Poetry

The Dead Girl

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Photo of Author

Pixie Willo is a writer, reviewer, voice actor, and performance poet from the Blue Mountains. For the last three years Pixie has worked as a theatre reviewer and producer for the Stages theatre show for 2Ser FM; as well as creating audio packages for 2Ser’s Gay Panic show interviewing queer and diverse people in and around the Sydney area. She currently works as a creative writer for Entertainment Blue Mountains. As a creative writer she has written, produced and directed her first children’s play “The Marvellous Sock Machine” which was staged at Gallery 188 in Katoomba in July 2018 and is currently being transformed into a picture book. Her voice acting credits have included narrating for History Lab, Starship Sofa, Queerstories, Let’s Do It and Antipodean SF Podcasts, for which she has also written material. Pixie has had two plays chosen for the Short and Sweet playwriting festival in 2017 and 2018. Willo runs the Off-Beat poetry slam in the Blue Mountains and was a finalist in the 2013 National Poetry slam. Her new book, “in Clarity’s absence” is available from girls on key press (link provided below). She has recently graduated with a BA in Theatre, Performance and Creative Writing at UNE. Creative audio for the Dead girl produced by DayWorld Music.

https://www.girlsonkey.com/poetryportalshop/in-Claritys-absence-Pixie-Willo-p312010416

Runaway

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Nathaniel Terrell resides in Western NY. He is an accomplished writer, poet, author, and artist. In 2014, he published an inaugural collection poems titled Here Goes Nothing, through Mylk ‘n’ Honee publishing. His work has been featured in Cram Journal, Writing Raw, Fine Line Journal, Maudlin House, Good Men Project, Finding the Birds, Havik, Nine Cloud Journal.

His book Is There Not a Cause? was released April 7th by Atmosphere press and is available for purchase via atmospherepress.com, Amazon and Barnes and Noble

Lightning Bolts and Scars

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Gregory Ormson works with Russell Thorburn, NEA award recipient, in creating works of poetry and song. Thorburn is a playwright with several books of poetry and a novel. Gregory Ormson’s ‘Midwest Intimations’ was the winning essay in the Eastern Iowa Review’s lyric nonfiction contest (Summer 2017) He won Indiana Review’s 13 word tweet contest in 2015. Guitaris Derrell Syria joined Ormson and Thorburn on this song/poem collaboration. Ormson words, Thorburn piano and edits, Syria guitar.

#motorcyclingyogiG

Twitter: GAOrmson

“My words explore a soul’s stretch toward a white star emerging from lightning. This prose piece, in four minuets, finds its structural bones and narrative beat from the rhythm of an old red water pump.”

Recorded in Michigan (music) and Arizona (voice).

Seasons

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Linathi Makanda is a South African photographer and storyteller. She is the author of the poetry and prose collection When No One Is Watching. Born and raised in Mthatha, a small town in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa, her hopes are to open the doors of opportunity for many other black womxn creatives to occupy spaces as well as redefine the capabilities of womxn creatives and womxn in general. Makanda’s photographic works have been recognized by publications such as Vogue Italia (PhotoVogue) as well as by Michigan’s Saginaw Valley State University literary art journal called Cardinal Sins. Her writings as well as photographic works aim to celebrate authentic expression and to drive the notion that everything and everyone is art, worthy to be experienced.

Seasons – a visual outlining the importance of weathering all one’s seasons and the swift changes that occur in life. The visual drives the notion that there is power in embracing yourself in all stages you are in.

Credits Videography & Editing – Mwango Muntemba Kondolo

Poetry Writing and Recital – Linathi Makanda

Art Direction and Styling – Linathi Makanda & Mwango Muntemba Kondolo

Location Scouting – Mwango Muntemba Kondolo

Poetry Collection by Natascha Graham

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Natascha Graham is a lesbian writer of stage and screen as well as fiction and poetry living on the east coast of England with her wife and two young children.

Her poetry and fiction have been frequently aired on BBC Radio and published in Every Day Fiction, Acumen, Litro, and Yahoo News to name but a few, while her stage work has been staged at the Mercury Theatre, Thornhill Theatre London, and won the best monologue prize at Fifth Avenue Theatre New York. Her short films have been selected by Pinewood Studios, Lift-Off Sessions, and Cannes Film Festival

My Girlfriend the Narcissist read by Vee Tames

The Husband read by Vee Tames

When Gillian’s Here read by Vee Tames

Sunshine Pie

Apfelbaum by Laura J. Braverman

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LAURA J. BRAVERMAN is a writer and artist. Her poetry has appeared in Levure Litteraire, Live Encounters, The BeZINE, California Quarterly, and Mediterranean Poetry. Her first collection of poetry, In the Absence of Defense Against Loss, will be published in 2019 by Cosmographia Books. She lives in Lebanon and Austria with her family.


Apfelbaum

For a long time I believed Martin Luther said these words:
Even if I knew tomorrow the world would go to pieces,
I would still plant my apple tree.
We shared a birthday, though his was 500 years before mine.

He would have spoken the words in my mother tongue. I use
them as an incantation, as defense against helplessness—

I imagine
our globe as little as twenty years from now—septic seas,
garbage dunes, drought and flood. My husband soothes me,

says creation moves in cycles regardless of the reckless
doings of our tribe. He sides with Heraclitus: World ever was,
and is,
an ever-living fire,
kindling and extinguishing according to measure.

But surely our wild hunger has sped things up.

Does the earth care for us?
We scrub pots after dinner, pick up our children’s Lego bricks.
We better Narcissus—leap headlong into the reflections
our digital screens hold up. We save manatees stranded in mud,

compose cantatas, dry rose petals in the sun;
we beg at intersections with matted hair and little siblings, knock
on closed car windows.
We fear the swollen legs of our father,
scratch butterflies with our fingernails on stonewalls,
line up for death.

Does the universe care for us?
I’ve come across a theory: the cosmos expected life,
prepared for consciousness, for us, from its very cradle—

hoped for apple trees and their tart, pesky harvest.

Advice for Saying Hello by Ace Boggess

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ACE BOGGESS is an author of three books of poetry, most recently Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016). His fourth poetry collection, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

 

Advice for Saying Hello

I’m the wrong person to ask—
heart in it, but not my voice.

If we haven’t met,
you’re the speck of a gnarled spider

dangling from a ceiling in the hall.
Legs atremble, I won’t approach,

might stare rudely or run away.
I’m paralyzed from the tongue up.

Should you encounter me,
please speak fast

before panic hides me in its cloak.
Tell me your name, your favorite film,

what songs play
on the soundtrack to your life.

Tell me how much you love
spaghetti & red wine,

the smell of frying eggs,
the color of anything

under a rain-gray sky.
I promise to listen, &

maybe then, I’ll have an answer
for the silence I wear

like a holiday sweater:
ugly, red, & pulled from a drawer

out of gratitude or duty
on yet another lonely, public eve.

Three Poems at 55 by Kelly King Walden

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KELLY KING WALDEN blogs at kellylogos.net, which is also her Twitter handle (without the net:) She has raised children (4, one from Ethiopia) and mentors teens and college students. She created an ACT Prep business, which she runs, and writes on the side for various online magazines and a local magazine. She has only published one poem, at Plough Quarterly. She has a Master’s in English and has taught school and college in the past.

 

Padded Van
We were so packed into the van.
Every trip, just so many accouterments
needed, no matter where we were going.
My mother would bring a pillow and a full
size blanket because she was always cold
and wanted to be covered from head to toe.
Then there was a sweater or a big padded coat.
And her big computer with its fat padded case and
a big quilted bag to carry all the books and magazines
she thought she might read. And then there was the mini
back pillow for lumbar support. And she’d fill a little soft-sided
cooler with water and apples and nuts. And she insisted on an
extra blanket for anyone else who might get cold because it always
happened. We would complain about how crowded we all were, how
claustrophobic we felt with all this suffocating softness surrounding our
every move on every side. And on this trip, we were camping so my dad
had his pillow beside his seat, too, and I was sleeping on my pillow and my
sister had a big jacket hung up over her window because of the burning sun
darkening her already dark skin. And there wasn’t enough room in the back for
all the camping gear and food and bedding and suitcases so we had a couple of
rolled up sleeping bags on the floor between us in the back. And bulging out from
between the two middle seats were foam bed toppers and an extra, super-fat down comforter in case it got really cold one night AND two coats were stuck by our heads.
So when we had the wreck,
And went flying through the air and rolling over and over down the bank with the
blankets and coats and pillows and bags and comforters tumbling around us
like bedding in the heavy-duty dryer at the laundromat, it was a wild ride
and we were a little banged up, but we merely walked away
looking like pants and shirts that needed a little ironing.

 

When You Walked In
I was getting ready to leave
when you walked in the door.
I need to be somewhere soon,
but your unexpected arrival
halted my plans.
I rethink my agenda.
I can’t leave when I have the
unexpected gift of your presence
suddenly. I manufacture reasons
for hanging out in the same room
with you. Let’s see, what’s on my
list to do today? Oh, yes, clean
the kitchen windows, haha. I can
do a couple of them right now,
and just casually throw out some
conversation starters while I’m
hanging out. You are so focused
on what you are focused on. I try
to be focused on something else too.
But converse a little, too, at the
same time, you know, just casually.
About something maybe interesting.
Or just something.
Like tell you what I did this morning.
But that was nothing. Nothing
that you would find interesting.
But there was that one thing
I can mention. I can show you that one
thing.
But you’re so busy, so focused.
I don’t want to annoy you.
Can I at least
have a bridge sometimes? It can be
retractable. Or throw me a rope, maybe.
I just want to be one of the
islands in your archipelago.
I just want to be able
to cross over
sometimes
and see your eyes.

 

If Emily Had Children
The bustle in the house
the day the kids come home
Is the brightest tidying up,
the lightest of urgent work
in a stolid empty nest.
Irrational love precipitates
irrational effort
as tedious tasks stir energy.
I’m expecting life again –
the heart opens up
and the light comes in
illuminating soon filled rooms.
The stillness in the house
the day the kids leave
is a snaky place.
Trails of their presence creep
like vines through the house.
Mired in memories at every turn,
my heavy feet move from room to room.
The quicksand of sadness sucks me down.
The overgrowth of activity has left a fertility of memory
. . . A futility of memory.
If I strip their bed I strip their scent.
A grayness pervades the air and my soul
as I sweep up my Heart and put my Love away.

 

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