R E C E S S E S
I S S U E 0 0 2
F O R E W O R D
ISSUE 002 is FINALLY here.
It's happened.
I'm so sorry for the delay.
But thank you, all of you.
- SAVHANHA SMALL NGUYEN -
CONTENTS
|| SARAH KA || CADRIEL HYUNH || REBECCA BROWN || RSN
SARAH KA
BRANDON SHANE
CONFIDENTIAL (DAMAGE)
T/W: INFIDELITY, WAR & WEAPON IMAGERY
You crawled to the open curtains like barbwire,
holding your breath as pedestrian armies
marched across the sidewalks with rifled phones,
each snap a potential bullet to end your life &
as the polyester unites in a theatrical performance,
your love once again returns in a flood to amend drought,
dear senator, enchanted broker of wars, power, wars,
reverend atop the oracle-eyed church of delphi, w/
passion turned like a faucet; mechanical man taken
by primal aims & subjects * subject to regulation,
yet there is a charge from your hidden breadth,
megalomaniac animalized to a furnace of desires,
so take this wet kiss, this hug, this unbridled love,
find yourself engulfed in flames, master of secrets;
watch this secrecy erupt in a volcanic blaze.
JOHN GANSHAW
THE RINGMASTER
You are the youngest but the wisest
You are the reliable one
You are the resourceful one
You are the family anchor
You are the ringmaster of life
You provide to everyone except yourself
You listen to everyone except yourself
You support everyone except yourself
You believe in everyone except yourself
You want to save everyone except yourself
But yet you are the ringmaster of life
You dream about what could have been
You create opportunities when none exist
You wonder about the world and what it brings
You observe all that surrounds you
You think of everything, even when it isn’t there
You must, You are the ringmaster of life
In times of sorrow, you are there
In times of need, you are there
In times of hardship, you are there
In times of want you are there
In times of love, you are there
You are the ringmaster of life, yet it’s not yours
REBECCA BROWN
SUMMERTIME SONNET
Holidays make me think of boundless space,
Bare legs and arms freckled by friendly sun
Watching dappled shade flicker on your face
Blank diary pages promise unplanned fun
The zigzag of cool water makes you laugh
We lick lollies dripping rainbows of fruit
You perform cartwheels on the sunburnt grass
Chuck off clothes to don your mermaid swimsuit
But there’s a chill in the waterpark splash
A sharp edge to this hopeful liberty
I hesitate as the cameras flash
And hear danger in the deafening sea
These are fragile snapshots I must savour
Stick out my tongue for bittersweet flavour
CADRIEL HUYNH
THE BLACK HOLE AT THE HEART OF OUR GALAXY
The afternoon where you tell me that what we have is not enough, I sit on the hill behind our house peeling fruit. Skin after skin I shed into a green plastic strainer—the cheap one you bought in Hanoi. You said the trip back home
would heal us. Bring us closer in uncertain times.
We don’t quite understand what healing means. A delve into the countryside, perhaps. The wounds we have carried shall carry us.
I sit and dig my hands into bitter peels; The sun drags long talons down my back. Don’t you know when to give up? I sit with my back against the world. I sit with my back against you.
Dandelions bloom even if you try to crush them under your feet. You
pledged your love to me this afternoon, many lifetimes ago. Things have changed since then, but you were still my first kiss.
Nobody knows it was you, but it was.
THEODORE FORCER
OIL SPILL
the love of my first home is a love that is twisted,
almost cruel
because the radiator bleeds,
a rainbow of an oil leak
and the walls weep
teardrops warping the paper
they diagnose my room with water damage
and I am trapped under a collapsed roof,
tiles stolen
resold
there’s a downpour in the dining room
and the ocean breeze
of this haunted town
hangs stale in the doorway
blinking lights fizz and fade out
sickness lingers
in mildew and mold.
the wall that keeps the waves at bay is crumbling.
red meat bears grease into my bones
and inky stains never lift
(the carpet holds all that has ever been here)
sometimes I believe this little town stores so much hate
that it spills over the edges
drips down my hands,
but then echoes of laughter ricochet off these walls
language spoken in tongues, like some foreign dialect I don’t know
and the falling of tiny feet bang on these floors like drums
in their clumsy crescendo.
these are the things I am desperately holding onto.
we have to belong here,
with this town and all its ghosts.
CHARLOTTE AMELIA POE
NTH
entropy never looked as sexy as it did on your bedroom floor
"slip into something more comfortable," you say
and i let the void envelop me
oh sweetheart, the blip in the timeline is our heartbeats coinciding
and yesterday is tomorrow is the circling of a black hole
maw gaping and all sharp teeth
did you know that even stars can die?
now think about your own blood and veins and try to tell me you're special
oh, but we're all immortal if you don't trust the narrator
talk about ghosts in machines and solipsism and i'll nod along
you're the only one who can ever know how this feels
so try not to start screaming,
like, the world ends for everyone in turn
and a whimper in the back of your throat
is a lot less gauche
than a bang.
BEE THE ILLUSTRATOR
FOREST S. RIGBY
PORCELAIN RELATIONSHIP
T/W: IMPLIED SEXUAL CONTENT & VOMITING
I’m familiar with his porcelain contours
Smooth and cold to the touch
Lately I find myself down on my knees for him
Bruises forming against the cold tile floor
Gagging on his bleach cologne
Causing my throat to burn with the exhale
Choking as he forces me to hold my breath
Tears springing to the corners of my eyes
Until a release comes that I refuse to swallow down.
Previously Published in
NAME MAGAZINE (2020)
AARON SANDBERG
THE FLY (MERCY)
How dumb
to think
my sleep
was dreamless,
my dreams
full of sleep.
There’s the difference
between the scream
and the pain.
I'm not the kid
anymore, kneeling
next to the bed,
asking for god to give.
Now, it’s a good
enough prayer
to wish I were
good enough.
But I can answer
unasked prayers.
Bugs buzzing between
the screen and the pane —
I get up in the night
to slide open the glass,
crack the door
to let in light,
and let the flies fly out.
YUU IKEDA
MIDNIGHT BRUISES
Instead of human emotions,
inhuman alcohol
flows into my blood vessels.
Seasons become monochromatic,
the moon hides behind haze,
voices of bygone days disappear.
In a blanket,
I'm listening to screams
of me crumbled
by heartless bullets.
HEART
she can't draw
the picture of Heart.
the silhouette distorts,
just wanders.
she doesn't know
the color of Heart.
the innermost discolors,
just floats.
vague pain
and
hazy warmth
soak into her brain that
is thirsty for humanity
and is dominated by
monsters.
JAMES KANGAS
RICKY'S BLUES
Finally, it was laughable--
how he left you in the theater like that,
like a partnerless glove after he’d sat through five
minutes of the movie, itching for a brew
to suck down, a worked-up claque at his favorite dive.
Magnet-eyed as he was, the little
metal molecules in your body had jerked
you across the room to his side the first time
you saw him, he had that effect
on people. And since you had glowed
brighter than the rest, brighter
than the Dixie Highway Jesus, your eyes
huge as shasta daisies, he’d chosen your blossom
to fry, your hearth to start calling his
Holiday Inn, your wharf of sleep to unmoor you from
at 3 a.m., banging on your door after he’d
closed the bar, run someone else’s
panting tongue through the wringer like a washrag.
A wreck after three weeks of this, you slouched
in the flickering light through some starlet’s ruin,
her mascara running like Pitch River Falls, and when
he didn’t come back to pick you up, you lurched
next door to the doughnut shop, gulped four scalding
coffees, kissed your bubble good-bye, and phoned
your friend Mary to take you home. Then he got
pissed because you’d left, called you, called you
every name in the book. What balls! It took
another week for you to have it out with him.
That was the most lacerating affair you’ve ever had
the stupidity to put yourself through. That was
the most electrified you’ve ever felt, you said,
whether it was love or rut you didn’t care, too bad
it was a psycho playing cat and mouse, he gave you
gooseflesh and you were thankful, he made your brain
churn like a hive of bees, your blood go crashing
through your body, your bones sob how they’d come alive.
Previously Published in
Embers (Old Saybrook, Connecticut |Spring 1990)
LORI CRAMER
WHAT TO DO WHILE HE'S DATING SOMEBODY ELSE
1. Buy a spectacular outfit, anticipating the date you’ll have once he’s free again.
2. Hang the clothes in your closet.
3. Wait.
4. Tire of waiting.
5. Decide you deserve to look spectacular right now.
6. Slip into your new outfit.
7. Go to the eatery he frequents.
8. Select the seat at the bar that has the optimal view of his favorite table.
9. Order a pomegranate martini.
10. Anticipate his arrival.
11. Follow him with your eyes as the hostess seats him across the room.
12. Freshen your lipstick, fluff your hair, and prepare to “accidentally” run into him.
13. Sigh loudly when she appears and joins him at his table.
14. Startle when a guy in a baseball hat asks if he can buy you a drink.
15. Say you’ll take another martini.
16. Discover, as you converse with him, that the guy in the hat is smart and funny.
17. Remember you are smart and funny.
18. Look up just as the man you came to see strolls by hand in hand with his girlfriend.
19. Try to recall what you ever saw in him.
20. Laugh.
BEHIND THE BALLAD
You think you know me because of the song. As if a person’s essence could be captured in three minutes, thirty-four seconds. Sure, my ex composed a beautiful ballad. Those impassioned lyrics. That romantic string arrangement. No wonder he collected six Grammys. Who doesn’t want to believe the fairy tale? Wild rocker tamed by true love.
The thing is: The song isn’t about me. He used my name, yes, but the motivation for those carefully crafted lyrics? Money. Not love. To my ex, feigning feelings is just part of the game. Sentimentality sells. Even when it’s fake.
TWO OF US
We talked too much, laughed too much. Our heels, ultrahigh; our skirts, ultrashort. We fixed each other’s hair, told each other how fierce we looked.
We smoked too much, drank too much. Our nightlife, wilder than wild; our taste in boys, “the badder, the better.” We partied with businessmen, ballplayers, and bands, told each other “We got this.”
We stumbled too many times, fell too hard. Our pain, suffered in silence; our problems, hidden from the world. We guarded each other’s secrets, told each other that boys will come and boys will go, but friendship is forever.
JULIE ALLYN JOHNSON
NUESTRA SEÑORA DEL CARMEN
Here sits a man.
I mean — a torso,
with a head.
Flaps for arms, stubs where legs
would have extended
from twin trouser
appendages, tied in knots
lying limp & useless
on the sun-bleached concrete.
He’s propped up curbside
just off the Playa’s
strangled thoroughfares,
its church’s
white-washed
stucco walls
a calculated backdrop
to those glassy, vacant eyes.
Each day’s endurance
facilitated no doubt
with a meagre array
of medicinal nirvana.
What keeps the faded toluca basket
safe, with its sparsity
of American dollars, Mexican pesos?
Do watchful eyes
monitor this pobre alma from a distance?
A family member
or — more darkly — someone
he once held up as savior,
cashing in now on the guilt
of wealthy tourists,
the pious and curious?
My obliterated, despondent, angry heart —
The sun shines too harsh & fierce in Quintana Roo.
I look away — aim my camera elsewhere.
MACKINAW
Watch as Jane makes headway in her struggle against the ravages of ego lost, of ego consumed, of ego deftly manipulated along the bitter shores of a surreptitious lake in the Upper Peninsula where she grieves for five sisters whose betrayal still stings, for a mother who made none of it happen and then all of it
happen, and her father—well. Her father whom she adored although some would question why that
might be. The Grand Hotel was a bit fancy for her tastes, the shoreline condos and B&B’s too excessive
for one of her simple origins. She prefers rusticity as host for her creature comforts. Listen as Jane draws
a bead on an eastern screech-owl, her fingers tapping a frost-coated fence post, her suede-trimmed hiking boots tamping down last night’s snowfall as an eerie stream of silence whistles through stands of balsam
fir and paper birch, unseen purveyors of the island’s darkness. Smell the tang of greed in the air, the pretentious odors of inauthenticity. Savor the marble-slab fudge, the rainbow array of taffy, the rancid aftertaste of money boarding the ferry back to the mainland. Witness Jane’s resolve to disregard the onus of crushing despair. Celebrate with Jane as she strides ever forward, vowing to reclaim her once-lost life.
CHRISTIANE WILLIAMS-VIGIL
TÀHIRIH
T/W: MODERATE VIOLENCE
Red, frayed scarf twisted around her neck,
severing her enlightened mind from thick air.
Resilient body thrown down a well
icy, black water stained with her.
Women are told not to speak.
Stay home.
She said no.
Her voice rises from out the past,
challenging and screaming for Women’s Rights.
If I stay quiet,
I am equally guilty as the hand that choked her.
If I fight,
I risk meeting the same demise.
And so be it.
I will speak regardless.
And roar with all the sound within me.
Silence me not, until all women taste freedom.
ELLA NO QUIERE
AFTER TRANSLATION OF BAD BUNNY'S 'ANDREA'
There is a wolf-howl song written in bleeding ink for her. She
wishes they wouldn’t sing it on live feeds. She doesn’t
want recorded and rehearsed gestures. They only want
to rain viral, analytically measured love on her. Just a
show for the millions watching. Buying flower
after flower, to enhance, filter, and saturate this as just
another layer of the fantasy. An idea that
translates into likes and follows. ‘Subscribe to see more.’ They
don’t please the oceanic depths of her heart. They don’t
know the bonds, like the roses, have already wither-
-ed and this is over for her.
SONYA DEVYATKIN
SCORPION HOURS
These are the scorpion hours
when day hasn’t broken yet
but night has already passed
and the minutes have grown little legs
that crawl flatty
on and through your body.
These are the centipede minutes
that stampede through your mind
as they resurface memories to the foreground
and shut your will to a lock-jaw.
These are the cold and dry minutes
that seep into your nostrils
and tickle at the nape of your neck
They don’t quite haunt you
but they cause the slightest bit of unease
that leaves you
perpetually restless.
CLEAN THE CRAPPER
Have you ever really cleaned a toilet?
Gotten down on your hands and knees and
scrubbed the shit, worth centuries,
off the marble palisade?
Have you ever really seen years worth of shit
condensed into one small globular sphere -
a miniature Earth of excretion
as gloopy in its gunk as it drips
as it sticks to your facade of home and space...
Once you have, hand over mouth,
cleaned a toilet used by someone who is not you
used for years and years,
used to release and relieve themselves of
digested gluttonous junk,
you will finally see what reality is like,
you will finally see what adulthood is.
What is it, you might ask?
Well, why don’t you just walk over to the toilet bowl
stick your hand in there
search out that very ugly, very real
truth which is:
you eat, you sleep, you love,
you shit,
and then you die.
That’s all there is to it.
That’s all the toilet bowl can tell you.
And for that,
you ought to smile.
RSN
LACHLAN CHU
A MAYBE LIFE
Somewhere else
there’s a morning window of summer.
Here I wake to a cloud-high city:
dead night and
an elegy of almost-sunken stars—
the fiesta lights here are
rain-rusted bars &
blustered old Carlos’ talking box.
30 feet
Northeast,
a television screen meets life.
The figure trapped in the frame begins to speak,
but it’s too dark in his place
and the window is too far.
I don’t know most of the men next door,
but he is called Carlos.
Carlos who I find myself watching:
sometimes
while the stove ticks, my hands sweat-spat,
full with the buns I had picked up on the way back from work.
Sometimes
On Sundays of dry switchgrass and burnt sun-oven slate.
On Sundays of shrill ice-air and beard-white wind.
I put on a jacket that covers my arms & pants that cover my legs & gloves & shoes on those days.
I don’t like those days because I like my arms & legs & hands & feet. You liked them.
When there is nothing to do but sit,
and the books are too hard
& the work is too hard,
milky evening splits brisk into somber night, and I see the stars.
The grass feels wet, and it feels green. It was one of those days yesterday.
& it rained last night.
“I can see yours up there, Papá.”
I remember him telling me how his star was the tiny one being scooped up by the big spoon.
I never told him that it was really the big dipper.
I add that to the list; after
Tell dad the plural of “mouse” isn’t “mouses”
Tell dad he pronounced the word “refrigerator” all wrong
I see him chuckling when I read it to him.
I see him asking me how to say perro,
chuckling when my words are more broken
than his spirit.
I knew he couldn’t hear me, but sometimes it’s better to say things out loud.
I knew he couldn’t hear me, but sometimes it’s also better not to say things out loud.
(Like the broken taillight
or the four parking tickets.
Or the fact that I sold
his old T.V.)
I stood up
and walked back home.
But I didn’t want to be back at that apartment.
I didn’t want to be home on those cold days
where I covered my skin
& I didn’t want to tell dad that I kept his papers since
November 4th 2009—
—So it never made it on the list.
I stood up
and walked back home.
& I walked to Carlos’ door because
I wanted to watch his T.V.
that never turned off.
I never knocked.
& Carlos never answered,
& Carlos never smiled his big brown, bearded smile
& Carlos never said it was nice to meet me
And come in, come in.
So tomorrow,
in a maybe life,
I’ll promise to stop by for a drink.
REGENESIS
It’s hard to believe that Sisyphus was a wise man
when he knew it was as easy as letting go, simply
stepping to the right and watching the rock tumble
down into somebody else’s hands.
Everyone argues, but it’s obvious how they all desire
each of their cells to know its human composition,
how they do what they can to make their molecules
realize the beauty in their tiny calligraphy.
I’m certain I have something profound to point out,
so perhaps there is magic in the boulders piling up
in the stoic man’s arms; maybe people can force
atoms to know what they create.
I concede that a habit can sometimes be titanium. But
it is true that if you remove the blindfold at the edge
of the bridge, there is an immediate retreat to safety,
a deep gravity that’s primordial.
What I’m saying is that pushing a boulder up a hill
is just another symptom of depletion. Everyone knows
that there is an end to the journey, but they all think
it happens when you collapse.
The voyage is not over until you reach the top
of the mountain, which only exists because
the crushed are reincarnated as living—another
body fills the slot, moving at first,
deforming underneath like wax or clay, decades
of pushing before revival. The peak is a cliff, it’s
shaped just like a bridge, and it doesn’t matter
if every atom of you knows whom it composes
because there is a rock not far back, and it is moving;
someone is pushing it; you topple over the edge
like carrion into a machine.
I AM FLOATING BELLY-UP
A boy squats in the dirt and sucks on cough drops
while another does pull ups on a broken shower pole.
The image slides out in a hunted grayscale, starved
like beetles beneath the creep of newborn steam.
The lens is pointed now at a deer with no antlers,
and it bends its neck and pushes its shoulder blades
like caution. It knows how the sky muddles into cold
cave water before the storm bores through the forest.
The sun does not shine onto everything, and I tell
myself you need an empire to become illuminated.
One of the boys has a father who will saw and glue
the head of the fawn. He will rot by my camera forever.
TATIANA PEREZ
TO DIE OR NOT TO DIE
MUSINGS ON THE SAD GIRL ERA
To be sad is cool. To be unwell is profound after all the greats in human history suffered. Van Gogh cut off his own ear.
Small talk includes the SSRIs you've been prescribed, "Zoloft or Prozac?" Go on Goodreads and you can find curated reading lists titled "sad girl books" that consist of work by Ottessa Moshfegh and others. Type in sad girl on Letterboxd and you find dozens of watchlists that always have Girl Interrupted (1999) or The Virgin Suicides (1999) on the top of the list. These stories are set in dreams cityscapes, lonely apartments featuring flawed characters.
I must admit I too fell into the spell of the sad girl. I found profundity in melancholy existences. Though I try to remind myself it was me up against full marketing teams crowded in boardrooms.
It's worth noting the internet's, largely social media's, role in the
popularization of this aesthetic. I mean who wouldn't be intrigued by
slow edits featuring sad characters tinted in blue color grade with dreamlike audio in the background. Everything and anything can become aestheticized if there are a few good edits featuring scenes from obscure films and enough people participate in using the hashtag.
The term sad girl is much more a descriptor now much like the manic pixie dream girl. I view these two more similar than dissimilar. Though the manic pixie dream girl needs a male protagonist to function, the sad girl needs only herself. So maybe times are changing for the better.
Lackluster humor aside, I empathize with the considerable number of young girls on the internet being fed unhappiness in the shape of rounded cakes obscured by sweet frosting and red trim icing.
MONIQUE ROWE
JULIO RAINION
JUNE TWENTY-FOURTH TWENTY-TWENTY-THREE
I WANT MY SON BACK, i cry to the moon, the trees, the wind
(whoever will listen)
impassively, they lean in, feathered boughs glistening with mourning dew
they know as well as i what bridge he’s crossed
i’ll drink forgetting-liquor and
lose myself once more.
PAWEL MARKIEWICZ
TREE-LIKE SONNET
I beguile a blazing courage of ebony.
I bewitch a brilliant audacity of elm.
I captivate a dazzling daring of the holly.
I entice a vivid endurance of hornbeam.
I enrapture a flashing fearlessness of fir.
I magnetize a glistening firmness of wattle.
I enthrall a glittering fortitude of birch.
I hypnotize a golden gallantry of maple.
You carry away a luminous guts of pine.
You enrapture an intense heroism of oak.
You delectate a meek-radiant prowess of lime.
You ensorcell a shimmering spunk of redwood.
We wow a shiny tenacity of poplar.
We spellbind a silvery valor of rowan.
JACK JOSEPH
ABSTRACT ABYSS
Awoke with my head in a dictionary -
No abacus to account for any abbreviations.
Alphabetically, words adorned a literary
Artwork of alliterations.
Abashed by the sight of an abbot on my right,
I abhorred actions set ablaze.
Awestruck in an abstract abyss I did alight
On an accidental arcade with my eyes agaze.
Abruptly there was an aberration:
A brief and sudden drop in standards.
Acutely aware, I’d had an ablation
And been assigned to a hospital bed aside two grandads.
I then beheld an abomination:
(Not a snowman; but still abnormal)
Due to that awful operation,
My abdomen had been adapted into an alternative domain portal.
Actually astonished, I asked my allies
Are you able to affirm I’ve not gone crazy?
Awkwardly assured and of me they did apprise
That in my abdomen there was an aperture with an astral baby.
BEWILDERING BUBBLE
Blocking out the hospital babble,
I could see the baby through my body’s burgeoning window
Playing itself at both backgammon and Scrabble.
I then became bewitched by a smell like Bisto.
Born into this baby’s bubble,
I barely had the chance to bust a heartbeat.
A blink and a burp, I was soon in trouble,
Bathing in a boiling broth bittersweet.
Swimming in a bisque: thick rich soup;
Bewildered by a bishop
In a birthing pool
In his birthday suit.
I bundled out the bowl
To get a better look
And I felt a beta wave behold
Me like a bête noire somewhere in this book.
The bishop was betoken
Of a black beast,
Behaving like a bogeyman who couldn’t be broken
Whilst my bemusement still would not cease.
CASCADING CARTOON
Cooked in a cauldron of cosmic outcomes,
As the ceiling came down like a cavalcade.
I was caked in soup and concrete crumbs
When the floor caved in! Commenced to cascade!
Carrying me caught in a cocoon,
The concrete waterfall turned into cash.
The landscape changed into a cartoon
And cranium first, I coasted into a creche with a crash.
Confused by collapsed computer systems
And children who’d fallen asleep,
I crawled through coins and cuspy crayons,
Certain that a cretaceous creature had begun to creep.
Was it from the church?
A member of the clergy?
It covered me with its lurch,
As I cowered with consternation of catching the lurgy.
The closer that it got,
It looked like a clown,
Causing my blood to clot
And my capacity to conceive to close down.
TRIPTIONARY - CONTENTS
Abstract Abyss
Bewildering Bubble
Cascading Cartoon
Déjà vu of Defecation
Endless Entrapment
Foetus at Football
Glittering Grub
Hourly Hallucinations
Insane Incarceration
Joyful Jarring
Knocking Back a Keg
Lucky Lungful of Lexis
More Misshapen Meanings
Narrative’s Needlework
Offbeat Odyssey
Pepperami for Pterodactyl
Queensberry Quagmire
Red Room
Sibilant Sentence
The Tyrant’s Toes
Ugly Urn
Versatile Vocabulary
Was the Workpiece Worthwhile
X-axis
Yin and Yang Yells
Zizz
GARETH WRITER-DAVIES
DIVAN
I’m lying on the sofa
naked
reading Orientalism by Edward Said
Berlioz is on the turntable
I am stroking
a cat
Goodness me
this is not
how I was bought up
in the Calvinistic chapel
and the Boy
Scouts
like atoms that repel and attract
life
can be one too many books
picked at random
from someone else’s
shelf
how difficult it is
to be
oneself
I put on some clothes as the cat licks her pads
oh to live
and not think about it
FREEZER #2
her theory
was that the past
was best packed into tupperware
and frozen
deep in the freezer
like spent fuel
from a nuclear reactor
in due course
it could be examined and defrosted
or just stay
in the depths
amongst ice cream and stray chips
then we went on holiday
and whilst away
there was an electrical failure
we came home to death and destruction
EYE LEVEL
I had the expensive oil tank
taken away
widened the slab
and put a summer house on it
which didn’t quite fit
so I sit on the overhang
with the flowers at eye level
and watch the honey bees work
in our iridologic world
it’s good to be humble
get down to the bees
and see what they’re up to
next year I’ll plant more flowers
sit on the same step
figure out
how I can do things better
ARUSHI (AERA) REGE
ON THE TOPIC OF MODERN DOMESTICITY
dear my love / you’ve got me thinking about / bile green couches we hated / tables in the middle / right in our living room / you’ve got me thinking about / potted house plants or succulents we’ll inevitably kill / you’ve got me thinking about / getting married to en jeevan or kannazhaga or baharla ha madhumas / even though our weddings aren’t structured that way / perfect first dances that aren’t canon in d / i don’t know how to tell you i’ve never loved anyone more / you’ve got me writing out love letters / as if i was mahmoud darwish / lines like “i’d let you bury your heart in me, if it meant you’d say” / like “i don’t think i’ll ever know how to stop loving you” / like “darling, please, just tell me how to love you in a language you understand” / dear my love / you’ve got me thinking about making tea and coffee / just the way you like / too much cream too much sugar / you’ve got me thinking about cutting up fruits / peeling tangerines / my fingers sticky with the juice / as i feed them to you / you try to cut me a slice / i laugh / i eat the tangerine / i kiss you / i taste them on your lips / sugary sweet / dear my love / you’ve got me wanting domesticity / an apartment in the city for just the two of us / a cat or a dog or any pet we decide on / you’ve got me wanting love / in all of its domesticity / in knowing that i’d read your favorite books / watch your favorite movies / and you’d do the same for me / you’ve got me wanting a perfect life / one with you
IRINA TALL NOVIKOVA
HEAVEN IN HER HEAD
In that world where there are only stars, I will find small fragments of reality, there is
Nothing but her own thoughts.
It was as if something was penetrating into her, into her blood ... and when she made an incision in the skin as tiny as from a needle prick, the sea leaked out of her and several fish fell out of this blue. She cried and realized that she had become like those people who exist above and who, like gods, can live forever ... She did not need her life and she realized that it was time for her to leave, where the sky and stars would swallow her ... Feelings will remain here, in a house with four windows and a single door the color of fallen leaves... She gathered her things, took a deep breath and left without finishing her evening coffee....
The ones that never existed, those she thought about... What could they be, the blue ones lived upstairs, the secret city... And the ones from below never went up, never turned blue... But she was the first to the lower city had to go upstairs... It didn't bother her, her feelings left her and only the swifts that rushed about her windows screamed strangely. She began to understand from the voice and probably would have been able to answer one of them, if not for her inner timidity ... The timidity of the "innocent" that she became ... In the evening, she went to the big tower, where she applied, the only thing that was checked by the clerk , it pricked her finger, it seemed he was insensible, but it did not deceive her, she felt his smell, the one that a living creature experiences, he sweated a lot and now his reaction showed that he was frightened and probably very much, his palms were wet ... But outwardly it did not appear in any way, he took papers and a short silver flask, opaque like his face ..
It became like a mirror...
The lower ones very rarely worked in the administration and he probably distinguished himself before he was hired. She became even more somehow strangely cool and she squeezed her palms tighter ..
She swallowed the cold lump in her throat and froze, another clerk came out from behind the counter, there was a blue bandage on his shoulder, he opened his palm in front of her ...
Her voice was cold as a steel string "When you felt the change.."
There was no interrogative intonation, only cold indisputability was in her voice.
She did not open her hand in front of him, only slightly bowed her head and looked into his eyes.
"Yesterday I heard the birds and understood what they were saying..."
"Birds..." - his eyebrows slightly raised and lowered - "what kind of birds were .."
- "Swifts... Their nests are in the house across from mine.."
"You were always watching them..."
- "Sometimes I listened to them .."
She gave her a small notebook, black with a blue edge and an almost invisible "NP" on the cover.
- "This book ... At the very beginning, the address, where you will live ... Now you can not communicate with your family ... "
Then she looked back, looked at the counter, the clerk hadn't come yet.
She
Then she took out a dark corner from a pocket on her chest and said, in the same metallic voice, "Hide, read later .... And don't talk about swifts ... Sparrows, pigeons, pick up any birds, any ..."
She turned around and left...
“It’s as if he didn’t tell me ...” - her thought somehow strangely moved inside her and froze like a fish, as if waiting for prey ... “Let, let, let ...”
DANIEL CLARK
WHEN LOWERED FROM THE LORRY
vie for safety:
wriggle and squirm and thrash.
Life is… insufficient?
The seasons change. In autumn,
leaves spiral to soil. In winter,
they freeze; in spring,
they thaw.
When lowered from the lorry,
they see a slither of sunlight,
a small glint
of transcendent gold. Run!
Run! Run for the light –
but.
As soon
as. As
soon
as, in-
stant
lung w̶h̶e̶e̶z̶e̶ r̶a̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ r̶a̶s̶p̶ collapse.
Life is
wriggle. And squirm and thrash
and collapse
STEPHANIE L. HAUN
SCRAMBLED OR FRIED
She pulled a half dozen eggs from the refrigerator and carefully set them on the countertop. She concertedly walked to the range and turned on the largest burner to medium heat.
She rummaged through the cabinets, looking for the perfect frying pan. She looked over at her husband. He sat at the table, reading the newspaper, oblivious to her movements.
“This is perfect,” she said as she pulled the heavy skillet from the cabinet. She walked around the table, stopping behind her husband, skillet in hand.
With a twisted smile on her face, she raised the skillet. “Scrambled or Fried?”
CHIARA CROMPTON
UGLY BABY
I dreamed I had a baby,
just Had not the process of had.
It was an ugly baby.
(I’m not afraid to say when a baby is ugly,)
and it was.)
It’s jaw was skewed,
Like there was wire running through
The same as her Dad’s I thought,
without the process of dad.
So I kept her in my inside coat pocket.
Her,
apparently.
And she never cried.
Never made any sound apart from speaking once,
“Happy”,
she said twice.
Back in the pocket.
My dog is off the lead,
harassing people,
and I have a tiny baby in my pocket,
and I keep thinking,
I hope my dog will be okay,
I hope my dog will be okay,
if I leave it outside the café.
If I go inside to eat something that’s caught my eye
In the window, it’s something soft, shiny and yellow,
and when I go to buy it,
I bump into all sorts people I have known through my life
from university, college, secondary school, primary,
and some, their faces softly focused,
are from before.
And we talk.
Ah but jesus where is the baby?
It’s in the coat’s inside pocket.
It’s very quiet.
Is it dead?
A head poking out.
Thank god,
not dead just quiet.
Not dead just quiet.
What would they do
if it was?
I just forgot and oh god where’s my dog?
It can’t be my fault just to forget.
No process of had, just had and there it was.
Just had.
So there.
I spot the dog down the road.
Thank god.
I put my tiny baby back into my pocket and go for tea.
SMOKE (OVER-ACHIEVING FIRST BORN)
I lean out of the window
Because I don’t smoke
The balcony is for smokers
Like my sister or my mum
(or a balcony like it from when she was young)
“Have you been smoking indoors?”
I didn’t hear her response
But he didn’t knock at my door
So I assume she did me a solid
Or she didn’t and he assumed she was lying
And didn’t think to knock
Didn’t think to look
From the adjacent bathroom window
to mine
I light five candles
Drop my sister a message
Bathe
Air my knickers
And roll a butt towards the neighbours roof
No harm done
Because I don’t smoke
SHOP GIRL CRONES
On weekday night shifts
The supermarket keeps the shop girl team to three.
Under their night-time stewardship,
the shop is most itself.
There is no tinny radio,
but you will hear the Shop Crones echoed in three melodies.
The Crones know well,
the shop to be an independent soul.
So, when it is hot,
they huff tobacco leaf behind the bins and laugh a lot.
When it is cold,
they huddle in the breakroom and share (in solemn tones) their hard-won wisdoms.
Some nights, when one is sad,
they thank the shop to offer them its alcoholic remedies and sob.
Always, as the morning comes,
they suds the floor in tandem with a patient and unrushed tenderness.
ANDREA WAGNER
(DIS)MEMBER
I wish I could take out all the little pieces
Lay ‘em down on the table, analyze, look them over,
Count all the angles, note the color and the size,
Measure up the sides so I can know them, exactly,
Quantify these parts that don’t add up but might
If I look hard enough, really look, and try, and
Don’t force yourself, honey, but
What went wrong with you? and
I just can't seem to understand all the little pieces
look them over, count them, hold me up to the light,
Where did it go wrong? Where did it go wrong?
Lay me down, measure, analyze, little pieces,
Each phrase held down, sedated, tranquilized,
Tell me right now what's wrong with me,
Because I can't, I can't.
JAM JAR
How can I long for something I've never had?
I keep my thoughts for you nestled in a jam jar, crowded over
by other neglected fridge necessities.
My hands glide over, again, again. Sometimes reaching, but
maybe next time.
Eyes looking, longing
To open it
Dip the knife in and out
And spread them out to really see
But I close the door.
Even when expired,
I can't bring myself to throw it out.
HELD TOO TIGHTLY
Sometimes I really wonder why it is I can’t be happy.
I give way too much:
Too many letters, too much care,
A look too adoring, too obvious,
And maybe it’s…scary
I can’t hold onto my flowers
Because I hold too tightly
And the stems break
It’s like I’m not allowed
Am I not allowed?
Because they’re beautiful, and I’m not?
Because we’re both pretty?
I want to hold my flowers
My memories
My daisy girls that aren’t really daisies
But the stems
My stems
Keep breaking.
EDWARD SUPRANOWICZ
HON CORBETT
FALLEN FLESH
Strange to see a good steak
Innocently sat on the pavement.
Dead -
Firm and fresh and red.
Not held in plastic or a flimsy factory tray.
This one juts proudly out of its paper white packet.
He knows who he is.
Bought from the butchers that morning,
He sits politely next to the peppered bird
shits outside memorial park.
He’d get up and run back to the field,
If he only could. But as life comes, and goes
the next dog’s a lucky dog
who stumbles upon it.
BRAYDEN NORRIS
TRYING TO STOP LOVING YOU
I’m trying to stop loving you
I know it’s much too late
The only way to free myself
Is slipping into hate
It’s easier for you, my love,
Your love for me is small -
You can let it wither down,
Become nothing at all
But me, I’m handcuffed to your bed,
My watch and phone are gone
My virgin flesh is left exposed,
I simply can’t go on
I’ve nails in my hands and feet,
I must accept my fate
I’m trying to stop loving you
I know it’s far too late.
UNTITLED 250423
How much more can be done for love?
I regret almost everything
that I have done these past months
But even so we climb again and again
to the top of the same hill,
and I cannot weep, and
you cannot tell the buildings from the trees
Tomorrow, I will build a house
over where we died.
I will cover your body in leaves
And I will come each day to
sweep this tomb clean,
and dry your faded eyes.
THIS DARK HOUSE
I recall a time when this house was smaller.
Standing by the open window, smoke plays off my lips.
From here I can see you standing - my god - in the grass, the wind grasping at your hair,
ablaze amidst dying leaves.
You call to me, but I cannot hear you anymore.
Your name carved into my wrist.
It keeps me tethered here,
to this dark house. Thank god - I have no desire to be adrift again.
I will take this love
for what it is.
MAHVASH K.M
THIS MOURNING
She’s caught in the rush of hurrying feet
Snippets of conversations
Of laughter, exclamations
She’s caught in a tidal wave
Of teeming, streaming life
She’s caught in the swell
Of people of voices, of sights and smells
Riding the vital wave
Pushing ahead
Her silk scarf catches the breeze
Of swelling, surging humanity
She feels it pull
Floating just a little in front of her
She quickens her step
Her feet instinctively keeping up
With the urgency of life
She feels something
In her gut, the pit of her stomach
A ripple, almost a laugh!
She inhales deeply, she can’t place
This sudden lightness of being
It feels out of place
This morning, mourning
She had felt like lead
Now like vapor she rises up
Colourless, clean
In that moment she’s someone else
Propelling her body like a comet
Lighter, brighter almost serene
She arrives at her gate
8A
The same number, the place
Where this very morning
She had buried them
She had forgotten
For a few moments
Who she was
She was desolation and grief itself
Wearing the bruises of loss
Mourning only this morning
It all came back dawning
As she came to herself
As her blood remembered
And curdled inside
A freezing, heaving cauldron of chills
She sank into the depths of her seat
9B
There was a sequence
Monumental, compelling
To her agony
She had to remember
She couldn’t forget
Her world had ended
When she had buried her dead.
WHAT DREAMS MAY COME
I had a dream last night
You were in it
Fuzzy, unclear
But the hook was there
That had plucked you from somewhere
Inside my head or maybe
From some deserted place in my heart
It wasn’t an act
Of which I was aware
I had no say
In the furtive way
You appeared around me again
Even if you were phantasmic, chimerical
In that time, you were real
A swaying, decaying bridge coupling
The physical and the figmental
It left a bitter aftertaste
In my mouth when I awoke
I brushed my teeth
With renewed vitality
(My dentist would be happy at least)
I spent the day going over the locks
I had put around certain memories
These escapes
Even in my dreams
Made me restless, agitated me
When I was awake
Tonight I will have my dose
Of vitamins and minerals
(They promise all sorts of well-being)
So that when I dream
The bolted doors inside of me
Keep holding their integrity
But even if they lose their might
Releasing spectres of the night
I know that in my waking hours
In dissecting and determining
The cryptic whys and wherefores
Of night-garish visages
Invading, distressing me
These dreams, these unbidden images
Have already lost their sting
They have shed their whipping wings
To fly at me when I’m asleep
Through all of my monster-proofing
And so deep down inside
Something tells me that tonight
I will dream of other things.
GERRY FABIAN
REGARDING EFFICIENCY
The little details
like fridge baking soda
make all the difference.
Like a balanced checkbook,
knowing the exact amount
leads to sound decisions.
As simple as a regular oil change,
confidence in performance
can carry the conference.
And simple surprise roses
for no reason at all,
extends many warranties.
DANCE HALL COURTING
With lips like razors
you slice love
like a Chicago slaughterhouse.
The carcasses in your closet
hang like the ghosts
of great buffalo herds.
After we make love,
I always sleep
with one eye open.
EXECUTING ANGLES
This once equilateral triangle
has become an invasive isosceles
and I am the bottom line.
There is an irritating confusion
between inches and meters.
Like a broken rhomboid.
The opposite sides
are no longer equal.
And the right angle-
the perfect 90 degrees-
has crashed from the weight
of those with no mathematical
codes or measures.
ARTHUR DEHART
WALK
I take you on a walk, you don’t know where we’re going, and I don’t tell you.
The mountain air is crisp and there’s even a little bit of a breeze.
It smells like heaven,
The smell of it almost about to rain,
The frogs and birds creek,
Croak,
And moan.
You ask me where I’m taking you, I tell you it's to tell my dad bye, pappy too.
We won’t be here for long, but did you know my grandma sleeps with my dads ashes so we will have to say goodbye to his empty grave and one day I’ll put him in a necklace so I’ll never have to say goodbye. You nod. Rightfully silent and concerned.
This is the day I finally leave Tennessee, you don’t complain as I take you into the cemetery. There is no gate in this gravesite in the hills. No creaking, just gravel crumbling as we drive past the sign.
The Mountains protect and provide for the graves and I can almost hear the gods of the Appalachian mountains in the wind. They open the gates to hades and all of a sudden there are white figures sitting on the graves, legs crossed.
Lucid or barely dreaming,
I ask you this as a ghostly mother holds her baby,
Who can finally coo in her mothers arms.
I take a menthol cigarette out of my pocket and there he is,
My wispy grandfather with his dark skin,
And dark hair of the natives he descends from,
Sitting with his blue cotton shirt that I used to hang onto when he’d throw me in the air.
The patient man that raised me,
Sits on his own grave,
An empty one sitting next him, my grandmothers name carved into it prematurely,
Like an omen.
“How is everyone?” He asks me.
“They’re gone.” I reply and hand him the cigarette. He takes it and lights it.
You hate my family reunions because they concern you. With the amount of empty tables they concern me too.