Cuchulainn, o ancient celtic drag queen struts her stuff onto the plain, sashays across the battlefield intent on sowing pain and reaping lumpen carcasses which to her slaying o queen slay attest with leather battlebelt worn and crested helmet adorned a monstrous battle cry is left to summon up some demons for a little fighting fun to writhe guts and make of each bone a deadly blade corpses all – the men of Connacht are scared as Cuchulainn in gory glitzy glare storms the day lightning spear flash quick as Ru Paul’s snap Dolly Parton’s cattle owner revenge made home in Celtic vengeful flesh Cuchulainn butchers the competition lining her hillfort with the rotting, decaying heads of those who dared test and try her taking scarlet kitten heels for defeat and not the threat and hints of raw furious strength they so clearly are
Calum Robertson is a fulltime daydreamer, part-time tea-drinker from Calgary, Canada. Their work has appeared in Bourgeon Online Magazine, deathcap, nod, Tofu Ink Arts Press, and In Parentheses. They’d like to be reincarnated as a peacock, next time around.
Image by Haydn Blackey from Cardiff, Wales, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Alone, in silence. The multi-glows of children pedal in their futures. It dropped. The five-petal ruffled cluster. The earth preserved its importance. Change, though turning, protected in color. World as we need it. What is; becomes. What becomes; is. Old bones remember. Smile. The bite of many ages’ crawls. Finds its home. Rests tranquil for the night.
Ferris E Jones is an award-winning, internationally published and screenwriter living in Puyallup Washington. His work has appeared in both print and online magazines including as the featured poet for Creative Talents Unleashed. Other magazines include: Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2020, Glo Mag, Piker Press, Se La Vie Writers Journal, Write on Magazine, Outlaw Poetry, Degenerate Literature 17, Tuck Magazine, The Literary Hatchet, Warriors with Wings, In Between Hangovers, and many other literary publications. He is the recipient of two grants from the Nevada Arts Council and the Editor/Publisher of Nevada Poets 2009. Ferris has twice received honorable mention awards from Writers Digest annual screenwriting contest. He is also the Author/Editor of ten collections of poetry. You can learn more about Ferris E. Jones by visiting www.inquisitionpoetry.com where each month he features the work of other poets. The goal of this site is to spread the word of poetry throughout the world.
Image by Rocky 734, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Marsha Olitsky is a poet living in Philadelphia. Bourgeon is delighted and honored to provide a home for her first publication. She writes:
Growing up with dyslexia writing and reading was always a struggle for me. I remember as a little girl crying in the kitchen to the point I was gasping for air. Reading was like torture. I avoided writing like the plague. As I grew I gravitated more and more to writing as an outlet of expression. I never let misspelled words or horrible punctuation stop me from accomplishing my goals. After some encouragement I have chosen to submit some brief writing. I am praying for the opportunity to prove to myself and others the only limits we have are the ones we imply on ourselves.
Image: Open Road by Adam Ward, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Do you remember what you told me when you broke the cartilage
of my comp notebook, the royal blue one with those speckles, the
poems to your height, you burned it in your palm and told me to
take a dive like a swan, long neck stretched out for biting concrete,
and still I looked both ways before you crossed the street, I still paid
attention to the level of your shoulders, I still did, I still do, love you?
Maybe not. You’re so busy with your backaches and sneers,
I feel bad for you in all your strength. Your lonely, lonely strength.
Always breathing ash, you never let your tongue go unburnt, you
wait for it to purple on the grill, while you hold my neck down to
it, I’m tired of it, the fake thin, choking walls you build to stop me.
Do you ever get tired of hiding? Are you drinking enough water?
Damnit, I do. Still hold you, that is. Through all the smoke.
In spite of ourselves,
I am sick with it, the sting
of old sandbox love
Virginia Laurie is a student at Washington and Lee University whose work has been published in LandLocked, Panoply, Phantom Kangaroo, Short Vine, Tiny Seed and The Merrimack Review.
The last time I held my father’s hand, I was seven years old.
Standing over the grave of a grandfather who was now reduced to continuous headstone.
He came to me once in my dreams, I knew it was him even though it could have been anyone leading me up those winding stairs knowing I could never keep up.
I don’t remember my mother. Like someone robbing a bank and forgetting about the money.
That only child way my younger siblings were counted among my collectibles.
Chase the squirrel, the acorn. That sublime idiot laugh of the clunky dander child.
How my father replaced the graveside flowers and told me not to forget, but the mind is a fickle pickle.
This long comfortable shag between my toes. Sparklers for arms so we can all be fireflies on special occasions.
Flowers on my shorts, I must be in bloom
Flowers on my shorts, I must be in bloom, many blue flowers like some strange lost kindness reaching out from twisted elbows, that light purple watering can showerhead sprinkle, a light dampening like the Spring thaw carpet dawdling underfoot, initials carved in a backyard tree that decided to leave themselves behind, that boxy buck-knife historical record which almost always promises forever and never delivers and my shorts, your bloomers sepals, petals, carpel and stamen – Death is a kind of completion, hopefully it is not the only one, even if it is the most final.
Deep Pockmarks
In the back of a black town car speeding through the piping hot neon guts of nowhere.
All the bags in the trunk like a body wanting out.
Tinted windows just before midnight.
The driver with a face full of deep pockmarks, so that you look away and think of distant minefields expecting damage.
Choke up a forgotten cloud of smoke from the hairy underarm tropics.
Climb into a bed that may as well be a coffin at altitude after the elevator up.
Each beep a flighty cricket sold on this sprawling urban song.
Nowhere left to look but the view. Meant to sell, sale, sold…
Individual tiles in the shower as though colouring book Communism has a long way to go.
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 by Norbert Schnitzler, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons
