By Poison thorn
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This time instead of flowers lots of poison flowers
Have I spread on your pulpit in worship elements
You take those and look at me blinkingly
This time instead of an idol I have made a bumpkin
In the temple is playing on diabolic song
You stare at me while sitting
Engaged in thinking if there was any wrong
And I pinching on friends’ buttocks speak out hurrah.
By Sarah Al-Hajj
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1. Acquire a flower – most preferably one with sentimental value, otherwise why are you even bothering. You need emotion to motivate writing.
2. Spread out each petal so that it lays flat on the tissue paper. Make sure the stem is gone because why on earth would you press a stem. Unless you are composing an Ode to Thorns, paired with the poetic balance of beauty and pain. Be still my heart.
3. Cover both sides of the flower with the tissue paper in order to soak up the fluid. Whilst doing so, formulate a simile about the tissue soaking up the lifeblood of the flower like the pillow soaks up your tears every night. Find other love-sick examples on the world-wide-web.
4. Place the flower in a tight vice, or for regular people, under a stack of heavy books.…
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By Eric Weil
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– after Rita Dove
Morning. I look at my fuzzy chest
in the bathroom mirror. What are these
hard disks, like quarters, under my nipples?
I’m a boy; am I growing breasts?
I can hear the girls in my class giggling.
Last evening during homework,
my father called me to the living room,
and back at my desk, I couldn’t remember
what he’d said, but I realized
he had not yelled at me like the day before
and the day before that and . . . The letters
in the book swam like fish avoiding
a bigger fish until the current
in my eyes calmed.…
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By Sarah Al-Hajj
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Sweetness begins like the drizzling of a raincloud
Sporadically spitting in tasteful bursts
Like ink blotches on wet parchment,
Sugar waltzes with taste buds and
Bides its time before bursting the dam
And flooding the mouth with ambrosia
Pray the bees do not mind.
Note: This piece was previously published in Sarah Al-Hajj’s poetry pamphlet, Wonky Fingers, in February of 2024.…
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By Natalie Marino
Posted on
for Ava
Today my daughter—
now twelve and already looking like a young woman—
stands with me at the edge of a field.
I tell her California’s mustard flowers
are an invasive species first planted
by Spanish colonizers
so they wouldn’t lose their way.
She tells me about the blue bowl
she made in pottery class,
that comet pieces and moons make up Saturn’s rings.
I point to the park on the other side of the road,
where small children climb monkey bars,
where we used to play every Saturday
and wait for the first evening stars to let us know
it was time to go home.
She says she is too old for places like this now.
All around us are blazing pink daffodils
and brilliant lilies of the valley.…
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By John Beck
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The fall
has halted
for the
yellow maple
leaf, fresh
caught, bright,
casting a
tiny shadow
in the
porch corner
from the
spider’s web
in the
last light
of this
October day:
no escape,
no meal.
Note: This piece was previously published by LansingOnlineNews.com, a now defunct local news outlet, in 2012.…
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By Madi Huffman
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this heart of mine feels dull and lonely
aching for your love, only
are you thinking of me where you are?
are you looking at the same stars ?
did the moon tell you i’ve been telling her stories about you?
and how every shade and every hue
is more vibrant next to you ?
carolina skies are nothing compared to your eyes
and my my my… i sure do miss my guy
the one who dons himself in paint
my patron saint
in t e c h n i c o l o r
my dream of a lover
personified
just in time
to save my soul
was that your goal?
because now it’s yours
careful to treat it well, toujours
she’s a delicate little thing, this heart
but i’d sacrifice it all and call it art