
the truthfulness of its purple.

I’m confused
but I trust the blouse.
I know my mother’s skin
is inside it, safe within
all that purple.
She has not gone to dust.
Even the lost heirloom of her voice
is there,
sheltered in her throat.

I know the dream will return
like a soothing tide
carrying the purple blouse to me
warm and filled with my mother.

Again and again it will come

Again and again I will believe.

Kathryn de Leon is from Los Angeles, California but has been living in England for eleven years. Her poems have appeared in several magazines in the US including Aaduna, Calliope, and Black Fox, and in several in the UK, including The Blue Nib, London Grip, and The High Window where she was the Featured American Poet.

Rachel J. Fenton

Dregs

I’m imagining
you’re sailing
Down Parnell Rise, crossing at the crossing opposite the catholic
church, where we heard the piper play out the dead
whose relatives you saw hugging;
I’m imagining
you’re sailing,
turning onto the side street where the second-hand chair you liked
will be waiting behind glass, like a goldfish, and you’re staring;
I’m imagining
you’re sailing
past the building I said was missing Edwardian prostitutes,
by the boarding house where the man appeared bored at its gate,
likely overhearing;
I’m imagining
you’re sailing
by the town houses the posh developers are hawking;
I’m imagining
you’re sailing
up to the sign that will prompt you to tell me everything you know
about mayor Dove-Myer and nothing about you
or your friend, except omission leaves a hole, gaping;
I’m imagining
you’re sailing
through the garden of my name, kneeling to hold a head
like a wineglass, drawing it to your nose, inhaling;

I’m imagining
you’re sailing
away as I am.

Rachel J Fenton is a working-class writer living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her chapbook Beerstorming with Charlotte Bronte in New York is forthcoming from Ethel Press in April 2021.