Summer Poetry Sale
Rising Phoenix Press is having a sale on all of our poetry titles! Use the code SUMMER15 at checkout in our etsy shop and get 15% off of your order.
The sale ends at 12am Eastern Time on July 31st.
Rising Phoenix Press Collections
Survive Like the Water By Lydia Havens eBook and Print Copy
Keystones by Christian Sammartino eBook and Print Copy
Fleur by Darshana Suresh eBook and Print Copy
The Bowhunter
It takes her to the river,
the deer off in the woods.
Always so gentle, always so
full of bright. Feet crunch
in the leaves, she follows it down.
She sees herself in its eyes.
There’s fading in those eyes.
A wound somewhere, and she knows
she cannot save it. She knows
she cannot ease the way.
Hands spread too much too far.
Favorite girl, favorite beer.
Father’s drunk.
He calls his little girl over.
Always so timid, always so
full of fear, she sees the bottle.
She sees herself in the reflection.
There’s a wounded deer in that reflection.
A wound made from something
untouched, so much undenied.
Girl reads in the space
between night and morning,
of Artemis and mythology and warrior and blood.
She closes her eyes and hounds run the field.
Closes her eyes where things protect her.
She runs to the field, lays in the cool grass.
Looking up, always looking up,
she sees the comets and the wishing stars.
Reaching out, she sees herself in the universe.
There’s strength somewhere in that universe.
By Elijah Noble El
Biography:
Elijah Noble El is the twenty-two year old author of The Age of Recovery (2015). His numerous honors include a nomination for Best Writing at the Top Indie Film Awards for the short film Dog-Faced Honey. His work has been featured in Literary Orphans, Words Dance Magazine, The Rising Phoenix Review, Straylight Magazine, Hooligan Magazine, Persephone’s Daughters, Kerosene Magazine’s CONTRA, Illumination, Exist Magazine, Soul Anatomy, The Odyssey, L’Éphémère Review, Erstwhile Magazine, and elsewhere. El is the co-founder of Girls Don’t Cry, the film division of the literary magazine Persephone’s Daughters, a magazine founded by Meggie Royer dedicated to empowering women who have experienced various forms of abuse and degradation.
Séance with Lavender & Bleach
this is an undressing : body dissolving : like a pill
on the swollen tongue : beached & blood heavy : whale
suffocating on the gravity : of its own chest
mix this powder into paste : mud thick scent that burns
chlorine turning : ghost dance on the breeze : sting
that crawls : dirty fingers down the back of throat
coat your hair in this paste : & how you phantom
a part of you : slow burn body : into belonging
skin peeling back : like abandoned layers of glue
//
mama, i am trying to give your
son a proper burial, but you are
dredging him up, swollen & blue
from the river of your throat.
& how lucky we are, that my
name has not curled, wounded
animal in my throat. clog of
gray-brown blood & matted
hair guttered into shower drain.
this [crippled/queer] body is
a collection of disappointments.
wrong answers. body named
boy/girl/ghost. in the winter i run
the water & the pipes scream
louder than i am willing to, drown
out my voice & i become the
sound of summer rain.
//
strip the bleach from your hair : acid rain : drenched skin
drown the scent : in lavender & orchid pulp : stain
everything : the color of blood : before it abandons you
i run a razor across my thigh : soft rain cracking
against tiles : split the pale blue : tributaries of skin
nick my knee : watch the red gather & drip
watch myself pool : in the bottom of the shower : thin ribbon
of red winding : cigarette smoke in a still room : momentary
afterimage : of emergency flares : before it slips away into the sea
By torrin a. greathouse
Biography:
torrin a. greathouse is a genderqueer, schizophrenic, cripple-punk from Southern California. They are the Editor and Co-Founder of Black Napkin Press. Their work has been published or is forthcoming in 3Elements Review, Assaracus, Heavy Feather Review, FreezeRay Poetry, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Polychrome Ink, Rabbit Catastrophe Review, The Thought Erotic, Emerge Literary Journal, & The Feminist Wire. torrin’s work was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Rust + Moth. When they are not writing or editing poetry, they are trying to survive in america long enough to earn a degree.
for some Americans passing
Before I get too comfortable on your couch,
pull my Bostonian’s off, slide
my feet, still twisting in those brown
dress socks , over the Saxony rug
your mother washed with Tide,
the spot your dad would sit eating his
dinner and rooting for the Pirates
and if you could unearth the origin of everything;
shadows, the refusal to accept as true
that all our dad’s have gone on now,
yours being the last to go
but needed two live in nurses,
to get his story out perhaps. To
document the stuff younger minds quickly
forget.
Then we got the call, and it’s always a call,
not a flyover drone or a Mitsubishi A6m Zero
(where you could see the pilots goggles)
in that battle of the eastern Solomon’s in 42.
Or a glistening sign on the side of a goat
announcing your passing.
Or any Greek goat, naked but unharmed,
walking thru that order of peonies
then turning to suckle the baby Zeus
as Amaltheia did, nursing him with milk
in a cave on Mount Ida. And like all
the nurses I’ve known, forever
placed among the stars.
By Dana Rushin
Biography:
Dana Rushin
African American Poet,
living in Detroit.
Wayne State University student….current.
unmarried. still looking.
pocket dialing through air raids
slow evening / carpet bombing / dust
mite colonies scatter / mud bodies below
head on tails / on tales of aladdin
thief of fate / no djinns & magic lamp
one flying carpet overturned / soil shake
kosher salt / peppering souks / special soup
seasoning / orphan blood & jasmine tears
telephone wires / partition & pillage calling
lost lovers / wrong numbers
butt dial / ass cheeks spread
like rye bread / whole wheat
burnt fields / lamb to the slaughter
for dinner later / rib shank & breast
no different from the rest / compiled collateral
pile / unsent messages & power trip / error
screen not loading / image censored
pixel grain / habibi of no name face
by the byline / vanishing without a trace
By Thira Mohamad
Biography:
Thira Mohamad is a writer in perpetual progress based in Toronto, by way of South China Sea. A storyteller of South/East Asian origins, her poetic roots can be traced back through her maternal line. She utilizes art and its boundless dimensions to navigate the nuances of her identity. A failed archaeologist, she is currently crawling through university to finish her undergraduate degree. Thira regularly participates in poetry readings within Toronto’s diasporic community. Some of her writings can be found on her personal blog bayuandbooks.wordpress.com
No Man’s Land
You have found yourself in mud waters, stuck
half way between who you are
and who you want to be.
This is no man’s land,
an almost burnt bridge,
a dead zone of ugly things,
and you do whatever it takes to survive.
Even if that means revealing
the monster for all to see.
Here, you lose yourself. You have harboured
a hatred for the world for making you
feel this way. Your skin is foreign,
fear has your voice by the chokehold.
Here, you forget about redemption.
You have been betrayed by all that you are.
There are no mirrors
for you to reflect on.
What they don’t tell you
about no man’s land is that
it is not the destination. The end
is far from here; it’s past the meadows of dead soils
and straight through to the horizon.
What they don’t tell you
is that you can grow even in the
muddiest of waters; you are allowed
forgiveness for the betrayal
inflicted on yourself.
What they don’t tell you
is that the mask you wear to survive
does not have to be who you are.
You do not have to be
the person you were yesterday.
You are already
so much closer to
becoming.
By Anthea Yang
Biography:
Anthea Yang is an aspiring poet from Western Australia where she is currently studying Creative Writing and Literary & Cultural Studies at university. She is a silver-lining optimist and a lover of open fields. Apart from collecting stories, she also enjoys driving with the windows down and conversations about outer space. You can find her online at 2wentysixletters.tumblr.com
Mary had a Little Lamb
Humpty Dumpty promised
the pull-out method was fool-
proof that day they rode the
waves of a rolling field.
He jumped when she told him.
Shell and yoke rotting over
the sidewalk beneath their
studio apartment window.
She refused to look down
for nine months, wore a too-
tight blouse to the pawn shop
where she sold her mother’s ring.
Miss Muffet heard Mary
pleading through the walls –
Take a bottle. I need
to go to school.
What a shame, says Miss Muffet
eating her curds and wey, little
lamb doesn’t stand a chance
with a mother like that.
By Kailey Tedesco
Biography:
Kailey Tedesco is currently earning her MFA in poetry at Arcadia University. She is a former resident poet and current poetry editor for Lehigh Valley Vanguard. She also edits for Marathon Literary Review. Her work focuses on perceptions of femininity, often in a surrealistic manner. Many of her poems are inspired by confessional or Gurlesque poetics paired with her own experiences in cemeteries and abandoned amusement parks. You can find her poems featured in such publications as FLAPPERHOUSE and Jersey Devil Press. For more about Kailey Tedesco, please follow her on Twitter: @kaileytedesco.
FAITH
I believe in boys with sad eyes and soft smiles.
I believe in girls who roar back at the thunder
and still kiss like the first time they fell in love.
I believe in the people who’s skin never felt like home to them,
so they carved home out of the dust beneath their shoes
and kept on going.
I believe in all the ones who are told they don’t belong.
I don’t think I belong either.
I don’t know what it means to “belong”
but I know the ones shouting have nothing to offer,
that fitting in is the fad diet we’re all starving ourselves to.
I believe in us.
The ones who have never felt good enough.
I believe in the girl next door, who likes to be called “her”
but who woke up, today, with a gender that felt like
hand spun wool and spilled milk,
and who still doesn’t know how to tell her mother.
I believe in the ones dating the wrong people
so their parents won’t have to know
who it is they want to love.
I believe in a fear like that.
I believe in the kindness of strangers
and I believe that turning a blind eye
isn’t what makes you bad.
It only makes you scared like the rest of us.
I believe people learn to be brave.
I believe in the hands picking flowers as much
as I believe in the hands that plant them.
Because sometimes our hearts are too big for our bodies
and they like to go bumping against each other–
sometimes,
love doesn’t mean what you think it does.
You and I don’t love the same, but we are,
all of us, out here loving.
I believe in the collection of fingerprints you pick up
from everything in the world you have ever touched.
If I believe in anything,
I believe that that
is enough.
By Ashe Vernon
Biography:
Ashe Vernon is a produced playwright, an actor, and a poet. She’s been writing for as long as she can remember, but found poetry when she most needed it. She recently graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University with a degree in theatre and gender studies. Before she hits the job market with her oh-so-impressive fine arts degree, Ashe is spending the summer on tour doing spoken word with her best friend and partner in crime. Her first book of poetry, Belly of the Beast, was published by Words Dance Publishing and her second, Wrong Side of a Fist Fight, will be coming out through Where Are You Press, this July. She spends most of her time writing her way out of dark places, and looking to the stars. Ashe has featured in venues across Texas, such as The Standpipe Coffee House in Lufkin, Nacogdoches Literary Readings, and Love Jonz Spoken Jazz, in Duncanville. She has placed first at WriteAboutNow in Houston and her work has been published in Word Dance Magazine, and volumes one and two of the Literary Sexts anthologies. Ashe has no concept of the term “inside-voice” and spends every waking hour with her giant bear-cub of a cat. She plans on moving to a big city and covering herself with tattoos. It’s going pretty well, so far.
Rosewood
I work nights now, but sometimes I can still feel 6am beneath your roof –
eggs. tea. spilled coffee. ripped jeans and scattered freckles.
It’s still cold out, but the fingers of morning run over your windows, tumbling through shadows; eerie-eyed sidewalks outside.
I wish I can tell you that things work out,
even if they’re chiseled and broken,
but I say “can I come back in two days?”,
in the ringing silence of every single sunrise we watched from dusty, foggy rooftops.
The neighborhood buzzes – the town is like wildfire, creaking like our bicycle spokes and the dock a mile behind the ice cream shop. You sigh, out of breath, and I grin.
Now there’s pollen on the shingles of your roof, and your guitar is so far out of tune, but those are the least of our problems. March’s soft winds feel like a sadness in your town, rosy in the humid afternoon.
By Avery Myers
Biography:
Born and raised in a perpetual Indian summer, Avery Myers is a writer and restless traveler who works and plays on the East Coast of the USA. She is the executive editor of -Ology Journal, a safe harbor, independent zine for emerging and unpublished creative people. Avery is a featured traveler on Passion Passport, and her writing has been published by several websites, journals, and university zines.
The Mystery of Faith and Cold Fronts
It had missed them, of course;
He’d watched the radar on the laptop
The economics guru from the Ag Extension
Claimed was indispensable to the modern farmer
(After all, the specialist said, farmers were accountants and entrepreneurs,
Not to mention environmentalists and global marketers;
Looking over his brown, burnt lawn and the dusty path to his silos,
He’d grunted Mebbe I need to be a medicine man or magician.)
Oh, there had been some rain, here and there;
Milt Stone’s place over by East Groveland had seen a three-minute shower,
And a cousin who lived out toward Watkins Glen
Said the vineyards on Seneca Lake enjoyed a nice little soak,
But neither his place nor anyone else ten miles in any direction saw so much as a drop,
As had been the case for several weeks, despite any number of late afternoons
When great portentous banks of clouds,
Looking for all the world like so many black-robed judges,
Inscrutably ancient and hunched over, piled up on the horizon,
Dry lightning dotting and dashing in some obscure and enigmatic cipher,
And one sleepless evening he’d been watching the TV news out of Buffalo
When the anchor asked, professionally breezy and unconcerned,
So, Ted, is this the night we’ll have some actual rain in the forecast?
But the weatherman’s face was all grimness
(He’d been brought up on a farm out towards Castile,
And knew full well how folks’ guts were all twisted up
By the struggle between hopefulness and frustration)
And he simply shrugged and spread his arms wide, palms up,
Like some disappointed Magi who had no gift to offer.
He had, as he did every Sunday, stopped to pass some time with neighbors
After services at the Presbyterian Church in Avon
(The current occupant of the pulpit a thin, pinch-faced young man
Whose reedy voice contained an edgy, wheedling tone
Which gave the impression that he was not wholly convinced of God’s grace.)
They discussed important matters: who’d gotten how many notices from the bank,
How things compared to the great dry of sixty-four,
When they’d lost the corn and soybeans all together,
And how a good half-dozen farmers, convinced they’d been forsaken,
Had shot themselves in their haylofts or corn cribs,
And everyone agreed that the weather would break soon,
Though whether that was because they’d earned it or simple mathematical probability
Was a matter of considerable debate.
By W.K Kortas
Biograophy:
W.k. kortas is an itinerant civil servant living in Pennsylvania’s Endless Mountains. He lives and works by the axiom “Mediocre means better than some.”