‖:Reset

After Undertale

This first time we played,
I held your buttercup-stained smile
between my ribs. We were a god
that broke the crust on our kingdom.
But I lost your heart in the garden,
my body in the arrows

*I watched you return,
a hollowed corona.
It smelled like
rattling bones and dust.

Promise not to laugh
when I tell you this world
is kill or be killed.

*Remember the blind dogs; the snow
is so deep. Your face was meant
to be stitched with tears,
not this fractured science.

Here, I find you again
under angel rune, flowers echoing our new

*name—the fallen human,
a  c h a i n  o f  p u l s i n g  l e t t e r s
you could never arrange into truth.

I shatter the king
in the mountain. Swallow
these jarred spectrums all
for you.

*My rusted blade
can’t cut through your
SAVE FILE 3
stop this
SAVE FILE 3
ecstatic megalovania.

This metal LoVe pulls me
down through
folded timelines. A cinnamon mercy

*will bury us.
Let me share this weight
at the end of the world.
if only for a moment
Our DETERMINATION
breaks the mirrored sky.
A sunset crowns our

happy
ending.

I

don’t want this to be over.
*to let go

Are you sure you want to reset? :‖

‖:Reset originally appeared in Koru Magazine

By Ashely Adams

Biography:

Ashely Adams is an MFA candidate in nonfiction at the University of South Florida. Her work has appeared in Flyway, Heavy Feather Review, Fourth River, Anthropoid, Permafrost, OCCULUM. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was selected as Best in Show for the Antioch Writers Workshop Fiction Fellowship contest.

Ode on Hannibal Lecter that Ends with a Reason to Live

I heard once that fear gives meat
a bitter taste, acid bath in bone. How,
then, do these numb and clumsy
ligaments deliquesce on the tongue,
if not to make a meal in the ash of it.

It started on a plane. No. It started
with a gauzy heartbeat somewhere
over the shoulder, with untumbling
in sleep. It started with sleep fanned
outward like the tracks of a skeletal

train, the kind that dot the horizon
on a long country drive, gone to rust,
gone to stillness. And the sleep, stretched
to stillness, stretched to floral stitch of quilt
made a cave, that we may trick mid-afternoon

night into thinking there was any choice
but to fall. This naked dust—not vulnerable,
but folded and nude—this hucklebuckling
toward disrepair. What a waste it must be,
to discard a body so pickled with despair.

When I die, swath my body in garlic bulbs.
Wrap me in lotus leaf & set me to roasting
in clay. Let the fat of me mask the electric tang

of paroxetine, and we will know a thing like peace.

By Jacqueline Boucher

Biography:

Jacqueline Boucher lives and writes in Northern Michigan. Her work was a finalist for the 2016 Write Bloody manuscript contest, and has appeared in BOOTH, SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart, and other magazines. She can be found on Twitter @jacqueboucher.

A Response For Orpheus

HOW CONVENIENT OF A METAPHOR IS MY MENTAL ILLNESS?
YOU MILKWEED OF A POET, YOU SHROUDED GLASS OF A MAN,
HOW SWEETLY DOES THIS NIGHTSHADE
LINE UP IN YOUR NARRATIVE STRUCTURE?

DO YOU GET MY TRAUMA STUCK UNDER YOUR GUMS
WHILE RECITING THE VOWEL SOUNDS OF THIS HORROR THAT TUCKS ME
INTO BED AT NIGHT ? MHM, I BET
“VICTIM” JUST LOOKED SO NICE AROUND MY COLLAR
YOU COULDN’T HELP BUT MAKE IT A SIMILE
FOR WHAT A GREAT MAN YOU ARE.

I SEE YOU PLUCKED THE SCARS RIGHT OFF MY ARMS
AND PUT THEM IN THE LAST STANZA OF YOUR SLAM POEM.
I BET THE GRASSHOPPER SYMPHONY OF SNAPS WILL
REALLY EARN YOU THAT 10.
GO ON, HOLD UP MY CROOKED LIMBS
FOR THE CROWD. JUST
WIPE THE BLOOD OFF YOUR MOUTH, BOY.

OH HOW SWEET THE FRUIT OF MY LABOR
TASTES LICKED OFF THE MICROPHONE.
WHAT A GOD OF THE VERSE YOU ARE.
SUCH A WORDSMITH.
AND ALL YOUR BEST LINES
ARE SHAPED LIKE MY CASKET.

By Dorothy McGinnis

Biography:

A poet from Salt Lake City, Utah, Dorothy does her best as much as she can and also confirms she is definitely not twenty two very small baby ducks disguised as a 19-year-old woman. Dorothy has represented Salt Lake and Sugar house at the National Poetry Slam (2016, 2017) the International World Poetry Slam (2017), the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (2017), and has been chosen as the representative for the 2018 Women of the World Poetry Slam. Dorothy teaches poetry at Skyline High School, a role she loves. Her work has been seen in the Rising Phoenix Press, Feminist Thread, and the her two chapbooks, titled “On Becoming a Volcano” and “O Bless Rivers Even When they want to Overflow.” Her work has been nominated for Sundress Press’ Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.

 

Budding

girl made of flowers
woman made of moonlight
when you are fourteen
when you are twenty-four
and hiding your smile
and full-faced grinning
through rose lenses
as she sets your glasses gently
but quiet nights
on the nightstand.
and warm blankets
this quiet midnight
make you tremble
makes you tremble
in the worst way:
within each other’s embrace
scorching nightmares,
living your dreams:
fearful of who you are
wholeness in who you are
and why a girl
and how this woman
has made you blush.
answered all your questions.

By Amy Lauren

Biography:

Amy Lauren is an organist in Jackson, MS and recipient of a Pushcart and Best of the Net nomination in 2017. Her chapbooks include Prodigal (Bottlecap Press) and God With Us (Headmistress Press), the latter through the semi-finalist prize in the Charlotte Mew Contest.

Deep Security Breach Cripples N.S.A.

Putting World in Danger, and this before
coffee, the nation

already teetering or having long wobbled,
me unaware,

the same way my telomeres have been unraveling
while I threw sticks

to the dog, or the way my husband got a parking ticket,
four quarters splayed

in his fist, having crossed the street to greet
a friend before dropping

them in the meter, the meter woman hiding
behind a tree to do

her dirty work, then slapping it on the windshield,
triumphantly refusing

to listen to reason. Or me learning that a new medication
costs $40 for six grams,

a month’s-worth, my soul only three times heavier,
and priceless.

Should I be grateful for the bargain or glad not
to have to purchase my spirit

like a fast-food worker her uniform, or a coal miner
goods paid for in scrip

at the company store, everything twice as dear
but no helping it?

I speak to my son’s college counselor and fight
tears already overwhelmed

by the threat of debt, the either/or of it—
my child’s future

or my own—of course, I’ll pay through the nose,
am already stockpiling

morphine from dead relatives to save
on end-of-life care.

Perhaps the Shadow Brokers can do double-duty,
hacking and shellacking,

whacking opa and oma to give families
some elbow room

while holding big-data hostage. I make myself
read the story

to the bitter end: It may be years until the full fallout
is understood.

By Devon Balwit

Biography:

Devon Balwit is a writer/teacher from Portland, OR. She has six chapbooks and two collections out/forthcoming in the world. Her poems have appeared here in The Rising Phoenix Review, as well as in The New Verse News, Poets Reading the News, Rattle, Redbird Weekly Reads, Rise-Up Review, Rat’s Ass Review, Mobius, What Rough Beast, and more.

EVEN NETFLIX IS IN DEBT

There’s a vast swath of land infected by the living
dead. The desert, the plains, the cities– all beheld
by glow of screen, and we’ve dug holes too deep
for bodies. Just pray there are no more casualties,
no gunshots, no cars striking crowds, whether in
the USA or Spain– all of this is beginning to look
universal, the hatred of our own. How we pay
for the debt the nation’s entrepreneurs designed.
There’s an endless spate of horror
films upon which to feast our eyes but look
at the people walking down your street harboring
the fears society cannot afford. There is still
ample land to lay graves– land founded on holes
we placed bodies in yet we distract ourselves
with everything, looking for the next lark
to keep us living. Under a blanket in the living
room with our lovers, under stars aglow through
open window, we watch the drama unfold.
We know the protagonists will always
find a way out of suffering.
Those through the window never do.

By James Croal Jackson

Biography:

James Croal Jackson, a Filipino-American poet, is author of The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared in FLAPPERHOUSE, Yes Poetry, Stonecoast Review, and elsewhere. He edits The Mantle, a poetry journal. Find him in Columbus, Ohio or at jimjakk.com.

Ode to the Man inside and the Letter he will not get because he was transferred to a new prison on Tuesday last

for E.O., for his family, for all inside~
with thanks to the poet Issa Kobayashi, for this world of dew

He who they said did
what he did not do

He who lost world and life and home
myth of freedom too

Who was brother and son and father
all the roles he once knew

He who lives in cage
for what he didn’t do

Redwhite bars, broken promise, false accuse,
and skin: what it all came down to

More than two years in
I finally write to you

Spin story, sing verse in inks bright
like morning dew

The losses you’ve borne
now this one too

All the innocence we’ve lost:
now this loss too

The truth? That letter
may never find you

My small offering,
small through and through

winds through concrete maze
imprisoned now too

Just like all the things we’ve
taken from you

This, just one more,
nothing new

And yet, and yet—
in this world of dew

we learn and learn again,
us hapless fools

not a thing is promised: not justice, not release, not freedom—
all this we surrender too

But know this now—
it may be true:

those words
were not just meant for you

They spun story, hope, poem
and awareness too:

that yours would not be the only
eyes for whom they blew

light scatter of hope
cast across ephemeral page, dust and dew

Perhaps—could it be?

Someone needs them more than you.

By Hazel Kight Witham

Biography:

Hazel Kight Witham is a writer, teacher, activist, and artist whose work can be found in Bellevue Literary Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, Rising Phoenix Review, Angels Flight, Zoetic Press’s NonBinary Review, Lunch Ticket and Lady/Liberty/Lit. She lives and breathes in Los Angeles with her family.

Poem in which Mason Verger does not appear

Admit it: it would be better if he honeyed
his drink with the grief in you. Like maybe,
if his lips were drawn with cackle, with sneer, you might
have better earned your ankle’s inward twist. If
you were some lovely hog, some elegant crane
of neck and jodhpur fit to be fed for screaming,
then you might tuck his simple villainy into the cedar chest
that holds your finer messes. Instead, he is spit curl
& heather tee, feathered voice and underbite. When it’s over,
he stops asking why you’re crying
to buoy your conversation with quips on Milton
he’d told you once before. In this, he foregoes swish of cloak
& makes your mouth into an apology, its syllables trailing
behind you
in dark morning, a braid.

By Jacqueline Boucher

Biography:

Jacqueline Boucher lives and writes in Northern Michigan. Her work was a finalist for the 2016 Write Bloody manuscript contest, and has appeared in BOOTH, SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart, and other magazines. She can be found on Twitter @jacqueboucher.