Category: Dating + Relationships

Sleepy Bane-Bane

Kiki Dranias

did nothing but wish and cry, wishing baby I were the rivulets streaming from your eyes. so many times. every time i’d believe you had gone i’d bring you back from an empty grave. they’d say, Girl, you cray or you ok? but just crazé en amoré for an imaginary Read more

Kiki Dranias

KIKI DRANIAS is a multi award-winning Hellenic-Canadian poet, playwright, director & producer living in Montreal. Kiki’s debut play GOING UP, an immersive and site-specific theatrical presentation, was performed live for 14 shows in November 2019, on board Elevator #1 at LE 5800 St. Denis, in Montreal. Winning three of the categories, including Outstanding New Text, Outstanding Emerging Playwright & Producer, Outstanding Independent Production, this sold-out inaugural production received in total seven nominations at the 2020 Montreal English Theatre Awards. This playwright’s second theatrical work WHERE IS ANTON is a 40-minute piece that Kiki wrote, produced and also directed. The show was performed live at the 30th Montreal Fringe Festival in June 2021, for six sold-out shows at MainLine Theatre. With primary support from Canada Council for the Arts, Kiki wrote and produced her third play THE LOVE TRIAL, a 75-minute modern Greek tragedy. This hybrid type and immersive theatrical presentation was performed live in front of 500 audience members in December 2021, for seven shows at the Masonic Temple Hall in Montreal. As a poet, Kiki has also authored BLOOD IS BLUE, a well-received poetry collection. To showcase her work and the work of others, this woman artist works under the Purple Divine producing and publishing banner.

Thunder

Doug Hoekstra

Rolls like a kettle-drumon the other side of the passwhere my lover once livedin a plain wooden houseunder a sky that carried weightin its splendor and its solace We saved hours underneaththe dogwood tree, silentholding hands, lightly old-fashionedlovers bent on listening asthe yellow-billed cuckoo sangsadder than the rain Everything I Read more

Doug Hoekstra

Doug Hoekstra is a Chicago-bred, Nashville-based writer and musician, educated at DePaul University in the Windy City (B.A.) and Belmont University in the Music City (M.Ed.), whose prose, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in numerous print and online literary journals. His first set of stories, Bothering the Coffee Drinkers, was published in April 2006 and earned an Independent Publisher Award (IPPY) for Best Short Fiction (Bronze Medal). Ten Seconds In-Between, his latest collection of short stories, was published in June, 2021 on Better than Starbuckspress. Hoekstra has also worked extensively as a singer-songwriter with eight albums of original material on labels released on both sides of the pond, propelling touring throughout the U.S. and Europe, at bookstores, coffeehouses, clubs, libraries, pubs, festivals, radio stations, and castles; solo and with combos in tow. Musical highlights have included Nashville Music Award and Independent Music Award nominations, as well as many groovy happenings. 2021 also brings a new album of music, The Day Deserved. ("A lot of people write songs, Hoekstra writes five minute worlds" - Wired Magazine).

I Know

Elisabeth Horan

Using the crowbar on me — I am more tired than angry with you — endlessly waiting — I’m aware you don’t love me; the way you love the scarlet lady out your backdoor I’m shaking alone — only the veins in my forehead pulse – applaud my effort — 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.

Ghost Knight

Paula R. Hilton

We haven’t spoken for years, yet my wounds are fresh. Your sword’s point, it’s center ridge, the length of its groove, as if a ghost knight buried his blade in my chest. It’s no secret, I once loved you more than the rest, despite your duplicity, your sarcasm disguised as Read more

Paula R. Hilton

Paula R. Hilton explores the immediacy of memory and how our most important relationships define us. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and has appeared in The Feminine Collective, The Sunlight Press, Writing In A Woman’s Voice, Dear Damsels, The Tulane Review, and elsewhere. Her novel, Little Miss Chaos, was selected as a Best Indie Teen Read by Kirkus, and her first poetry collection, At Any Given Second, received a Kirkus star. She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans.

Desideratum – n. something which is needed or wanted

Elisabeth Horan

On a Joplin trip Winding a string around my finger Oh yeah; sweetest hues and blue of Addiction, of love of words, pastel baby What’s the point, little girl-pink tastes Like anger to me — I need nothing But satin feelings — I understand nothing — the Presence of my 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.

A Demi-God

Margret Avery

If there was a joke attached to every lie you spoke or wrote I would laugh and laugh and never settle for your self adulation in your separation of the shallow wall in your heart that never lets anyone in but its the failed chagrin in the dailies of your Read more

Margret Avery

Margret Avery expresses her talents through being a singer / songwriter / actor / writer and poet. She has also worked as a freelance makeup artist with her work gracing the pages of many editorial and commercial publications. The passion to express through song led to her writing and continues to grow with equal tenacity. Margret has contributed as a writer to Suite101, Women’s Voices for Change and now proudly for Feminine Collective. Margret’s writing is included in Feminine Collective: Raw and Unfiltered Vol 1 and that makes her smile on a daily basis. Her music can be heard on Spotify, Pandora, CDbaby, Soundcloud, Reverbnation and NumberoneMusic.

twenty years

Anne Leigh Parrish

twenty years you’ve been gone & that’s just how long you’ve been dead in life you were gone, too i was a pool you’d drown in if you got your feet wet you kept your feet dry how hard to hold the truth like a bitter seed under your tongue 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.

Drowning

Hannah Bagley

Pull me in and take me under. Throw me overboard—hold me under the waves. How I wish I could drown in the expanse of you.   Take the air from my lungs and give me yours. Let me paint you with care, turn your skin smooth as river rock— polished Read more

Hannah Bagley

Hannah Bagley is a poet and recent graduate from Southern Appalachia. She is also published in The Chestatee Review and As It Ought To Be Magazine. Bagley draws inspiration from her upbringing in the mountains, nature, and the human experience through a feminist lens.