Honey Rivas Smokes Cigarillos from Bellezine
Honey Rivas smokes cigarillos delicate
burning olive branches
living in her bruised hands dying
in her angry lungs
Seaweedfrom Bellezine
endless gulping glugging bubbling tug
swallows the ocean into its maw
Wrinklesfrom Bellezine
I’m afraid of the fleetingness of my skin’s elasticity.
Every day begins with a dollop of sunscreen
News!
Best Reads of 2018
As we enter a new year, our staff looks back at our best reads of 2018. Cassie: My best...
April 2019
Last Day of the Viaduct / Linda Waterfall Is Dead
have you ever fallen asleep on it
can you even imagine no ulterior
have you been declared unsafe
only music and love
have you planned to drive around it
singing a cadenza
Probabilities
the empty road ahead—
no gas stations, no rest stops,
not even a phone booth to call for help.
Ars Longa
Even with cancer the dog
has to be fed and the trash
has to be bundled
March 2019
The Rural Chronicles : Junctures
But I keep looking for the core world, a deeper place, that bright bell of sun. We’re not Presbyterian school girls, after all; we’re in the middle of a wake-up call.
Ubh
I’m struck dumb suddenly by this egg, this enormity.
This immense incomprehensible oval and its lovely silence.
Basil Leaves
this is our home she says, skin and bones built up with love
we put basil on everything
February 2019
The Burial
My husband says he wants to be buried by the sea, like Neruda, so when his eyes can’t see the ocean anymore, his body would still be close to it.
Waiting for Rescue
Drifting here on the far side of the moon and sun, she feels strangely at peace. Trigger does, too, in the falling rain and the question of goodbye.
January
I will be home soon in bed. I will wake up in six hours. I’ll be home in nine minutes.
December 2018 – Pushcart Nominations
Pirate Town
In a few minutes, predictably, the air brakes gave an angry hiss and the ton upon ton of steel strained to stop the momentum of its own barreling progress. The train finally came to a stop in the open desert.
12:59:51:06
Looking back, I can only remember the nickname given to the luger at those 2010 Winter Olympic Games in British Columbia: “BAM-BAM!,” they cheered. He was a favorite for gold. I can’t recall which country he was representing, just his…
You Prefer Hearing Poems Read Aloud to Poems on the Page
I’m trying to explain my poems.
Sonnets equal boxes, into which
we place the cat, a gun, & all our problems.
December 2018 – Pushcart Nominations
You Should Be Dancing From the Print
The ground seemed so much farther away than usual. The soles slid on the carpet. She felt like a little girl in her mother’s high heels. She did not feel sexy.
End From the Print
Always late, and always your sleeves carefully folded. A cat knows the sunny spot.
Drinking Dead Birds From the Print
Before I had my son, I thought I was too careless to be a mother. I had a bird for eight years that I’d gotten from a flea market as a gift. His cage was cleaned when my parents told me to clean it, his water bowl goopy and pink.
July 2018
The Boy Who Was Divided into Time Zones From the Print
In the mornings he pulled on the trousers of the day but could not choose between his corn belt and his bible belt.
Remember Floating From the Print
She asked me, “do you like Miss Donne?
You’re both girls. But my dad says that’s okay.”
Company From the Print
Les just sit togeddah, we talk story.
Bum by Aunty sing a song, but fo now goin talk story.
Bout a beudeeful girl who wen bump her hed, jus like you.
June 2018
The Unknowable
she—having regained composure—messaged him: Your mother needs to know you are all right and she foolishly expected an immediate response
Bodies
What’s needed now is bodies—
when the cold wind blows
Although, Etc.
Why didn’t I steal you
before doors were barred,
make a camp under the boughs?
April 2018
Dear Johnny Castle
we knew you were trouble, in the pits of our stomachs,
or maybe lower…
Nine Months after Joyce Rose, Aged 67 and Expected to Die from Cancer, Moved to the Seashore to Make One Last Attempt to Write the Good Novel
She waited for a gray-green tentacle to slither up from the water.
Azalea Festival Queen Patricia LeMay (L) holding the Norfolk Mace and being kissed by her father Gen. Curtis LeMay (R)
Their faces are very close;
it seems he is whispering to her.
February 2018
Oh, Venus, what shall I do with you?
So you’re not the Anadyomene — suck it up!
Too much pudica peek-a-boo
sfumato
So they named you Mona Lisa,
as the song goes,
blather on about your smile.
Woman With Beautiful Breasts
this anti-Willendorf
bares one swollen breast-bud scored of real clay
January 2018
Chicken Wings Fall from a Building
Defenestration: to throw something out of a window.
Death by Burning
“Baby, everything’s gonna be fine,” he says. “God has a plan for us, and I promise you, it ain’t death by burning.”
Bell
my bones a bell and my flesh a bell, my tongue a vibrating rhythm all its carpet own
December 2017
Security Lines From the Print
what if I can’t travel with
because of
oh you know
Exhale on Descending
We fly over a trailer park
with empty slots, above-ground pools,
a Marriott with hourly rates
Lexicography
The run of a horse
is a gallop. Roam, rove
with restraint. Run those hounds,
those errands. Run your eye
down the list.
November 2017
Gio’s Arm
It was hairless and white, without visible scarring. It looked like there had never been an arm there at all, as if this were just a different way for a body to be constructed. It possessed a peaceful aura, Quinn thought.
The Poppy Eater
There is that much shadow in her, that much dusk of an open earth.
Rain. Saturday Morning. Training Wheels.
We’re far from the seventeen flavors of hell I run across in the course of my week, things that are just never good: glue traps. outgrown swing sets. waiting rooms.