Issue #54
CA Russegger
| self-portrait: drowning in a river | and still washing my hands |
|
The purest truth: the river flows like punctuation, its shape a beached comma bleeding into grass-soothed shore. A mess of flowers is dripping into the water, white petals hemming a garland around me. I see myself singing like water lapping at steady ground, cold-numbed arms barely fleeing my side: I think I see myself weeping in the river, tears brimming over my head like a halo swirling into another flood filled with saltwater. Again the river flows like punctuation—the comma pauses, then boils a tide of calm in a sentence nicked with imagery; I want you to know that the period is the land, an ebb halting into motion. How crushing it is to soak my body in unarticulated fear receding into calm. A face of pained blankness like a saint— I think I see myself dipping beneath the surface, swallowed whole without sound. |
I will be reborn unclean. If this is the obsession. Then I drown in the fear: as an edifice written in water reeling me close to a happy ending. The ill-soaked hurt pushing my hands into the gushing purity. Soap as slivers bubbling between my fingers. Disease a refrain—begging to hold my hands close, repeating a restraint: all must remain clean. A body awash in hygiene, frozen to itself. because the body is myself and I am trapped with —my own body. It is always a body. A body escaping into ritual, plunging into purification like faith. Scrubbing skin-scraped hands is a rite nearly endless. A momentary dryness, amplifying the surge of water. Temptation begging me to clean. The water is only beloved— silencing the purity and steeping me in dirt like a clear swamp wretching green. Swirling to build a pattern from the ground up: Aching —in a deluge. Finally, clean. Clean, clean, dryness leaking onto my hands, echoing in the iridescence of soap froth on the water, struggling against the mud-clogged tide submerged without ritual: shrieking to be saved. |
| dirge to a lost cause | in a shrink’s dollhouse |
| You do not want to die—all you want is an end to the pain. I know you have been buried in these words, platitudes up to your neck. A noose woven from conversations in evening light, a pillcase of hastily-shut curtains and sorrow-folded notes left untaken. I promise you one thing— it gets better. Yes, you say, This too shall pass. Yes, I say, it will pass like a bullet hurtling through every organ: it will burn like a house of pills mangling your liver. But it will end. And I will be here and I will love you to shreds. I know how you feel: every breath is like leaping from a ship that is sinking anyway. Yes, you’ll die eventually. Yes, I say. But you will be peaceful before then. I promise you one more thing— There will be an end to the heartache. A painkiller lingering at the bottom of the bottle / There will be light, I promise. Yes, you say. Yes. It’ll be peaceful when I die. Yes. |
Control. This dollhouse fantasy was built as a way to play God. You want to pretend because I peer through your lies. Others speak as if you are not the problem, as if your spirit is dimness, unmedicalised & unmedicated: soaked in fire rushing in from outside in an overspill of convulsing into the wooden dollhouse. Control, you will have a seat at the table. Repeat after me: I will stop catastrophising, because grasping for control is like shooting yourself— dragging through others like collateral damage, shrapnel lodged at the helm of a decision. Stop / building rooms for your pain. The medicine is repair / every wooden doll bed nailed to a common asking. How have you been? Good, always. I think they’re working. So tear the house apart. As if you were never cobbled together from a mound of useless pieces, sucking life like you deserve every drop. What? You’ll die. And it will hurt more than this. You mean there is pain worse than the broken dollhouse. You will carry this prescription. And it will hurt differently. It will fade: to the porcelain grin folding outwards. Death is right here, unavailable. There you are weeping for it: you can’t have it. Wait— I’ll build the dollhouse again with you. Allow me to put the foundation together. And you’ll guide my hand— You’re building it all by yourself. Yes I am. |
CA Russegger is a student from the Philippines; a huge fan of history, religion, and language; and a constant petter of dogs. Recent work in Blue Marble Review, Parallax Online, and The Conjuncture.
Sandra Salinas Newton
IN GLORY
For Chris Boniecki, who celebrated his victory in a game of Tag.
Πάτροκλος, Ο Αχιλλέας σε καλεί πίσω*
Nothing is so serious as a simple game
Between friends: The same earnestness attends here
As in a battle to prove one’s worth.
And so I see you, hair flying and catching the wind,
Like that eager warrior on the plains of Troy
Shining in his companion’s armor,
Seeking more than reputation: thirsting for glory
That can only trouble the gods who see
Themselves as arbiters of fame
And would that flame extinguish
In ones so heated with victory.
You must take care, my friend,
To make less of what you win
For the gods are easy to anger and rebuke.
* Patroclus, Achilles calls you back
Sandra Salinas Newton is a professor emeritus of English currently living in Austin, Texas. Her published work includes texts, fiction, and most recently, poetry. She is also working on a novel. Her website is www.snewton.net and can be reached at s.newton (at) snewton (dot) net
SG Huerta
Sonnet in Which the Poet’s Heart Wants Out
After Claude Delfina Cardona’s “Pisces Heart”
I walked slowly through the flower section
at H-E-B for no reason today,
taking in the red roses, sunflowers—
or trying to. I am dyeing my hair
purple between my job and poetry
workshop just to feel the burn. The forecast
says rain and my neck and hands will look like
I bleed lavender. Well, maybe I do.
My heart will not stop pumping plum blood all
throughout my exhausted existence. God
help me find help out of the floral aisle,
out of Lubbock, out of Texas, out of
this galaxy, this body this body
this body this body this body this
SG Huerta is a Chicano poet from Dallas. They are pursuing their MFA at Texas State University and live with their partner and two cats in Texas. SG is the author of the chapbook The Things We Bring with Us (Headmistress Press, 2021). Find them at sghuertawriting.com or on Twitter @sg_poetry
Rich Murphy
A First Mate
With no other plans,
the bailer buoys by dumping
empty buckets into a clock.
A life sails by toward landfall
where stones flower
with names and dates.
Upon the deep and rough
among purposeful ships
and tugboats the flimsy craft
(tracked “craftless” by admirals)
drifts on salt water
from sensitive eyes.
In safe harbor for blank
calendars and with much
breathing ahead, the captain
without charge clings to
the life preservers tossed
from just outside the cemetery.
Rich Murphy’s poetry has won The Poetry Prize at Press Americana twice (Americana, 2013, and The Left Behind, 2021) and the Gival Press Poetry Prize (Voyeur, 2008). Other books include Space Craft (2021) and Practitioner Joy (2020) by Wipf and Stock, and Prophetic Voice Now (2020) by Common Ground Research Network.
Alessio Zanelli
Nocturne IV
Light needles, pupils constrict,
hands withdraw from the glass,
the catholicon the color of amber
glows like an oil lamp in the dark.
A wink and it all comes to an end.
The shade fills up the apartment.
The hands grab the glass again,
are about to raise it to the lips
when they meet with the nose,
so that the palate is told to wait.
The crux of the matter is anguish.
Conjectures swirl within the head,
like eddies on the river’s surface.
In the end the taste of absinthe
stings and bitters the tongue,
the presentiment disappears,
every doubt or nuisance wanes.
And time is but one of the senses,
because tomorrow is another day,
nothing occurs in the same way.
Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English. His work has appeared in nearly 200 literary journals from 16 countries. His fifth original collection, titled The Secret Of Archery, was published in 2019 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.
Jeffrey Kingman
SKIFF-GARDEN
this boy still
pole quivers
one big one in the bucket
parches
what are the scaling?
trombones, men
milk wagon
white on white
quiet the subtitles
pensive young woman her girlish mother
leans, looking
flirts
some words do
rain dots paddle
la trucha la truite
aren’t acquainted
Jeffrey Kingman’s poetry collection, BEYOND THAT HILL I GATHER, was published by Finishing Line Press in June 2021. He won the 2012 Revolution House Flash Fiction Contest and the 2018 Eyelands Book Award for an unpublished poetry book. He has been published in PANK, Visitant, Clackamas, and others
Robert Bulman
A Masterpiece of Goo
Yellow paint, artfully spilled
on the cracked black cul-de-sac —
a Jackson Pollack
on the potholed pavement.
A closer frame displays decay —
dead matter and drab wet goo
spoil the canvas that,
from my kitchen window,
had been a masterpiece
of autumn.
Robert Bulman teaches at Saint Mary’s College of California, where poetry hangs in the air like smoke. Born in Minnesota, he grew up in Southern California and drifted north. His poems appear (or will soon appear*) in The Trouvaille Review, The Daily Drunk, Bluepepper, The Eunoia Review*, Third Wednesday, The Orchards Poetry Journal*, Short Circuit, and Sledgehammer Lit.