I expected to return and find the house
collapsed on itself in my absence.
But I came back,
half as beaten down as before but still unwhole,
and found nothing changed,
all the way down to the dust bunnies
in the corner of the stairs.
I spent days and weeks before this one bracing myself,
building up my walls
where they had started to crumble away.
I placed a bucket in my hand
to bail myself back into the hole
I thought I created in my hurried exit
but found no such thing.
Nothing could have prepared me
for the amount of inaction needed.
I had prepared a grand re-opening.
and no one came.
I’ve never been good at adjusting
and readjusting,
the arranging
and rearranging.…
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We drove past each other weekday mornings out where the highway is two lanes. It took him a month to notice. The third time he saw me, he smiled and waved. I waved back. I remembered to smile the next day.
I talked to him as we passed. About work. About downsizing. I explained how, if the same thing happened to him, he could transcribe medical reports over the Internet to make a living. I justified money spent for online games, online movies, online sex, food deliveries, wine deliveries, toilet paper deliveries.
I don’t know where I was going the first time I saw him. His head was tilted to one side and long brown hair covered half his face. He looked at me and it felt like I knew him.…
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A leading American poet and a multiple Pushcart nominee (with awards from Midwest Poetry Review, Peninsula Pulse, Poetswest, Womanspace, and others), Midwest writer Christine Swanberg just had her ninth poetry collection, Wild Fruition: Sonnets, Spells, and Other Incantations, published. A college and high school teacher, she is a featured national reader and workshop leader; her work has appeared in hundreds of anthologies and journals.
Your collection of 75 poems is grouped into five parts, each preceded with a color or b/w photo. How long did it take to complete? Was it more challenging than your previous collection, The Alleluia Tree?
It has been five years since my last collection. I experimented with sonnets and shaping free verse. Part of my process is placing the poems in journals before publishing them as a collection because I want them to have wide a readership; it makes the collection more professional and more publishable.…
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When I feel the telltale tickle in my throat, I want to cry. I thought this was over. All I ask is to make it through fifth-period calculus without causing any incident whatsoever. I’m sitting at my desk in the center of the classroom, surrounded (trapped) on all sides by my fellow classmates, who must surely be watching my every move. This is the worst possible thing that could happen. Instead of tossing and turning from dreams of showing up to class without pants on, I suffer from the absolute nightmare of coughing not once (which is bad enough), but twice during class. I’d rather implode from my un-coughed cough than face the humiliation.
To cough once is embarrassing. To cough twice is social suicide. I will be forever scarred by the traumatic memory of when I coughed for the first time five minutes ago.…
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I want to write
———dirty poetry;
——————you heard right.
Words that aren’t gold
———because they’re too busy
——————grinding against the dirt.
I’ve been yearning
———to live
——————beyond the poverty
sticking to my palms.
———I shredded my diary
——————at seventeen,
tried to silence
———the frenzy of youth.
——————I’ve been pulling away
at strands in my verses,
———combing out
——————the glitter.
I want to be honest
———I may have traded
——————God for poetry
wanting / to make / love.
– Claudia Rojas…
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R. E Hengsterman is a Pushcart-nominated writer, film photographer, and flawed human who deconstructs the human experience through images and words. He writes under the Carolina blue sky. You can see more of his work here and find him on Twitter at @rehengsterman
In this episode, Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Hengsterman about balancing writing, editing, and photography, wrestling with self-doubt, the impact of modern technology on human behavior, and Citizen Cope, among many other things.
– R.E Hengsterman…
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Orville,
what did we just see?
I look at my brother.
He looks at me.
Mirrors of wonder,
much more than a disbelief.
We look back up to the sky
and want more.
This awe feels right.
Despite no wings, this is
humankind’s dream, as if
commanded and given,
as if bestowed from heaven.
And look at us.
So much can happen
when we just believe.
– Joe Bisicchia…
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