Month: March 2020

Scooping Honey from the Sky, by Tyree Storey

I’ve got this peaceful kind of memory, in a city washed heavy in my blood. It’s like clotted soil where weeds daren’t spring, all pulped over and worn-down from each passing.

I sit and cradle the lowering light from the hilltop as caged dogs bark. I can’t tell if it’s for the day’s end or the spiced air, but somehow it feels like this is home. Kingston and Kandy don’t feel five thousand miles apart, but you know they can’t grow chillies in the fields past Guilford. Regardless, I bet my mother could tell you the tint of the soil in a blindfold, and maybe there’s something ancient in that.

I’ll die an Israelite for Ceylon, forever scooping that red-honey sunset as it drips from the sky. And I guess somewhere there will be dogs baying as I do.

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The Vacation by The Ransom Notes

the vacation

uncover treasure
dine exotic
pack light
clothes carefree
showers sparse
hunt warmth

snooze under trees
bathe in rivers
learn to surf
slink into cafes
feign a holiday
explore this city
romanticize it all
escape your homelessness

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Mommy Too, penned by Terra Vagus

I try constantly, not to have anger toward you.
the way you cast me aside.
Loved me less.
Ignored my cries for help.

You’d say “Buck up, life is just like this.”.
when I begged you to take a stand against the constant drinking,
You simply pointed at my self inflicted wounds and said
“We all have our vices.”.

To this day my heart breaks
when I let myself recall
the way I pleaded for a figure
with no maternal instincts at all.

Make me believe that you love me
only when I have something to offer.

Mommy I can’t take this any longer.

You live your life with the selfish belief
that I owe you my everything
because you created me.

You’ve also been my destroyer.

All my life I’ve lived in envy
of those with mothers whom they can call close.

Now I’ve always got something to prove.
Can’t accept I haven’t much to lose.

Mommy can’t you love me the way you love yourself?
This constant heartache is my living hell.

Mommy why?
Why is everything always about you?
Don’t you know I have a soul too?

Now I’m afraid
To be a mommy too.
What if the best love I can manage
Is a love like you?

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Soft Wreckage, written by Alivia Banecker

Coming in strong with senses neglected, blearily wandering with shadows that took her by the hand and overpowered her mind. She wanted to know-what did it feel like to be sunshine rather than sadness? To live life rather than chasing something reckless? Bring light to those skylines and lose herself in transparency with the cityscapes and streetlights; she’s one of the full-minded ones, she had a heart filled full of contentment, but carried chaos everywhere she went, and she knows what she wants, but she doesn’t know how to shake the film strip in her head to prevent it from skipping on repeat again. She is beauty wrapped in intensity. Only ever knowing thickness by its first name, never allowing herself to be spread thin by the intention of something different.

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Better, by Melissa Felson

I sat inside a room
and promised myself
I wouldn’t come out
until I was “better.”

You see,
no one taught me
that better
is not a chalked line in the dirt,
that there is no
bronzed medal with gilded rim
reading:
Better. Fit for consumption.

I stared down a mirror
so long
that my lips became my eyes
and my eyes become
huge craters
I couldn’t climb out of.
But I didn’t care for climbing anyhow.

Instead,
I became a master excavator.

Proud,
albeit lonely.

Tools in hand,
refusing hands of rescue
reaching out from the rim.

“I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.”

“She was,
in fact,
not fine,”
reads the narrator.

These days I’ve learned
that dogs see in black and white,
but I am not a dog.
I am human.

I am human,
so I err.
I am human,
so I am flawed.

I am human,
so no amount of
excavation,
recreation,
reflection
or divine inspiration
will deem me “better.”

But
I am human,
so I am enough.

Sugar-Substitute

People keep telling me
I look amazing.
They beg:
tell us your secret.
what have you been doing?

I tell them:
I’ve made some changes to my diet.

I’ve stopped putting
external validation
in my morning coffee.

(sugar-substitute, highly processed
packaged sweetener
made of
artificial
Instagram likes and
bending over backwards like
acrobatics for attention;
blending myself into
you for approval
like stirring in your
favorite brand of
soy milk even though
soy makes me sick.)

I tell them
I opt for the real thing these days.
Organic
connection and
act natural, which is to say:
Don’t act.
Be.

And, sure, it’s hard to kick the habit and
I’m not perfect at it, but –
I tell them –
Life is much sweeter this way.

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Wistful Regret by Caleb Blanchard

Light screams bright rays through my pupils.
Bars mixed to an intense temperature open in front of me, leading through halls of red hot lava.
While the absence of darkness deafens.
Heat shivers away, and I’m not scared.
Even while the ground sweeps, and god kicks my legs from contentment.
Falling, Into what I think is damnation.

But wait-
There’s no fire, no sorrow; just me and the wind.
I hold my eyelids ferociously, air rushing so fast as to strike the tears out of reach.
Sight returning as I’m bestowed beautiful memories of you.
Wanting to hold on as long as possible yet I’m descending towards a visible surface.
My body tenses up for impact.
As I glance back, the sky fades along with you.
This view so real, realer than when I trace my finger across your gentle hand..

Accepting the state our universe made.
Accepting the true damnation of life.
Of love.
Of you.
The bones underneath my skin get smashed with newtons of force, grounded to minerals that wisp away with its long awaited gust of wind.
And even through death, the only pain I felt was falling faster than my wave goodbye.
To everything.
Feeling chances rain that couldn’t be brushed, touched, or comforted.

I’m sorry I love you.

Winter’s Grasp by Caleb Blanchard

Winter fogging resonates with the cold.
My breath steadied from your touch.
Fingers never stale at numbness.
For your warmth helps me clutch and never let go of what I’m told.
“Hun you mean so much, even when you’re the biggest dumb dumb.”
It’s like there’s nothing but us.
Heating from a single caress.
As a gentle and careless genius with sparkles in each eye.
I can’t look away.
You’re so damn handsome, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Gabe, you say my hand’s always chilled;
It’s from my long due absence of emotion.
Given in lessened breathing as I wasn’t concerned to live, I never knew at the present.
Never felt devotion towards all I care about until you came along.
I was always so content with the cold-
Either because it draws us closer, or helps realize how much love we take for granted.
It’s just.. I’m enchanted.
Where it makes me happy!
Where I can’t ever stop smiling.
Where I’ve never been so relaxed, where I’ve never been so close to you.

You’ve got me at your knees but insist on mercy.

Why not give it up once.
Give upon your hands to mine and spread it’s forgiving heat, melt my hands as you do my heart.
With tears, you’ve brushed away.
With chills, you’ve struck away.
Leaving me desolate of thought as my body retracts your prowess.
Lifting me up to be breathless. From then on I give you mercy.
But right now, neither of us need that.
We need each other’s warmth within the season.

Why are you still reading baby, I’m cold.
I’m weak.
Weak and desperate for your warmth.

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Bad Kids, written by Anjali Sethi

And perhaps, those bad kids fought great wars and lost,
Their blood splattered on your mahogany walls,
And you handed them a bucket to clean their shit off the stalls,
And perhaps who you’re blaming is you.

And perhaps, those bad kids fought great wars and lost,
Against your venom spitting games,
And these lessons they had in bruises of black and blue,
Your poison penetrating,
They screamed and cried, but you turned a blind eye,
And perhaps, who you call fucked up is really you.

So excuse me if I say,
Take a step back, you’ve lost the respect you once had,
We stand against you in exteriors of funeral attires, piercings and tattoos,
Getting laid for the night just to feel some human,
But in the morning,
We’re here and burying you.

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Sun Rays by Autumn Floyd

Sun Rays

Poems on my mind, adventures at my feet. Flowers in my hand, my sorrows far beneath, my sand filled mess I call a braid. Sun rays fill my endless gaze, and for a moment my worlds complete, I feel on my face the salty wind, beauty fills my mind again.

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Refraction of Light by Dana Cappelloni

Refraction of Light

I once saw a feather leave an imprint on snow.
A refraction of light whispering a story of how life came to be.
A curious passerby insisting on remembering.
All of life has a story.
A reason for being.
I quietly listen.
Hoping nature will enumerate my own.
Until then, I’ll skip rocks along a river bank.
I’ll write poetry.
I’ll pray at night to the one I love.
I’ll push out emails and shuffle papers on Monday afternoons while I look longingly out the window, wondering how earth got it all right.

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When You Fall, written by Sarah Rabby

The thing about being so fiercely independent
about keeping others at arm’s length
because you don’t need them, don’t need their approval, you’re fine on your own

is that when you break
when you fall through the sky and can’t remember how to breathe
there’s no one there to hear the resounding crash

so there’s no friendly face helping you back up
no one holding out hands and wearing furrowed brows
it’s just you

because all these years you crafted a persona
screamed stay away, don’t even try, you’ll never be enough
fabricated sneers keep you safe, ensure no one sees

how ugly it is when you fall

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