Tag: love

Two Poems | Andrej Bilovsky

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Image: Bruno Mira

Factoring

I did not see the naked man on King Street.
He was one of those “Nudes for God.”
Instead, Jacob slides in like a snail on pink slime.
wailing, as high-pitched as a gibbon.

He rubs his puckered eyes roughly.
And his jelly-mouth ripples in the clock face.
Five in the morning detaches itself from time.
His kiss unties me though it smells of dead cologne.

I am only here so I can be here when he’s here.
My secret life continues it existence in him.
But he’s kin to a decomposed insect.
I squeeze his innards into a likeness of myself.

Well-Spread

There are parts of me everywhere.
Like curled up on a park bench.
Or preaching the dead cult of sex.
Or naked and looking for work.

I deserve breeze but reap the stillness.
My gloomy fire begins as ashes.
In the reading room of the public library,
that’s my head opened wide at page 3.

Herman Melville spits in my ear.
I follow a handsome man into a doctor’s office.
I slink into a movie theater, drink out of an army boot.
Snow or gay bar, the flakes prove inconclusive.

Andrej Bilovsky (he/him) is a gay poet and performance artist. Former editor of Masculine-Feminine and Kapesnik. His poetry can be found at the Quiver and Down In The Dirt.

Three Poems | Kate MacAlister

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Image: Quinton Coetzee

divine rites

don’t open your eyes yet
the want is ravaged and set alight
I will call your pain to me
name your beasts to do my bidding

call me back

to worship with wanton knees and eyes
nail my collarbones to the bedroom door
and drink from my bruised lips
a dream like this demands a hungered sacrifice

call me back

to your kingdom on this starless night
the rain so reckless in the shadows
let me dream of your trembling spine
and pry open your butterfly ribs

call me back

to plant moonflowers in your blood
they only bloom carefree in the dark
let me honour you with what remains
beyond skin and crushed days

call me back

to your bed, your voice drowns
out the world. Was it even real?
I just want to feel you – here and here.
all I touch is glass

awakening
still / again

christmas morning constellations traced on your skin / undressed / spilled / beneath
the quiver ing lashes and breathless light /enfolded below the midwinter dawn / so
stolen between  

the call of the day and the coffee /(do you want to go and see the worst of me?) /heaped
clothes on the  creaking floor / a tangible whisper in the curtains / the red farewell /stars
sighing in your image/  

and the resurrection of today/ sheltered twilight /can’t hide the embers mined in / the
dead of  night /still on my lips / I am still starving /my heart half eaten / still obsessed/with
what remains  

of the distant bedrock / the thunderwounds of yesterday / (do I not burn when
I bleed?)  I hold your hand/ through these hurting dreams to support their
weight/ still /again/  

we summoned and witnessed / an unspeakable trinity  
come / here / tonight /  

Despair  
Desire  
& the small Death  

(prayer is whatever you say on your knees) and if you can’t forgive what lurks
below the skin /  remember / I am fire-tongued and anointed by your touch
/deciphering the holy infliction  

of having been wild and perfect for a moment / (thirst to thirst) / surrender
now /  (your fingers in my hair / my mouth / covered in my blood) / hold
me / in this space  

we are rebuilding the universe / my words are the bare bones /  
painted with the colours  

you have  
shown me  

/ l o v e /  

this is how we retaliate / desecrate the decaying temple /with solemn lunar
devotions  feral laments / spellbound in the marked sheets / the unmade bed  

(I think we’d survive in the wild) 

all hallowed
to be read in case of emergency

we crossed this ocean /I lost the ground / the moon
drew me/in /my crimson tides /beckoning your hands
in red /on the mirroring surface / the light of early dawn
come
falling
apart

celestial bodies of water / on the fine shoreline before sleep
betroth my hands / to your breath/your elfin throat
vowing /gasping / on half of the dead stars
to be strange / to be beautiful / to be wild / to be/
open water

crashing on broken shells / blessed October sand
a litany / a siren song / an unchanging state of affairs
I am not going to hurt you /cannot resist the call of
continued disturbance and fractures on the wind

a tear bled / into black ink stains/blossoms / into a word
echoes into a constant dream yet untold /let’s send a postcard
from
where
we
fell

some things are better on paper /some things are better
signed and sealed / in blood

When we share our stories, we realize that we are not alone with it. We begin to see the system that behind violence, injustice and exploitation. Telling our story is the connecting moment to take action and to initiate change.” Kate MacAlister (she/her) is an author, feminist activist and founder of the multilingual community arts and literature project Stimmen der Rebellion/Dengê Berxwedane/Voices of Rebellion. Her works have been published in journals and anthologies all over the world. Kate’s debut chapbook “songs of the blood” is filled with poetry that speaks of human connection and the dreams of revolution. Coffee, her cat Bella and, naturally, her activist friends are particularly important for her creative process. Find Kate on Instagram at @kissed.by_fire.

Until Death | Talya Jankovits

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Image: Oscar Keys

Until Death

One day our bodies
won’t work this way—
won’t fit together 
coaster on tracks, 
wild
ride rise fall plummet 
                                         into
                                                         oblivion.
exhilarate
tummy turned
knotted nausea
panting
fingers clenching,
holding onto,
pushing into,
leaning back to

              There might be 

bedpans.
diapers.
A neat row of teeth 
soaking in solution.
Bones so arthritic
they can’t bend 
towards each other. 
              or unbend, 
and still
I will reach 
for you.

Talya Jankovits’ work has appeared in a number of literary journals. Her short story “Undone” in Lunch Ticket was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her poem, My Father Is A Psychologist in BigCityLit, was nominated for both a Pushcart prize and The Best of the Net. Her micro piece, “Bus Stop in Morning” is a winner of one of Beyond Words Magazine’s, 250-word challenges. Her Poem, “Guf” was the recipient of the Editor’s Choice Award in Arkana Magazine and nominated for the Best of Net. Her poem, A Woman of Valor, was featured in the 2019/2020 Eshet Hayil exhibit at Hebrew Union College Los Angeles. She holds her MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University and resides in Chicago with her husband and four daughters. To read more of her work you can visit www.talyajankovits.com, or follow her on twitter or Instagram @talyajankovits

Lately Done, Lately Love | Josh Gaydos

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Image: Andrew Seaman

Lately Done, Lately Love

lately done, lately love
‘neath garlands
neatly trimmed
nearly featureless, without
tethers or hands fastening
to a pledge of allegiance
they cannot keep,
to a creator who spun the trees like
screws before the sign off scene,
like polished high heel shoes

lately done, lately love
with timid approach to cuckoo
clocks dipping beaks in sanded
hours, our end left with a note
that will oil from skin with us,
vinyl and wood, needle and mud
could forget the impression made
without the guesswork
of carbon dating

lately done, lately love
no fruit will fall
from the mail ordered
apartment gardens,
boxed up dirt and seed
seen indirectly like one
another, decomposition
composed alone to
conjoin and disintegrate,
barren, bearing

Josh Gaydos (he/him/his) is a self-taught poet that currently resides in Colorado. He has been published in Barren Magazine, Door Is A Jar Magazine, The Lettered Olive and The City Quill. IG: @jgwrites22

Election Day – Susan Zeni

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DEB1
Photo: Pamela Calloway

First, election day, and then
not so strange being close in bed
but first being strange
but not being in bed
being in body kind;
being slow, being not hurried for pleasure
being not at all the fantasie in men’s eyes;
being two, but not us, we
being lips, being breasts,
being you, being me, the bed being round,
plunging line of winter being one,
careful we, cutting away what is death.

Not even necessary, love
but there is love
and earlier there was my sadness for summer again
and the black dog chewed a squirrel
winter people crawled into tin holes.

Election day, I choose you, choose me, choose you
and earlier, the old woman wheeled to the polling place by her son,
a great book in her lap
fat boy in a green jacket, sparrow on a black roof
orange room very dry
but not dry, very lonely
but not lonely
only the blue jay
only the blue jay pecking on the window
not flying but then flying
from the black roof
not hearing my own voice loving for a long time
and then not even necessary, love,
not so strange being close in bed
but first being strange
being in body kind
careful we
falling through the fruits of winter
cutting away what is death

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Susan Zeni wants her poems to tell the stories of people living on the margins of society. She lived in Manhattan on Avenue A, in Chinatown and in Harlem for five years, Seattle for ten, and is now ensconced back in the Midwest after years of teaching community college.  Publications and honors include a Lucille Medwick Award for a poem with an humanitarian theme, “Black Angel,” published in the New York Quarterly, danced by the Erick Hawkins dance troupe, and read up on stage with Gwendolyn Brooks; a Seattle Weekly portrait of Ralph and Mary moved out of their Second Avenue Hotel digs by the Seattle Art Museum; and “The Street Walker’s Guide to Wealth,”recently published by the Minneapolis StarTribune.

Susan gets her kicks playing accordion, having been in a number of bands, including the Polkastra and the all grrrl klezmer band, the Tsatskelehs, as well as performing solo at local art openings, Quaker events, and farmers’ markets.

Cutting Bones – Morgan Ventura

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2 macro

They cut bones
while their lover saws coconuts.

Lining them up against the brick wall,
there is nothing for the sun to bleach.

Tinny, tenacious shrieks
pierce the air and emit an aria.

Metallic, it leaves a poor taste on the tongue,
the kind of putrid fur no scraper can peel.

The sound of bones primordial
against a backdrop of bold, fuzzy shells

hangs over human heads,
calculating, ruminating, no other than a bored specter.

One person struggles to find meaning,
but is left with the other cradling the saw.

Trapped within the jungle’s fury,
even the bones are not themselves.

Morgan Ventura is a writer and folklorist from the Midwest. Her poetry has appeared in The Raven’s Perch, Really Serious Literature, Ghost City Review and is forthcoming in Clockwise Cat, while her essays have been featured in Jadaliyya and Folklore Thursday. When she is not interviewing archaeologists, she enjoys podcasts, experimental film, and exploring ruins. She splits her time between Oaxaca, Chicago, and the forests of Connecticut.

ghost ghazal in prose after the marriage – nathan elias

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Matt Clifford - Photo Credit Matt Diss ALOC Media

Before I went, loving you was the best part of my life. There you are, emerald eyes, in each memory when I reflect upon my life. You couldn’t see me as I hovered near you while you wept on the couch, thumbing through the box of photos that represents but a fraction of my life. I tried to speak your name and was amazed when the sound was a bird’s chirp. You stood up, went to the window, and momentarily forgot my life. In this realm of transparency and emptiness, we cling to fleeting moments. We dance throughout history, for time is not linear in the afterlife. I wanted to see your birth; I wanted, regrettably, to see your death. I wanted to drift through the detritus that creates a composite of your life: New York. Florida. Australia. California. Coordinates that, on the other side, do not exist. In the city of angels, and through your eyes, emerald, I can see the best parts of my life. In circumnavigating the remainder of your days without me, I’ve come to understand the art of moving on and letting go, even though I could not master this art during my life. And this is why I must now transcend. Evaporate. Disintegrate at the sound of you whispering, “Nathan, my love, I will see you when I go, but until then I must live my life.”

nat ghost small

Nathan Elias is a finalist for The Saturday Evening Post’s 2020 Great American Fiction Contest. He is the author of the chapbooks Glass City Blues: Poems and A Myriad of Roads That Lead to Here: A Novelette. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles, where he served as editor on the literary journal Lunch Ticket. More of Nathan’s writing can be found in Entropy, PANK, Hobart, and many other publications. www.Nathan-Elias.com | @_NathanElias

Cover Art: Jack Anstey

lali & the void (a love story) or, he gives me gifts -yesica mirambeaux

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Matt Clifford - Photo Credit Matt Diss ALOC Media

Last night I dreamed I had a torrid love affair with the void

 

Sometimes it would take on its true form and everything around us would blur        tip       and slide inside it

awash to points unseen

 

I would stand impassive and watch it consume piles of matter and aether alike

 

all things that were once thought to be lost were certainly found              here

 

it would gaze into my eyes nakedly, lovingly, and select a sneaker-clad leg from a pile of refuse

 

so I would watch the bones crunch in its enormous maw

and admire it for being so fully                                            itself

without a hint of self-consciousness

 

just the quietly, unabashedly rapacious beast   it really was

no shame

no real evil, even                        in its deliberately passive

elaborately encompassing                  self singular

wu wei

 

 

sometimes it takes on another form

of a beautiful young lover with messy curls that hang to his shoulders

all dynamical plenum, a sleek frowzy heroin chic slinking about him

languid and passionate all at the same time

 

in this form he laughingly chases me            through white-walled apartment complexes

slamming me up against the doorways and

pressing up against me

in long,                             interminable halls

my very own aphairestic machine

 

he is the void and it consumes me fresh each time

 

still no matter how many times he visits

or how long I stay

 

I still remain to tell the tale

naked                                     and    unscathed

 

the only trace of our trysts a certain wisp of a peaceful       and       lasting              wu wei

 

that    braids   and    sinks itself               into my wide-open dna

a stubborn  keepsake         of  a  sudden    calling

macro 4

Yesica Mirambeaux is a longtime writer with a passion for the written word in all its many and diverse forms. At the age of 16 she won the Walter J. Suskind Award for a short story and has continued writing, both in her personal and professional life. As a content manager, information architect, tech writer, and corporate blogger, she enjoys the challenge of understanding a company’s story and finding the best way to share it. As a perpetual storyteller to her loved ones, she is happiest when crafting personalized poetry and entertaining snippets for the circle of people she loves most.

Cover Art: Mohamed Nohassi

you don’t knock on my door anymore – ghost #62

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1400 cobwebs

You don’t knock on my door anymore.

I’m left to that resonance of your last knock that ping pongs around my apartment like an invisible pinball.

I’m left to the vibrations like our hands intertwined on the keys of a piano pressed down hard with our feet on two pedals, letting our love ring long and loud but slowly dying down like a sick old dog.

I’m left to wonder if I still hear anything and at what point does living in memory become a madness.

A necklace, a gift, left to sleep in the bottom of a box.

Who’s to say that I’d wear it as a noose and not as the physical amalgamation of that song that comes on and transports you through time?

When we set things down to not carry them any longer, is it to forget or because they are already always there?

I look in the mirror as I wrap your necklace around my neck and watch as it sinks into my skin.

I hear a knock on my door but I don’t know if I’m home or not to answer it.

 

hourglass

ghost #62 is.

Photo: Matthew T Rader