Bourgeon

The Best Poems About Shenandoah Have Already Been Written But

misty clouds float over mountains carpeted in green
like angels breath hovering over the mossy forest floor
sky and earth transform from impenetrability to transparency
everything is full of holes up close

when fog is on mountain drive carefully
the white expanse punctuated by lines scrawled across the sky
the green by bales of hay mid roll
turn left onto skyline drive (as you approach)

cars sit still at the overlooks
holding their breath
god’s sighs heaving as they stretch
white waves rolling over green

when you walk through a cloud you’ll hardly know
just a kiss on your cheek and a hand in your hair
it’ll be cooler than you imagine and less soft
love doesn’t need to be solid to be real

there is absolutely nothing like the ocean

sunlight tantalizingly dusts your eyelashes
white frothiness on the edges

you rise
sleepily at first
like gentle silk devoutly praying
rocking back and forth rolling
a cautious sheen glimmering on your cheek
then blistering caravans become jagged mountains
fiercely escalating drawing from endless deep plains
a sweeping salute and then you sift down
jaggedly vibrating
fierce and fleeting

sheens of silver seep into sand
turquoise allblue mirror sunlight green
you don’t have a single face

The World Burns and i Tie My Shoes

A new plague variant sweeps the continent
i walk to the lake with my friends

Storms and fires ravish the west of the country
i make pasta at midnight

People sleep on the train every night
i call my mom before bed

Abortion is about to be banned
i kiss a girl in the alley behind my house

The government kills relentlessly
i read books about different galaxies

Companies steal data
i sleep till 11:00 on the weekends

By 2050 all of Miami will be submerged
i buy a new umbrella

The world burns and i
I wake up every morning

Rana Bickel (she/they) is a queer Jewish poet from Maryland. She is a recent graduate of Barnard College where she was a member of the slam poetry team. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Jewish Literary Journal and Thimble Literary Magazine. She loves books, community, and rainstorms.

Image by I, Luc Viatour, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons

Dead Man’s Toenails

Every time I look down, there he is—
thick disease-ridden hooves for nails,

dad’s gift to me. I’ve resented them my entire
life. Briefly the blame fell on walking barefoot in

manure as a kid, that was my mother’s guess.
Now I realize it’s my inheritance, this

hideous prize; a reminder of
the old man’s genetic magic.

Every time I clip, curse and polish
these yellow crustations of crumbling

decay—my only wish is to kill this crap.
What if, with dream-like desire I could

inadvertently resurrect the dad I had.
We could dance a two-step on our peasant feet!

I remember the doughnuts

I can never go back there; I know this is true because I visited the old neighborhood just last July and it’s simply gone, a ghost not a community, filled with boarded up shot-gun shacks, broken sidewalks, dirt for lawns, and condemned signs. The old 7-11 is a building that lies gutted with a sign in the front fractured window that reads Easy Taxes 1 2 3. When I was a kid, I emptied the coin jar early on Sunday mornings and walked three blocks to Daffy’s Donuts on the corner of Evangeline Throughway in the throbbing heat and bought a dozen day old for 79 cents. When I returned dad would have chicory coffee brewing and my sister would slice an orange or apple to share. We three sat on the back deck under the giant pecan tree grinning like fools. This was the life! I remember thinking. To this day I cannot eat a fresh hot doughnut—it just tastes wrong.

Nicole Farmer is a reading tutor living in Asheville, NC. Her poems have been published in The Closed Eye Open, Quillkeepers Press, Capsule Stories, Sheepshead Review, Roadrunner Review, Wild Roof Journal, Bacopa Literary Review, Great Smokies Review, Kakalak Review, 86 Logic, Wingless Dreamer, Inlandia Review, In Parentheses, and others. Nicole has been awarded the First Prize in Prose Poetry from the Bacopa Literary Review and has just finished her first chapbook entitled Wandering Not Lost. Way back in the 90’s she graduated from The Juilliard School of Drama. You can find her dancing barefoot in her driveway on the full moon at midnight.

Image by Arnold Gatilao from Oakland, CA, USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

This Planet

Let me live here in this place
Let me thrive just once
On this imagined planet
This alternative mental dimension called dream
Called hallucination
Where streets are dotted with phantasmagoria
Where people speak honestly
Softly
Poetically
A place where the women are built for speed
Their bodies always rocking
Their passion always exposed
Always raw
And the whisky lives comfortably on my lips forever

The Swirling

We swirl around this marble until somebody
Or something
Or both
Make sense
Until we feel reciprocation of some kind
Warmth of body or spirit
Invigoration of the loins
Stimulation of the heart
And a lucky few
Very few
Find both and transcend all of this
These schedules and deadlines
These bills, bullies, and bosses
All the things manufactured
Leaving behind the illusion of civilization
Living eternally in what can only be called a dream
A fantasy to you and me

TA Harrison is a writer and philosopher on the autism spectrum. A world traveler, a veteran of combat, the product of an impoverished Midwestern home, TA has lived the life his poetry beautifully paints.

Image: Iuherath, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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Flash of light
Glimpse of a crisp font
Perfect kerning
Gleaming teeth
Saturated color
High contrast
Soothing noise
Smiles everywhere
Work in a pair of breasts
Trigger the reward center

Permeate a scent
Summon images
Sizzle with flavor
Perk the ears
Invoke a feeling
Don’t sell the superficial
Project a lifestyle
Get past the clutter
Remember a call to action

All of that energy
All for the blitz
All to be thrown away
All to be clicked over
All to change the channel
All to be ignored

What happens here

For there to be a righteous god
He/She/It
Must love more than me
Must forgive more
Must show patience more
Must be more just

As I walk this world that
He/She/It allegedly governs
I do not see that
Not in others
Not in me

Therefore god
Whoever he/she/it is
Is either not competent
Or not interested
In what happens here

John Tompkins is a writer living in Texas. He has published fiction and non-fiction with a variety of outlets including the American Philosophy Association, Levee Magazine, Metonym Journal, Terse Journal and Glass Mountain.

Image: Leonetto Cappiello, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons