Nighttime ghosts cackle, eyes shut, painful gut, in a rut of another sleepless hour, no power to shutoff thoughts, delay solutions, resolutions, absolutions, passing hours wind down the clock in a whir of restless, feckless recriminations, until dawn creeps through the curtains, again, and again, and again.
Rise exhausted, unready, unsteady to greet the day while a grackle cackles as if to say, nevermore, which is the story, understory of my whiplashed life, good luck staying awake, as I fake another day of work, eyes half shut, ears a buzzing, vision fuzzing, until day is done, homeward bound, where sound of clock ticking, drives one to madness, sadness until I lie down at eleven and repeat the pattern again, and again, and again.
Delicate as a feather in the palm of my hand
She was my day, night, and all that lies between. Her every breath: sycamore and lavender. Each touch a floating feather in the air, every smile the full-phase moon’s perfection rising on a clear autumn evening, her laugh, chirp of bluebirds swarming a just-filled feeder, each swirl of her glowing hair, flowing orb of the sun.
Peter A. Witt is a Texas poet and a recovering academic, who lost his adjectives in the doldrums of academic writing. Poetry has helped him recover his ability to see and describe the inner and outer world he inhabits. He also writes family history, with a book about his aunt published by the Texas A&M Press, and is an avid birder and wildlife photographer.
Abortion Sonnet
When I have fears that I may cease to be
before my pen can punctuate the brains
of all those smug-ass pricks who only see
the world beneath their thumbs; the ones who say
all lives are precious, valued, even though
they fail to give one solitary fuck
about us, who oppress us with their faux
compassion; those who pluck at psalms to suck
the mercy out of their own god, then spit
on us for not obeying their demands;
if their theocracy can only sit
in unreflecting power—then understand
I’ll rage against their sanctimonious shit
and drag their raggedy-ass empire to bits.
W/apologies to Keats
Rage Sonnet #12
When I do count the clock that tells the time
and see all reason battered by the Right,
when trash judicial dockets toe the line
with silver-haired oppressors in the night;
when lofty ideals I see barren of fruit
which erst created opportunity,
and Liberty’s all tangled in lawsuits
and borne with books into a burning spree;
then of our nation’s future I do ask:
will we among the wasted empires go
or will we set upon a brighter task?
We could decay in fear, or choose to grow.
And nothing but compassion can forestall
our pride from shambling into our downfall.
w/apologies to Shakespeare
When thistles war
When thistles war, anathematizing God
and briars break and nettles split their pods,
the clandestine apostles hide their pricks
and Job waits up to catalog the tricks
while stalwart nuns direct the thunderclaps
and garish pollen sanctifies the lapse
of reason when a solitary brood
of passions rise to demonize the nude.
And if I tremble, if I question fate
when flowers rumble and reciprocate
with ghoulish laughter, can you wonder why
I’ve lost my faith? Who would decry
the crass deportment of an errant weed
or criticize the mutinous behavior of a seed
in transit? Do I have to quantify
how many dancing angels have ere died
by pinprick? Can I possibly excuse
the tendency of rosaries to lose?
I cannot. No, I simply can’t explain
how thickets thrive where furrows only gain.
Tara Campbell is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse, and graduate of American University’s MFA in Creative Writing. Her publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Wigleaf, Booth, and CRAFT Literary. She’s the author of a novel and four multi-genre collections including her newest, Cabinet of Wrath: A Doll Collection. Connect with her on Twitter at @TaraCampbellCom
Image: Thistledown a method of seed dispersal by wind from Pollinator under GNU Free Documentation License
It has been exactly 281 days since I last wrote of yesteryears, of DEFCON Level 5 fuckery, of pain, of harm, of shadows; with the knowing commentary of…”it’s been years”.
It has been exactly 281 days since I last wrote of it / them; tired of hearing the words “bitter,” “stuck,” “forgiveness,” “trust” — tired of hearing of how control is tied to metaphorical write-offs, tied to grace left unearned, tied to worth as a person in a sickening equation of misunderstood dynamics.
My bones do not stop remembering; the occasional relentless need to be awake, awake, awake in the oddest hours of the day. “Soldier’s Watch”, they call it, except I’m the only one who can detect the mines, gotten damn good at it, all these years later… …but they are there. Quiet tendrils I am aware of. Quiet unease and recognition that things haven’t been the same. It took a long time for the men around me, whom I adore, cherish, look up to to stop walking on eggshells they didn’t crack; took a long time for the halved family tree to feel more safe than it did sad, for the “dead girl” to be okay even when it went unasked. And it all sank in so comfortingly. Like warm blankets just fluffed and dried, warm smiles, arms, and sweet movie nights. But the mines still linger, though there’s fewer these days, the memories still whisper of the things they’d say. This isn’t bitterness.
This is being okay and making it work. This is knowing exactly how to balance, how to breathe, how to anticipate, how to soothe, how to chatter in a way that carefully under loads, carefully undershows. This is knowing the darkest parts of a person, to be shattered, and to somehow not be quaking in fear. Any more.
Of Crickets & Minefields
Mother tells me not to forget I was born hearing as if scarred lines on my ears do not speak for themselves. I guess she noticed I was growing up quicker and thought I wouldn’t remember when the silence started to ring its own bells.
Mother tells me of a world that is changing, surrounded by Everests hushed in white gowned sighs. Their clinical language is a tongue left lacking: “progressive mixed” – a funeral dirge spaced in time.
Mother tells how I was never supposed to be here, to walk these expensively plain college halls or hold a degree, Mother knows, Mother knows, of molds I am breaking and the rough hewn path I must carve for me. Every time, I imagine Mother smiles somewhere softly, perhaps at “our” river where the fish skim the sky. She cannot measure the gulfs that yawn menacingly, can only dream of an expedition scouting party made up of two; Mother tries, Mother tries, but she is hearing her silence left to blend with the crickets singing adieu, lost its way as the snowflakes fell, kissed the earth, like the sound sauntered out in goodbye; when asked why she cared that I arrived as hearing she couldn’t navigate minefields left entombed, medical records narrating the march of encroaching doom.
I sleep under ever-watchful Luna in the silence as Mother cries, Mother cries all through the night; A journey of two left for one to complete – between two worlds who each hold no reckoning; puzzle pieces irreparably cut to inappropriate size. To live in this unspoken space of checkerboard black and white is to know unattained joy etched against both sides. To be born hearing and to leave without, to enunciate clearly and still have to shout – of reveries lost and prayers tossed aside; deaf or hearing, to which am I?
Allison Smith writes: Originally from the Southeast Texas coast, I am now living and based out of Northern Virginia. As a writer, I have been active since the age of 13. When I was 16 and 17, I became Deaf and the topics around the world of disability are often the subject or partial subject of my writings. Now married, I work full-time as a high school Special Education teacher, striving to make a difference in this world in any way that I can.
We have been underground
For what feels like forever
Sucking on our cell phones
As if they were tree roots.
Now the time has come
To put aside masks,
To emerge once again
Beyond our closed safe doors.
We crawl out pale and waxy,
Fragile as if unfamiliar
With our post-pandemic bodies.
We need to take fresh air into our battered
Lungs and gradually strengthen.
Then we will gather once again
In large fertile groups and
When the moon rises
Together, we will sing
From the tops of our trees.
The man-gull
The man-gull only appears at low tide Out on the mudflat with his rake and torn clothing. Bent and digging for clams, As his brethren circle and call. Like the other gulls, he returns to the same patch Again and again during the season Avoiding people. He follows only the tides Showing up about forty minutes later each day Sometimes in sunlight Sometimes in rain Sometimes lit by the moon. He digs steadily Appearing to take no notice Of his surroundings except the rising water That drives him closer and closer to the shore edges. This morning, I saw him pause briefly to stare down a herring gull Communicating in a language known only To those who take their livelihood from the sea.
Michele Keane-Moore is an avid birder and photographer who takes her inspiration from the natural world. She teaches biology as an adjunct at Western New England University and tries to get outside every day.
By ramrod fleet, by coonskin cap, walking contraband visits the shops, in this one and out that one, purchases wrapped under arm or carried in tiny gift bags that festive ornament dangle just feet above hurried gum-stuck pavement and I with this tea spout, a personal waterfall, in this cozy linoleum womb which must now stand in for dying mother, this recidivist’s way I return to the window, checking to see if that yellow door across the street is still there; the train runs off with all its passengers on the hour, no quick getaway for our stoic yellow friend – out front and first over the top, how long must a man steep before all the flavour leaves him?
The Guests
Mrs. Markey has invited many factions over. Storming up her kitchen, the smell is awful. And soon the guests will arrive. I keep peering out from behind heavy brown curtains. A moth-eaten housecoat done up around sagging middle. Imagining all manner of party favours and place settings. A parade of lipstick and disingenuous niceties. Warring submarines parked all over the street. Jiggling Jello molds up the front stoop with a false precariousness.
And later, that fraudulent tippled gang-cackle. In this repurposed Barcalounger, I sit in the dark. The stillness of old pipe smoke upon these rooms I forget to live in.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle through his garbage. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Bourgeon, TheSongIs.., Cultural Weekly, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
Image: Floris van Schooten, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
