It is good to disappear. Incognito fires extinguished.
And the dissolving man in a liquid beaker.
As some faraway youth-to-death occurs in direct proportion.
No knowledge of the other. Connective tissue long unseen.
A black rubber stop for spillage. Skyward gazers hand-in-hand.
The falling of a star observed in one place, is the end of a life in another.
Have You Seen the Ants Carry the Dead Back into the woods?
There is a reason the arsonist is always looking for that spark the lovers can never seem to find, that least clinical of inducements – have you seen the ants carry the dead back into the woods? Like the top half of a chocolate Eclair with all the filling missing, working in teams like shift work done in miniature; distance overcome by numbers, father mathematics would be proud; sweet beard Archimedes rigging up a pulley system at the University of Syracuse, go Orange! Or you falling into my arms like a failed land bridge, these many whirling dervish children of enduring sweet-toothed minds.
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.
I wish I knew What you meant when You showed up at my room And you told me you loved me. It has been raining All day, classic dark and Stormy night, and your T-shirt was soaked Through, and your hair was Wet, and I wanted to offer You a towel, but you Told me you loved me.
You stood on my Carpet as not to get my limited Furniture wet, and I asked You why you were Here, and you told me You loved me.
I was wearing sweatpants and A sweater, and my eyeliner Was smeared, and my Shoes were off, and you told Me you loved me.
My day had been long, and I Was behind on Work, and it was raining, and You told me you loved me.
It was far too Late at night for me To be up, and for you To be out but you told me you Loved me.
I threw a lamp At your head But I missed and you told Me you loved me I yelled And you told me you loved me I cried and you told me You loved me I beat my fists Against your chest and you Told me you loved me I Pushed you out of The door and you told Me you loved me I watched You walk away and wondered What you meant when You told me you loved me.
Believer
Sit down next to me. Ignore the blood seeping out your side, a bullet wound caused by Something less volatile, more Sadness than madness, a stinging Bee or the words of the Prophet of whatever you want To believe. Let my shirt help Sop up the water pouring from Inside you. Not tears, of Course, that is far too obvious And far less oblivious. I was speaking about More of a Water-to -Wine kind of thing, like you’re The sacrificial sheep and I’m the One holding the knife. Or gun, In your case. But it’s always Your case, right? Come sit with me.
Lillian Hallock (she/they) is a young adult writer from Richmond, Virginia, and a current student at the University of Virginia. Lilly has been writing since she was a young child, as a way to let out her vast imagination. In her free time, and is always creating, whether that be through poetry, prose, music, art, or the occasional game of dungeons and dragons. You can find her on Instagram @lchallock.
Image:unbekannt270, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Stretching open I feel exactly how I want to. The fear makes me tremble but want feverishly.
The moon is not full. I am not wild now. I wake and I roll into memories that daze me. I feel my mouth still full of kisses and sweet fruit.
The loneliness is both cruel and dear.
Can I be your earth for a while? Can I feel shared instead of taken? Please There could be merriment and fire as deep as bone.
Opaque
Burying my cheek between your shoulder blades the cold mud seeped through the feet of my stockings. They watched in heat and horror our swift, mocking dance and ran their tongues along the roofs of their mouths.
In hindsight we were not each other’s lovers at all. we were each only lovers with shifting words for human nature and one shivering heart.
Shady Evenings in Early Spring
Drenched in rainwater pressing cold fingers to cold necks
Heartbeats strong and foreign small thighs sticking to your ribcage.
-The leaves were in my hair for days –
Morning was especially dank, but my daffodils finally bloomed by the beach trees.
Shakti Sackett is a Virginia-born and raised writer and photographer, based out of Antigua, Guatmela, Guatemala. She writes material typically drawn from dreams and those memories so thin you have to grasp them as gently as they come to you to write them down.
Image by Michal Klajban, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons Author photo by Bienvenido Cruz.
A security guard follows me
while I visit Lalla Essaydi’s photography,
paintings, and multimedia art exhibit in DC,
with close pursuit in latticed space
he asks me what these harem girls mean
Odalisques? with all the writing on their bodies,
if I think they’re pretty, lying there seductively,
even if a little angry in the face
how do I like her pose?
They’re better in the gallery
down the street, he goes on, you know the ones
typically shown
not by this Moroccan woman
who forgot to take off
all their clothes.
Bible Museum
I: In the Doors
In the beginning there were words of many letters foreign dusty shapes projected sculpted painted engraved embossed gold-plated hewn inked stained-glassed fêted admired in opaque forms and primary colors of connotation
Rendering nothing and everything
Uncommentaried, simplified, uncontested, artfully untranslated bookworship without conversation in tour guide dictation
II: Elevators
Play oud music from the region while saturated hummingbird flits in and out of occupation Lift a people beyond questions of providence and provenance into elation
III: History of the Bible – Translation
To solve Biblical translation millennia of speech-to-page transit though history geography politics linguistics Draw a line, peel a pomegranate, Merely spin the wheel to assign any indigenous idea from the ends of the earth to the correct English designation
IV: Bible in America
Display The Woman’s Bible closed. Too dangerous to read, or open.
VI: Stories from the Bible – Animation
An immersive experience: Eve dances naked until pregnant Hagar is absent while Sarah dissolves Deborah brandishes a knife in flames accomplices Jael and Barak behind Orpah, darker than Ruth, has no name Naomi matchmaker presides Bathsheba conspires to become queen There are eight women in the Bible
V: History of the Bible – Biblical Names Naming is an act of love Forgetting tribes conceived in strife: son of my sorrows, judgement, my struggle or a woman who named herself bitter
VI: Stories from the Bible – Animation An immersive experience: Eve dances naked until pregnant Hagar is absent while Sarah dissolves Deborah brandishes a knife in flames accomplices Jael and Barak behind Orpah, darker than Ruth, has no name Naomi matchmaker presides Bathsheba conspires to become queen There are eight women in the Bible
VII: Children’s Experience
Roll ping-pong ball [sex-slave] Esther to [abusive tyrant] King Xerxes!
Use magnets to guide Joshua’s spies [to the brothel]!
A ball toss game: Maim “enemy combatants” before you cut off their heads!
Pose for pictures as [terrorist] Samson, about to kill [civilian] Philistines at a party!
VIII: Stories from the Bible – Theophany
Shhhhhhh… Further still listen and hush
Did you hear the voice— the voice under the voice— a woman’s speaking from the burning bush?
Elisabeth Mehl Greene is a writer and composer working in the DC area. She is the author of Lady Midrash: Poems Reclaiming the Voices of Biblical Women, and was the founding editor of Untold Volumes: Feminist Theology Poetry. Her work appears in VoiceCatcher, Mizna, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, and the anthologies Erase the Patriarchy and District Lines IV.
Image by Chajm Guski, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
It befalls a man to journey down into a macabre land without warmth of sun. carrying doubt but blinded by youthful passion. The shores of the Styx are lined with drowned daughters, grasping for things they can never possess Across the water is an alluring green hue.
Specters begin circling. The artist is surrounded by his former pride. They bow and depart as it starts to rain. Beneath the breast he cradles his grandfather’s parting words.
At the gate are three hounds, Upon approach the titan rises and releases a foul howl, it is bestial and benevolent, it is protective and vulnerable.
In the lurid halls of the underground king, The lyre beseeches the gods with words both true and kind. Its music cries out and is answered with deceit.
Reunited they scoff at the fool chasing a boulder, blind to an inevitable fate Across a decrepit field Elysium passes, growing smaller in the distance
Nearing the end now The aspiration calls with words both familiar and cold. He fails. Turning to face the meek voice but she is gone. a long silence fills the air, there is a weight to every breath
Madness feeds on the weakness as it does all men. Thoughts of home attempt to strengthen the will but the internal screams are too loud. He fails. The sea of sounds is overwhelming, it’s powerful waves gift the drowning man a lifeboat. The voice of Linus becomes a guide, take one step, now another. Arising from the pit Seeking the same purpose
Emerging covered in scars, the light has a soft touch he has returned from death. I am alive.
.
Marc Gull writes: I am submitting my poem titled, “Orpheus.” This is a poem about the Greek hero Orpheus’ journey into the underworld to be reunited with his deceased lover. I imbued a lot of myself in this poem as I wrote it at a very volatile point in my life where I felt isolated and depressed. I had just begun therapy and had also lost a close family member. This writing experience was very cathartic for me and I hope to share those emotions with the reader.
Marc Gull is a graduate student from East Northport, New York. This is his first published work. He is inspired by the works of Sylvia Plath, Walt Whitman, and Tom Stoppard.
Image by Helen Stratton, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
