love song for an alcoholic, from an alcoholic

I am unfamiliar when the clouds come
across your eyes, and still, you have no mother.
she is buried somewhere, same as my father:
different knives, and still, the same bed.

you suckle from days-old bottles like
honey can birth itself, like nectar is not hard-
earned, like a body could sacrifice
without giving something in return.
I, too, reach the end and wonder where
is more.

I offer the palms of my hands, take bites
from my arms in communion, pray I will
find another way to fill my belly. you ask how
to keep your eyes open while being gutted.
I tell you the fable of stitches as I, a myth,
bleed out onto the kitchen floor somewhere
back in the dust of 2010.

you ask with your mother’s teeth, through
your father’s mouth. I cannot find the words
to say that you were the one who taught me.
we fashion our fingers into fishhooks,
I become my mother’s cheeks and my father’s
secret-keeping,

we become tiny sliver moons that find
their first meal inside of one another. you sleep
outside and hope to be raked up. I crawl backward
into your skull and cannot sleep for weeks.
It looks so much like my own,

sourness and god wrap their bodies around
one another until we cannot tell the difference.
I spill the honey on the carpet, you tell me
to look away, as if I cannot recognize the sound

of desperate teeth and tongue clawing
at what is not yet soaked up. I hold your head

and call you by my father’s sickness,
by the name we share: we bring
the knives into bed and teach them

how impossible it is to sleep still
when they are tugging at the pieces of us
that have already been opened. blood recognizes
blood. thirst is the god of glass.

we make ourselves a home of bottles
and call the graveyard a cathedral.
I am love and all its hatred when we are
empty tin at the edge of the bed.

I am both my mother and my father:
the pleading to stop and the promise
that he never begun. and so in this bed,
we are four: that dichotomy of we.
we both are, breathing, knotting in what in
me loves what in you, and what in me
is flood, come to hold onto you.

and if we are the bottom of the bottle
we were born into, we will always
reach it. if we are the bed of our
parents, we will always be undone.

By Emma Bleker

Biography:

Emma Bleker is a 21 year old writer working for her English degree in Virginia. She has previously been published in Persephone’s Daughters, Cahoodaloodaling, Yellow Chair Review, Thought Catalog, Rising Phoenix Review, and Skylark Review, among others. She probably wants to be your friend.

Firegirl

1.
We used to paint our foreheads
with soot gathered from overturned logs.
He made me believe in rubbing dirt
into our brown skin,
that it could make us darker, holier.

2.
There was no need for night, half-moon bites
shadowed my collarbone.

3.
My mother once called me a pyromaniac
for running twigs through the fire and waving them
in the air to catch oxygen. For staring too long at the smoke
without blinking. She never once said anything
about the way I used to look at the boy
who seared his name along my spine.

4.
I have not forgiven myself for the unused
fire extinguisher in my closet.

5.
No one ever told me to
tend to the fire. The blaze told me
to grow wild with him, and oh god, I did.

6.
The burn under my left thigh is still tender
as if the raw flame still licks the skin.

7.
His hands remind me of the way I shrieked
when I touched the handle of an iron poker
and felt the scorch
of metal branding my palm.

By Erin Jin Mei O’Malley

Biography:

Erin Jin Mei O’Malley is currently studying in Germany as a Speedwell Scholar. She has previously served as a Genre Editor for Polyphony H.S. and is the Co-Founder of Sooth Swarm Journal. Erin has attended workshops run by the University of Virginia and the Kenyon Review. Her work been recognized by Hollins University, Columbia College Chicago, the National YoungArts Foundation, the National Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and others.

Gorgon’s Lament

The language of my grandparents was aborted in my childhood.
I wanted to eulogize it, but I did not have the words.

I line my eyes with my ancestors’ ashes, color my lips with gochujang.
I think I am doing penance. For what, I do not know.

The white woman sprinkles grains of pity on my wounds,
says, Darling, not everything is about race. I cannot answer her

because my mouth is filled with rice. I am chewing on
chink and gook and they get stuck in my teeth.

Choking, I cough, Maybe not. But maybe more than you think.
She doesn’t respond. I look down— my hands are invisible.

America, who will bridge the gap between your dream and your truth?
I try, but I am only a half-realized echo of the diaspora, a ghost

who haunts the chasm and cannot reach the other side.
America, you are Athena, untouchable in your crown of reason,

your golden hair smelling like a battleground, metallic
and unyielding. I am Medusa, raped on your sacred shores

by the sea who claimed me for himself, that watery expanse
who caresses continents but belongs to no land.

America, you have turned my black hair to serpents.
You have made me a monster, and now no one will meet my eye.

By Megan Kim

Megan Kim is a mixed-race student currently living in Oregon. She is the founder and editor of her high school literary magazine and holds a state championship title for poetry recitation. She believes in art as a means of expression, healing, growth, connection, and activism. In her free time, she enjoys adventuring with the people she loves. More of her writing can be found at magpiedreams.tumblr.com.

Soft Revolution, Even Softer Voices

We are what’s left of the cities
full of small people and bigger shrines
and laughter that reached higher
than the heavens, fires burned
but we burned brighter and
no one could say that this was the end.
we are soft revolutionaries, mouths
full of flesh and hands full of apologies.

We are what’s left of the sky,
plants growing through our bones
and we shoulder the weight of
still living in hopes we’ll find another
place without violent revolutions.
We have souls like water, soft hearts
under hard fingers, stronger fingers.

We didn’t ask for this, but here
we stand. We are what’s left of
the unstable voices, shaken and angry,
left alone in the dark rooms, we
can stand but our knees shake
We stand for what’s left, we are what’s
left.

By Cait Potter

Cait Potter is an emerging artist and writer set on giving voice to the ideas stuck inside their head. Their work focuses on softness and surviving.

Progress

Machines do all the work
at the Ford Engine Foundry
the company film said in 1954
that’s progress
but machines can’t
sit in the cafeteria all day
playing cards
or tell a foreman
to fuck himself
the film neglected to say

Oh progress
is a jolly sight
indeed
without asbestos
and foundry dust
and cigarettes
and the heart carving that comes after—
here’s a question
how many chests were cut open
and put back
without all the parts
how many lives rearranged
a little
for piss streams
to work on
in the showers
while a fucking machine
just stood there

By John Stupp

Biography:

John Stupp is the author of Advice from the Bed of a Friend by Main Street Rag. His new book Pawleys Island will be published in 2017 by Finishing Line Press. Recent poetry has appeared or will appear in The Greensboro Review, Poet Lore, The American Poetry Journal, Into the Void (Ireland), LitMag, The Tishman Review, Door Is A Jar, A Quiet Courage and Slipstream. His poem “Goat Island” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016. He lives near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Maternal Line

If you were my daughter:
you would know the joy
of walking barefoot on a rainy day
And how mud squelches just so
between your toes
And how the air smells of rebirth
and uncried tears from what life
throws in your direction, every day.
You would know the stars in their constellations better
than the ones on television, and the color
of your dreams would matter more
than the color of your nail polish.

You would know how to enjoy going to the movies
or to the beach or on vacation, alone.
You would enter the playing field
in tennis shoes, not sandals. The integrity of
your “no” would value as much as your “yes,”
and you would know to reject anyone
who thinks otherwise. You would learn
how to forgive, walk away from, and firebomb
your enemies- and which application
suits what situation. Without apology.

If you were my daughter, you would never need
to hide or deny or negate your love,
and its expression; you would never
be ashamed of your desires and passions.
your boyfriend or girlfriend
would be welcome in my home.
And when love forsakes you,
when dreams elude you,
when employers overlook you,
when life abuses you in the street-
you will learn the truth

That the same genes that give compassion
also produce warriors- and they
are hereditary in the maternal line.

By Marie Anzalone

Biography:

Marie Anzalone is a development worker researching climate change effects in the rural Guatemalan highlands, where she lives with an active volcano in her backyard and a passionate love for all things arts and sciences. She crunches precipitation data and interviews poor farm wives on her good days and humbles herself the rest of the time presenting poetry in Spanish in front of a tough crowd who are quick to remind her of every gender and verb tense error she has ever made. She has been writing poetry for more than 15 years, and would like to offer a few pieces for consideration in your esteemed publication. She is offering the following 5 poems: “41 Fireflies,” “That Morning in August,” “Daily Consumption,” “Maternal Line,” and “The Freedom of a Rainy Day.”

Her creative writing and essays and short stories have been published in the Namaste Human Rights Journal of the University of Connecticut (2010), and several times in The Larcenist, Rising Phoenix Press, and Versewrights. She has published three stand-alone books of poetry, which may be found under her author profile on Goodreads and on Amazon, and has had works included in several creative writing anthologies. The five pieces she is offering have not been previously published through any print format other than her personal blog on Writers Café.

Photograph taken on Kimball Street, July 21 

white car, parked atop the staggered
cobblestone with green pooling at the seams,

sleeps with its front wheels still turned
to the left, with its windshield wipers poised

like fingers, reaching where the evening sun
strikes metal. we haven’t had rain in a week.

above it, a tree branch tangled in telephone lines.
someone is also saying goodbye. but here, now,

teetering on the brink of forgetfulness, this farewell
feels too monumental to be commonplace.

where the line of cars tapers off, a building
that is more wound than wall, a doorbell without

someone to call to. the paint chips off
and into the roads. it’ll live in some dirtied sole tomorrow.

as this strand of sidewalk before us narrows
into trapezoid, only then do we notice the two

people standing there, gripping each other’s hands
and waving goodbye to us. they are smiling,

a chinese grandmother and her little boy. he is hoping
to see the pastor walking his dog

on the next block. she is hoping that home
will open for her when they arrive.

it has taken us long enough
to see them there; it will take them longer

to walk home. the city stretches out before them.
grandmother warns the boy to watch his step.

By Jisoo Choi

Biography:

Jisoo Choi is a junior at Centennial High School in Maryland. Her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards and the Letters about Literature Competition of the Library of Congress. In addition to writing poetry, Jisoo plays the viola in several youth orchestras and chamber ensembles in her community.