Machinery

my sister got her arm eaten up by
a chain link fence and i was
trying to get you on the phone,
trying to call you up,
get you to talk to me, but
no go.

now Bowie is dead and
Rickman is dead and
Prince is dead, and
i keep thinking
my mother’s going to die,
my father’s going to die,
maybe i’m going to die
without ever seeing you
again.

in fact, i’ve been feeling this so much i
had a dream
you were riding shotgun in my car,

i was driving through the night and we
didn’t talk much.

we just
sort of
prayed

together.

but when you did talk
we were sitting on rocks in the
painted desert and
my head was in your lap and

you said,
“this thing is gonna kill you,”
with your hands in my hair you
kissed me and said it
over
and over
again.

By Demi Richardson

Biography:

Demi Richardson studies writing at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, where she currently serves as Editor in Chief of the New Growth Arts Review.  She digs long words, and is an expert at losing all of her Monopoly money.

At the Intersection

the day after Philando, which was the day after Alton

At the intersection of Crenshaw
and MLK Blvds
I am oblivious until
I steer into the left turn lane
and look up to see
the crowded corner
the signs, the shouting.

The car I pilot has no horn,
and so I am mute
when I wish to be blaring
sounding into the horror
of it all.

The woman shouting on the corner
with raised fist
sees me
see her.

I raise my hand,
peace fingers V-ed
trying to say
I see you, I hear you, I’m with you
but I wonder if she thinks
I am saying,
Hush, Relax, Calm Yourself,
and I don’t know,
I just don’t know—
what my raised fist
in response to hers
would mean.

I think maybe she nods
and I lower my arm,
poised at the intersection
of where one struggle
meets another—
Black Lives Mattering
on every side of me
and me,
lost in unnavigable privilege

wondering how to
be a part of something
that scares me
and moves me
and that I feel so far from—

able to roll up the windows,
and when the light turns green for me
as it always does,
roll on through the intersection.

By Hazel Kight Witham

Biography:

I live in Los Angeles with my husband and two young sons. During the school year I am inspired by the stories of young people in the giant public high school where I teach English Language Arts. I have an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles and my work has been published in Bellevue Literary Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, and California English.

A Country Doctor

Father lay silent
in the hospital bed,
new slit on his belly

where the hernia started
to wrap around his stomach.
Doctor cut a hole

and blood was pumped
into a small cylinder on
the wall. I walk in holding

a book set to read
but instead just
stare at the wall, think

about the nail he drove
into his hand thirty years
ago. Shocked, wondering

how he could smile. Glass
eyes, mother wrapping a wet
rag around his hand.

Stare at the crack on
the wall. Watch water
drip down the metal door.

I clip his toenails. See a rusty
strip float. Scratch a notch
in the iron bedframe. Close

your eyes and look:
outside rain kills the windowsill.
Inside our cell fills with sand.

By Charles Kell

Biography:

Charles Kell is a PhD student at The University of Rhode Island and editor of The Ocean State Review. His poetry and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Orleans Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, floor_plan_journal, The Manhattanville Review, and elsewhere. He teaches in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

SAINT

I am a saint of an unholy city
holding a funeral for ghosts.
I’m standing in the emergency room,
the floor smelling so antiseptic that
it cleaned my wounds for me.

I got ligature marks around my neck,
I got burns across my back, I wish you could’ve
seen me holding my head
when it was still attached.

I know. I know. I know.

Say a prayer for the ghosts that
hover, say a prayer for the gods
that linger, say a prayer for the
teenage martyr, bleeding out
from the holes in their wrists.

I’m a saint of a falling sky,
built upon the rumble and rough-
housing of old gods.  Got a body like
a derelict building meant
for crumbling, meant for crashing.

Meant for crying, meant for leaking
didn’t matter what at the time, nothing
left now but a set of creaky stairs and
a voice that calls your name.

I am a saint of an unholy city, holding
a funeral for ghosts and I’ve got
angels begging, got god on his
knees, got a prophet brain for
a killer’s call, lord knows I ain’t a
saint no more.

By Cait Potter

Biography:

Cait Potter is a queer, mentally ill artist and writer.  The majority of their work focuses around the messiness of mental illness and the workings of trauma.