Category: Poetry

A Poem for International Women’s Day

Z. M. Wise

Lilith, goddess guardian, first one to raise arms and plant feet downward. Enheduanna, I pay tribute to you. Golden signatures trickle down on miscellaneous temple hymns in honor of their presence. No time but now to salvage remains, original calligraphy to support descendants. Sappho, you underrated Greek beauty, as ancient Read more

Z. M. Wise

Z.M. Wise is a proud Illinois native from Chicago, poet, essayist, occasional playwright, seldom screenwriter, co-editor and arts activist, writing since his first steps as a child. He is co-owner and co-editor of Transcendent Zero Press https://transcendentzeropress.org/ , an independent publishing house for poetry that produces an international quarterly journal known as Harbinger Asylum. He is the author of seven books and chapbooks of published poetry and a play, including: Take Me Back, Kingswood Clock! (MavLit Press, 2013); The Wandering Poet (Transcendent Zero Press, 2014); Wolf: An Epic & Other Poems (Weasel Press, 2015); Cuentos de Amor (Red Ferret Press, 2015); Kosmish and the Horned Ones (Weasel Press, 2018); Illinois Infinitarium (Cherry House Press, 2020); and The Nightmare Mask (TBD). His debut play, Bottles of Emerald for the Demon Queen (Transcendent Zero Press, 2019), was published in late December of 2019. His most recent chapbook of poetry, the mini-epic known as The Nightmare Mask, is searching for a brand new home. Other than these books, his poems, lyrics, essays, and book reviews have been published in various journals, magazines, and anthologies. Besides poetry and other forms of writing, his other passions/interests include professional voice acting, singing/lyricism/songwriting, playing a few instruments, fitness, and reading.

Sounding

Kari A Flickinger

Words sometimes settle between thighs. Eye up—all night think how I don’t your shoulder brush, cough don’t, you away, leg. I don’t acknowledge your mouth when you’re talk -ing, how can you? Talking such silence between an affect. Sounding pangs liquid off every windshield tears the sky open. Tears, tears. Read more

Kari A Flickinger

Kari A. Flickinger's poetry has been published in or is forthcoming from Written Here: The Community of Writers Poetry Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Burning House Press, Door Is A Jar, Isacoustic, Ghost City Review, Eunoia Review, and Riddled with Arrows, among others. She is an alumna of UC Berkeley. When she is not writing, she can be found playing guitar and singing to her unreasonably large Highlander cat, as well as obsessively over-analyzing the details of neighboring trees.

Excavate

Emily Algar

You touch me and I give way You wrap your arms around me My back against your chest And I lean back, Oh how I lean and bend against you My skin against yours has me making sounds that are not my own You have awoken something in me Something Read more

Emily Algar

Emily Frances Algar is a journalist and writer. She has experience in the music industry working as the A&R on the Grammy Nominated Album (Best Folk Album) Front Porch by artist Joy Williams. Emily has been published in a number of print and digital publications including Atwood Magazine, American Songwriter, and Record Collector magazine. She specializes in both long and short-form features as well as interviews and reviews. She has written pieces ranging from the commercialization of feminism and feminism in popular culture, critiques surrounding freedom of speech and the #MeToo movement as well as recently interviewing refugees from Iran. Emily has a Masters in International Security from Oxford Brookes University. Her thesis looked at the extent to which the media shaped public opinion during the Vietnam and Iraq (2003) wars.

Not 1937 but 1972

Elisabeth Horan

For Olds… for Bruck We aren’t shaped things like our moms’ hairdos So round so golden so smooth like this guy’s ego He says better not have that cheeseburger better not have that chocolate malted — And your thighs chafe like hers… so what — so, skinny is Holocaust rated. 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.

POLITICALLY CORRECT

Anne Leigh Parrish

Who may tell her story? Who has earned the right? What if she’s come and gone? Has no tongue, no eyes, no hands? Must one wear her skin, eat from her bowl Fight nightmare’s demons on her sleeping mat just to feel the Rhythm of her heart? Aren’t we all Read more

Anne Leigh Parrish

Award-winning writer Anne Leigh Parrish’s next novel, an open door, will be published in October 2022 by Unsolicited Press. Recent titles from Unsolicited Press are the moon won’t be dared, a poetry collection, October 2021, and a winter night, a novel, released in March 2021. She is the author of seven other books. She has recently ventured into the art of photography and lives in the South Sound Region of Washington State. Find her online at her website, Twitter, Facebook, Medium, Instagram, Linked In, and Goodreads.

For the Jukebox that Won’t Stop Playing the National Anthem

J.B. Stone

the sultry ode composed of smashed teeth, blood stained glass, hammer-fist dents, ready to turn public spaces into choral asylums, turn town squares into scorched earth & blast the blistering notes of nationalism, numbing the ear drums in the worst of ways, we howl like drunk men in wolves clothing, Read more

J.B. Stone

J.B. Stone is a neurodivergent writer from Brooklyn, now residing in Buffalo. Stone is the author of A Place Between Expired Dreams and Renewed Nightmares (Ghost City Press 2018) and the forthcoming Fireflies & Hand Grenades (Stasia Press 2019). His work has appeared in BlazeVOX, Peach Mag, Glass, Empty Mirror, Maudlin House, Crack the Spine, and elsewhere. You can check out more of his work at jaredbenjaminstone.com or his tweets @JB_StoneTruth.

“a plea”

Lauren Anders

maybe you will want to love another more than you could love me. so i ask of you, please do not let her name be written at the end of your list. don’t let her fall to the back burner, or at the very least, let her sit on the Read more

Lauren Anders

Lauren Anders is originally from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma where she graduated with her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Oklahoma City University. She recently completed a master's program at the New York Academy of Art and now lives and works in Manhattan pursuing various artistic practices.

Vestal Valentine

Kristin Garth

What love I’ve known I found on knees, by chance between iniquities. Fingers confined a backwards prayer, cutaneous chants without my underwear. Vestments, red wine a rosary, entwined lithe wrists you lead to liturgy, to genuflect before an altar, bare, a deity I wed in collar, chestnut hair. Services sworn in ballet veil, Read more

Kristin Garth

Kristin Garth is a poet from Pensacola, Florida. She is a knee sock aficionado and a sonnet stalker. Her sonnets have stalked the pages of Luna Luna, Occulum, Anti-Heroin Chic, Ghost City Review, Drunk Monkeys, TERSE, Journal and many other publications. Her chapbook Pink Plastic House is available through maverickduckpress.com