Category: Emotional Health

Close to Home

Myra Slotnick

Today is a good day to die. The neighbor’s mother is dying next door, fifty feet from us. She has been dying for some days. The son arrived yesterday, though, from Ohio, all red-eyed, sleep deprived, and unshaven, and I happened to be collecting the mail. “Hi, how are you?” I Read more

Myra Slotnick

Myra Slotnick is a queer playwright and activist living in Provincetown, Massachusetts. When Covid struck she became eager to explore other genres, culminating in a collection of stories, and several essays.

Hearts are breaking everywhere

Elisabeth Horan

Even though I cannot see your face Nor place my fingers upon your skin; I am here; craving your words, your Warmth, the small smile in the dark, So damn sweet As if still children; we would play on the Playground, eat unwashed apples, and Ride our bikes, dangerously… Need Read more

Elisabeth Horan

Elisabeth Horan is a poet mother student lover of kind people and animals, homesteading in Vermont with her tolerant partner and two young sons. She writes to survive and survives to write - We are all battling something. Let's support each other. Elisabeth enjoys riding horses and caring for her cats, chickens, goats and children (not necessarily in that order). She teaches at River Valley Community College in New Hampshire.

Trapped Tears

Judith Staff

It’s back, that distantly familiar swell under my ribs, a bitter sensation, like crying which is desperate to escape. Is it my trapped tears, all alone inside my chest? Or the hollow itself that they inhabit, which hurts? The aching makes me inhale, throbbing intensifies. Perhaps because my sorrow is Read more

Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.

Every single night

Elisabeth Horan

My brain is a place of deep concern to me. My brain is a place of butterflies and octopi. You haven’t seen a place such as this and I am so happy for you. You tell me to smile and chock it all up to my negative attitude – that Read more

Elisabeth Horan

Elisabeth Horan is a poet mother student lover of kind people and animals, homesteading in Vermont with her tolerant partner and two young sons. She writes to survive and survives to write - We are all battling something. Let's support each other. Elisabeth enjoys riding horses and caring for her cats, chickens, goats and children (not necessarily in that order). She teaches at River Valley Community College in New Hampshire.

Night Shift

Lara M. Lawrence

My hands come together prayerful around the whistling hot cupful to wait to sip scorchless to feel its breath grow cool degree by half degree across my lip— A vigil I cannot keep. All day I touch my raw tongue to the back of my teeth. Again, broadside in the Read more

Lara M. Lawrence

An ardent student and teacher of literature for almost 30 years, Lara is venturing into her own writing endeavors.

LEGISLATING SEX 

Katherine West

Teenagers in Texas can no longer get birth control on their own.  The logic of this escapes me just as it did when I was a teenager and my step-father stole my birth control pills out of my purse.  He did not want the shame of a pregnant teenage daughter, Read more

Katherine West

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective and Southwest Word Fiesta. New Verse News nominated her poem And Then the Sky for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She is also an artist.

Richard’s Mummy

Judith Staff

Richard isn’t at school today. He wasn’t there yesterday, either. When I get home, my mother seems sad. She crouches, looking into my eyes with hers. “Richard’s Mummy is – “ My mother has tears now. I don’t ask her why, I wait. I feel uncomfortable. “Richard hasn’t got a Read more

Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.

Judging Rights

Judith Staff

Nestling together, blame and judgement let’s talk about that. Were you there? Were you wearing her clothes? You know, the ones she asked him not to pull off? Did you feel her heart accelerating? While her soul wept in fear of what was to come? Were you witness to all Read more

Judith Staff

Judith Staff’s background is in teaching and early years education. She still teaches occasionally, though now her main focus is in child welfare and safeguarding children. Her work includes delivering training, presenting at conferences, and engaging in collaborative projects with schools around child abuse awareness and sexual violence prevention. She enjoys writing blogs and poetry on topics she feels passionate about. Judith loves running, gym classes and karate. She is married to an art lecturer and they live in Northamptonshire, England with their three free-spirited children, a 12- year-old son, and daughters aged 11 and 9.