Tag: submissions

Fog | David Dephy

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Image: Nathan Anderson

Fog

Fog lies low over the land.
Rain drives soft across the fields.
Comatose landscape.

There is nothing immediate we can hope for,
now we have nothing to do but breathe,
until something better shows up.

We are holding each other,
expecting a miracle at dawn,
as if there were no one and nothing to hurt us.

Beginning in mid-May the nights draw in,
our look turns warm and soft,
the fog passes gently over us,

we’d like to ask the fog—
don’t talk to us, our heart’s been broken,
we can’t listen to you, we can’t see you,

but the fog covers us and says:
I never see myself either,
in my own mind I’m invisible,

that’s why you may feel I’m almighty,
you are like birds, your flight
begins and ends in silence,

you will find yourselves in each other only,
silence is garden, among the growing dreams
and precious wishes

you will discover each other again,
everything that will ever be discovered,
already exists in the mist.

David Dephy (he/him) (pronounced as “DAY-vid DE-fee”), is an American award-winning poet and novelist. The founder of Poetry Orchestra, a 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee for Brownstone Poets, an author of full-length poetry collection Eastern Star (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2020), and A Double Meaning, also a full-length poetry collection with co-author Joshua Corwin, (Adelaide Books, NYC, 2022).  His poem, “A Sense of Purpose,” is going to the moon in 2024 by The Lunar Codex, NASA, Space X, and Poetry on Brick Street. He is named as Literature Luminary by Bowery Poetry, Stellar Poet by Voices of Poetry, Incomparable Poet by Statorec, Brilliant Grace by Headline Poetry & Press and Extremely Unique Poetic Voice by Cultural Daily. He lives and works in New York City.

I ACKNOWLEDGE MY MOUTH WORM | Aliza Saper

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Image: Sergei Akulich

I ACKNOWLEDGE MY MOUTH WORM

What do I know of my own tongue and the taste of love?
For one thing, I savor the bitterness of envelope glue.
This is love;
and the metal of minor open wounds in the absence of band-aids or tissues,
and the rim of a water glass that has sat reverently on a nightstand for too long.
All the food I eat on a day when I don’t feel like eating,
and toothpaste…look at me, taking care of myself.

What does my tongue know of me, and the soft skin of my inner cheeks?
The spots where anxiety has compelled me to bite.
Blisters.
Blisters are kind of like love.
Too much friction, and evidence to show for it.
How many flavors of Chapstick?
Where sweetnesses and disappointments traverse the landscape.
An ecosystem within an ecosystem.
Mother tongue.
My mother, tongue.

A muscle strong from carrying all the messages that never made it out of me.
Laced with secrets, and receptors of breaths both known and foreign.
A transformer, look!
Slack, and pointy, and soft, flat, and rigid.
Hot dog!
Clover!
Funny faces are love.

My tongue is well versed in survival tactics;
like, how to breathe through smoke,
and how to hold, and hold, and hold tension.
Braving cold summer snow cones and steamy winter teas.
It maintains equilibrium when the rest of the body cannot.

What does my tongue know of travel?
Having trekked roofs, and hollows, and caverns.
Cavities, too.
A paleontologist in its own right,
and a philologist, and a virologist, and a cytologist.
Knowing of more -ologies than a brain might ever be.
Teaching me, and teaching me, and teaching me.
This is love.

For a prisoner of the mouth, my tongue manages to sustain a taste for life.
For love –
and the bitterness of envelope glue,
and the metal of minor open wounds in the absence of band-aids or tissues,
and the rim of a water glass that has sat reverently on a nightstand for too long.
All the food I eat on a day when I don’t feel like eating,
and toothpaste.
Look at me, tasting it all.

Aliza Saper is an original Denverite, and a wearer of many creative hats. She is the winner of the 29th Paul Rice Poetry Broadside Series Contest, and a 2018 National Poetry Slam qualifier. Currently, she is a resident teaching artist specializing in theatre arts integration; fiercely advocating for arts education, and spaces that support it. Her affinity for self expression, and meaning-making has led her to pursue endeavors in storytelling via the visual, literary, and performing arts. Follow her on Instagram: @aliza_lynn.

glad god said i’m allowed to be alive | Tall City

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Image: Aditya Vyas

‘glad god said i’m allowed to be alive’ he said to whomever was listening,
sang a tiny song to praise god and included everyone in the room
buildings across the street bathed his armchair in rainbow neon
the combined aura of different advertisements at different distances
he sang a praise song to combat difficult feelings
the neighbor’s little girl asked him not to die until he got older
he promised not to die until he got older
so when she dies, everyone would be there to meet her in heaven
to walk her to her room

he washed dishes and wondered
if they were still rolling dice down the street,
he wiped down dishes and wondered
if all the stores were open,
he found his armchair was a neon tinted throne
his shadow on the floor held a stairway
he knew if he went down into the shadow stairway
he could keep going down forever
he wanted to go up instead
forever
but there was no staircase in the ceiling, not now
god said it was not his time to go yet
god said he was allowed to stay alive

there were just moths there, studying the lightbulb
there were just moths on the ceiling
with crushes on the lightbulb
he was sure the ceiling wouldn’t open until death
he promised her he wouldn’t die yet
she wanted to die now so she could see grandma
he assured her that grandma would still be there
he told her to live a life, find a man, have kids, grow old
she didn’t listen she was afraid of going outside
when she went to bed there wasn’t any music
just her voice improvising praise songs
to combat difficult feelings
he fell asleep before her

didn’t dream of anything at all
every night is a strange mystery
still he said ‘glad god said i’m allowed to be alive’
when he prayed at church we caught his cheating,
opening his eyes a crack to copy our wishes
opening his eyes a crack to check on his own shadow
to make sure there wasn’t a stairway there
to make sure the trapdoor was closed
so he wouldn’t fall into his shadow
and leave the sanctuary suddenly

the streetcorner crowded
the stores still open
the street goes past the bridge
but there it is just factories and warehouses
nobody there are night except those who don’t know what’s going on
the people who stand around like ghosts and
disappear when you turn your head to look

Tall City (Chris Bullock) was born and got bigger on Long Island, New York. He did a few things then moved to Colorado Springs after trying to study in Paris. He did a few things there too, then moved to Denver, where he went back to school for foreign language. A couple of years on scholarship in China, and he is back in Denver. 

Languishing | Eli Whittington

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Image: Josh Hoehne

Languishing

Oh!
How we languished!
How we laid, and sat, and crouched
In shady buildings
As the sun burned above
How we scrolled, eyes rolled
Glazed
How we tucked fingers into familiar patterns
Familiar shapes greeted us
How we giggled inanely at short silly videos
How we condemned
Strangers from afar
How we fretted!
How we exhausted ourselves
Doing nothing
And never slept.

O,
How we languished!
In the shade we laid
And sat and crouched
On porch steps and stoops
As the sun burned
Freckles into polaroids of summer memories
How we rolled cigarettes
And plucked strings
Into familiar patterns
How we condemned politicians from afar
And fretted
About garden pests and
Polluted rivers.
How we exhausted ourselves
Doing nothing.

And O!
How we languished!
Grins splitting like ripe fruit as we
Sat and crouched
On leaf-littered ground and
Moss-covered tree-limbs
We laid in the shade of fruit-bearing trees
As the sun simmered above
How our eyes glazed in the dappled shade of the canopy
How we tucked fingers into familiar fur
Nibbled our neighbors lice
Giggled inanely
At our children’s antics
How we napped!
How we fought
Strangers from afar and
How we fretted
When the storms
And the big cats came
How we exhausted ourselves
Doing nothing
And slept
Like the dead.

Eli Whittington published a book entitled “Treat Me Like You Treat the Earth” in 2019 through Suspect Press. Eli is a queer, bi-polar Colorado-raised and Denver-abiding poet.  They are a parent, a singer/songwriter, gardener, carpenter, tiler, biker, and hiker.  Despite these character flaws, they do not enjoy IPAs.  Their love of folk-punk remains unexplained, as they are not an addict, are well over 20, and have functioning eardrums.

Hear Me Out | Sam Moe

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Image: Gauravdeep Singh

Hear Me Out

  1. I am pretending to be a god in the bathroom mirror.
    Dim blue Christmas lights blend with a single pale
    yellow bulb, the same dangling light from the stories.
    Atop my head is a puddle of green. I used to have
    better words. You’d give me your hearts and I’d say,
    fire lamb, my love. But that was before, and I’m not
    supposed to adore you.
  1. I want dessert for dinner. I sit on my hands to keep
    my reach from your wrist. Watch out the corner of
    my eye as you slice into a filet whose center is bright
    and fiery as an ember, you can change your heart’s
    shape and I’m lost in daydreams of summers gathering
    seasoning, mint leaves with aphids, I had a thing for
    toffee, held my breath as we walked side-by-side
    through the radish patches.
  1. In the dictionary of flowers, I doodle your initials. You
    haunt the way I hold my pen; you tell me to stop but I
    can’t help myself, I’m not as into the weather as I could
    be, would you save me, or should we toss liking into fire?
  1. Moon tattoo on your thumb, the day in which I pay the
    price, how you care more for jaws and violet roses, you give
    up on my alphabet, there is apple blossom and ash, trumpet
    flower fit for a mouth, bells then shells, I’m doing that thing
    you hate where I offer catchfly snare as answer.
  1. I could try a little more truth if you wanted me to. Corn straw
    cress, the crown imperial, and your father’s fir. Then it’s days,
    flowering reed, iris and sprig, the juniper in jars, Larkspur then
    lavender are you still going to love me when I’m moss?
  1. Know your breathing. I’d sacrifice birds, too. It’s time to ask
    the father how to build the altar. Oranges, split lip from a fall
    off the pew, broke a cherub statue’s arm, I’m forgetting how
    to explain myself, just saying I have a crush because of robes
    and the bucket of ashes, do you think the priest knows our lungs
    do you think he sings when he drives the thin edge of dusk.

Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genres contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, “Heart Weeds,” is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, “Grief Birds,” is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find them on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.

A Wakeup Poem | John Grey

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Image: Krisztian Tabori

A Wakeup Poem

With great effort,
I crank open my leaden eyelids.
I open my mouth
at great expense to my jaw muscles.
I yawn,
threaten my upper arms with muscle tear
as I suck in my ration of air.
I lift myself,
first, at the waist,
then I swing my legs around,
cranky and creaking,
like a rusted weathervane.
I haul myself up
to the vertical state,
as wobbly
as some Olympic games wrestler
going for the record.
My knees tremble
but they hold.
Blood picks up speed.
Oxygen fights it way to my brain.
The hardest part of the day
is over.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review and Floyd County Moonshine. Latest books, “Covert” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review and Open Ceilings.

reasons for raisins | Jeffrey Spahr-Summers

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Image: Andreas Haslinger

reasons for raisins (6)

tell me you know something
of the love lost on grapes
of skin peeled away
very carefully
and while eating the grapes
skinned and exposed
for what they really are
think of those of us who crave them
who want only to eat them
again
and again
and again
who want only to hold them
to save them for another day
to do the very human
thing and change them
into raisins or wine

reasons for raisins (7)

call it age if you like
or experience or maturity
just as wine matures with age
or call it a step in the cycle
through which all living
things must pass
in order to survive as
humans we believe
in the pleasures of life
this is why we eat grapes
or drink wine
or plant such seeds
and as humans we ultimately
mature so as to provide for
ourselves and the ones we love
this is why we must grow old
so it is also with grapes

reasons for raisins (13)

here are the ones
that got away the ones
so cocksure and cool the ones
who ran so electric
as they slipped under the
stove the refrigerator and the sink
how sad they all seem now
cloistered in the corner dust

Jeffrey Spahr-Summers is a poet, writer, photographer, and publisher. He is the publisher and editor of Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal.

Pressing Leaves | Lyndsie Conklin

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Image: René Vincit

Pressing Leaves

I took three ginkgo leaves
from two trees transplanted
in the heart of our metropolis.
How odd the ancient arbors
seem hidden in the aspens
and junipers, which outgrow
the non-native bushel
in the quantity of limbs,
leaves, and outstretched height.
But I wouldn’t dare pluck
the conical cliche of yellows,
nor could I keep the needles
of evergreen foliage.
Instead, I wanted these green,
bifurcating, fan shapes
to be a small reminder
of a beautiful morning
on a city park walk with caffeine
and donuts, hand in hand
intimacy, late in September
as all the other leaves
began their cycle of death.
Once home, pettily distant
from the innocent memory,
I grabbed my notebook
and store-brand scotch tape
and began to catalog
all the symbolism of the day.
I considered how long the leaves
could remain pressed
in the unlined, coil-bound book
but not if the tape
would hold steady
and the cylinder seam
began to dry and die.
But somehow, those three leaves
remain in their place,
bookmarking our morning
and the difference between
native and ancient trees.

Lyndsie Conklin (she/her) is a Montanan transplanted to Colorado, living with her husband and cat, Beans. She enjoys getting outside, being a cat mom, breakfast foods, Diet Coke, oversharing Type 1 Diabetic memes, and writing poetry and erotica. Lyndsie attempts to find romance, beauty, and darkness hidden within the little things while highlighting these little, gross beauties within complex, current topics, such as mental health and LGBTQ+ and women’s issues. Lyndsie holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Western Colorado University and a Masters of Education in Higher Education Administration from Post University. Some of her work has been featured in Soupcan Magazine, The Sleeve Magazine, Pile Press, and Dreamer by Night Magazine.

Stay, Illusion! | Liam Max Kelley

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Image: Thought Catalog

Stay, Illusion!

Some purple pile of angels,
stone, by base of worn stairs, watch
eagles adorned with your teacups,
saucers—

and Shakespeare is mistaken
for Jesus going sideways down
the metro escalator.

I’m warmer for your shaking.
My pills hurt swallowing

—the king assumes his photographer
wields rifles and vermin
instead of
red spinning tops—horses too tall
for stars to hold
any meaning beyond
lost beanies and orange wine.

(Somewhere it’s Thanksgiving, so I’ve left
                everyone.)

Maybe an old woman veins out
licorice toffee
to each of her teeth chatting
on the morning train
fortressward, coastalward…
she smiles,
offering to bag me,
and I take the first my fingers find.

Another lady, bald,
offers me four licorice cough drops.
Though one falls from my hand.

Mouth beating black three
—I cross over
the ocean seat. My scarf doubling
a pillow
for wrist splints—the fog
spreading out over the window,
old blood on a warm bandage.

I take back-to-back photos of you
scalpelled behind yesterday’s closed eyes.

Hamlet’s cream puff pulls espresso
with broken glass pain and
our future light, the
question burning—

my napkins parade away towards
a mooring…

You stable that Christmas
rat in your arms—

for one you stand sleeping,
steps broken,
the other your stare
bungees under shadow
of labyrinthine brows,

buried deep
in the casemates
by Holger Danske, the bats, God,
and that penis
gunned down in stone.

You took a bite of my cheese
sandwich at the station—right before
I tossed the timeline ruler.
For a moment I could’ve swore
I’d taken you for a swan
or beached Ophelia,
but I recalled then
this country’s hole is a castle—
words, cannons
—please remember we are in a church.

I vain thanks for a moment

to remind myself
of where the metal ball should be—
then board a top car backwards,
returning home to you…

Liam Max Kelley is a Chilean-American playwright, poet, and teacher. He is a board member and open mic host at Stain’d Arts, an arts non-profit based in Denver, Colorado, and the co-founder of RuddyDuck Theatre Company, a local absurdist theatre group. He writes poetry to avoid making an argument, to highlight life’s horrid ambiguities, and to turn the heads of those he holds dear.

The moon | Steve Anc

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Image: Sven Aeberhard

The moon

She is the peddler at the end of our dreams,
With a beautiful surface.

The dance of the morning,
where gentle sight abides.

The feast of clear color
with smiling song and form.

The sight that sees beyond the sea
And the coming home of the fishes.

The song of the kindly living,
And the coming home of the lovely breeze.

Steve Anc is the son of Ajuzie Nwaorisa, a Nigerian poet. He is a poet with searching knowledge and deep meditation on universal themes, he is quite a modern poet in his adherence to language and his use of metaphor is soul-searching. Anc’s works have been published in Open-door Poetry Magazine, Poetrysoup, Goodlitcompany, Voice From The Void, Our Poetry Archive, I Become The Beast, Fire Magazine