Voice of Eve
ISSUE 15 - JUNE 30, 2019
Contents Bethanie Melcher 4 Bethany Sisk 10 Carly Schaelling 14 Cinthia Ritchie 22 Katherine Chambers 30 Kate LaDew 40 Katherine Pickett 46 K Carlton Johnson 50 Kristen Baum DeBeasi 56 M. M. Adjarian 62 Mary Gatheru 72
Rachel Marie Dindy 76 Sarena Mason 84 Sophia Chiu 90 Stella Vinitchi Radulescu 98 Stephanie Fielding 106
BETHANIE
MELCHER
Sunburn
BETHANIE MELCHER
Mist rising over a green lake, eyes lost canoes. Face wet from the mud of and I looked like sea glass. A jaggedness, an ugly shard intended to hurt. smoothed into something of beauty by some greater power.
I let my whole hands roam through the ocean. Hair between waves, finge the outline of my mind, something tangible I could force all my wants on as blunt as a horseshoe crab, I remembered the way your mouth looked w your teeth. So deserted, so far gone from thought, but you knew that.
There was no warmth that day, though I still went home with a sunburn. 2 AM when I felt heat on my face and dreamt of fire. Peeling off a few day pillow and blew it onto the floor, the dust catching the light before the da important I’ll never tell.
morning, you smelled of fennel, A little too wild. Over time
ers through hair. Trying to feel nto. Sinking into wet sand, heart with a piece of grass between
. A dull pain I did not notice until ys later, I put the skin under my ark. A sort of fucked-up wish, so
About Bethanie Melcher
Bethanie Melcher is a speech-language pathology graduate student current in the inherent magic of the natural world and the complexities of human
tly living in New Hampshire. Her poetry is inspired by everything holy found connection.
BETHAN
NY SISK
Pine’s Darkness
BETHANY SISK
Wilted Weeping flowers aloom, of twisted times a bloom fallen on a forested floor. A lifelong lore. Cramping claws of the twisted divine Rooting around among the brine. Beneath the earth in clamped confines screaming souls lie. Oh! how beautiful breathful bleaching begins, bursting bridges of a hollowed inn. Scamping scoundrels shrewdly swallowing while a shallow smile of a pig wile. Oh branches divine! a sweet smile all the while hiding behind ghostly bile. Edges you say a blundering bay half a mile, on a summer’s day to where the skeletons lie Beneath the brambling branches dine of a winter’s pine.
About Bethany Sisk
Bethany Sisk is a full time Kitchen manager at a gourmet cupcake shop. She spends every moment of her spare time exploring the world around her and writing. Her works include poetry, short stories, articles, and novellas.
CARLY SCH
HAELLING
My Teacher
CARLY SCHAELLING
My teacher reminds me of a pigeon with a rainbow neck who bobs at the ground munching. I think pigeons are pretty cool. Even cooler when they carry messages or flock around my ankles, worshiping my hands, the hands that throw them manna. But I am a selfish god, I throw life to the birds because it makes me happy, because they need me. And they never know when I’ll come. (Sometimes I don’t feel like it, so I stay home watching reruns of Friends. But I come around eventually.) And the pigeons throw down palm leaves at my entrance, and as I throw the bread, before their wanting eyes can burn me, I shake my head at them. Your fault, little birds, I say and they believe me. They can’t help but love me and long for me anyway. My teacher is not like this crowd of pigeons. He’s the one who stands afar off, rolling his little pigeon eyes,
shaking his little pigeon head at me, cutting my façade. He eats the scraps when the rest have gone, and I, lumbering home, pretend not to see him.
Rain Prayer
CARLY SCHAELLING
In church the pews are all lined up like soldiers. I like to think they whisper to each other when the last of us has left. I like to think the rain sliding down the windows is a prank played by the sun. I think the girl pulling herself onto my lap will call me her big sister. She wraps her puny arms around my neck, her little poufy dress crunches up around her tummy when she plops down crossed-legged next to me. I used to wear dresses like that. I used to beg my momma please let me wear my Cinderella dress to church. And let me put on your lipstick too. I figure I am outside in the rain with my little friend. We are wearing princess dresses and our mothers’ lipstick. The cold drops slide down our faces and the pavement sighs with delight as we stomp and tip toe across it. I think I am a strong woman, you know. The kind who could wear a pantsuit to church, with that quick wit and fierce, dauntless attitude. You know the kind. The kind who tosses giggling babies in the air and has an easy smile, the kind who doesn’t sit on her left hand. I am that woman sometimes I suppose. But most Sundays I sit here next to the window praying for rain. I twirl my little friend’s hair in my fingers, we’re smiling at the men who sit up high and fall asleep watching over us.
Catchmaster
CARLY SCHAELLING
“Catches mice, snakes, crickets, bats, fleas, ticks, mites, lice, roaches brown recluse spiders, other potentially disease transmitting insects. Pre-baited, non poisonous.” Covering these words is a layer of industrial strength goo. Covering this goo is a smattering of creatures. On the window sill in my English building sit these little murder mats. Box Elder bugs crouch frozen on the sticky plains, quietly gasping their last breaths. Sometimes the mats are so full, the bugs could surf across their fellow bugs’ backs to safety. Sometimes they are empty, waiting, the text a warning for only those who can read. I see one little bug, stuck forever, with his tiny little left leg suspended in the air. It is as if he realized before his last step that he might as well have one limb free before he wasted away. I can’t tell if his little eyes are alive eyes or dead eyes. I can’t tell if his little heart is pounding or still, If he is resigned or panicked, if he saw the other bugs stuck before he braved the journey. I have smushed my fair share of tiny creatures. But I have yet to trap them on a window sill and let them die in time, with a view of where they came from, or where they were trying to go.
About Carly Schaelling
Carly Schaelling is an English graduate student at Utah State University, w creative writing class she can. She teaches first and second year writing at moving around the country and the world, in a military family. She enjoys
where she studies indigenous activism and social media, while taking every Utah State, and has been writing poems since she was a child. She grew up s daydreaming, cooking, and rain.
CINTHIA
RITCHIE
To the Girl Who Dared Cry Rape
CINTHIA RITCHIE
They say you lied tied a rope and tried to hang yourself, that’s why the marks, angry red and bleeding your neck, or maybe (and this is what the women said, eyes too bright, faces flushed) you were “into auto eroticism” how else to explain, in this small town, in the middle of summer, when the clouds lie low and the light lasts too long and even last night’s supper dishes, washed and put away in the cupboard, protest the hours until darkness. Sometimes the light can stay too long, sometimes the mountains can press in from too many sides, the bay unfolding until you taste every dulled word that falls from every tongue before it lifts to speak. The light can be a sin, the spruce trees can be a mistake, the shadows can reek of undergrowth and damp. Is that what you were thinking when you heard them at the door, sneaking in and wiping their feet on the mat, good boys with good manners, careful of your mother’s floor? Sometimes the light can be a curse, sometimes it’s the only thing to remember, not the hands pressing your neck
or the ugly stench of pain, threatening yet strangely familiar. Afterward, legs shaking, hands dead, no one believed you, how could they, with the evening light falling across the carpet, the comforting smell of spruce, the silver air muting your bruised mouth, and silence.
Sundays After the Cat Dies
CINTHIA RITCHIE
Egg-smelling laziness / cat vomit dried over the carpet / you keep it there vestige of stink / growing up, you sat in church, the misery of cotton dres confession once a month / standing in line and making up sins / the pries bad breath and nose hairs/ Bless me Father for I have sinned / what sins committed / your tedious confession, followed by penance / Our Fathers a said them fast, words failing your tongue / you wanted the hell out of the holy water damning your forehead and then / the blessing of sunshine ag dandelions and red clover / bare feet and miles of pastures / the comfortin horse flies large as your thumb / you’ve always hated Sundays /
e, like a relic, a holy sses and white gloves / st slump-shouldered with could you have possibly and Hail Marys / you ere / that glorious escape, gainst your eyes / ng reek of cow shit /
About Cinthia Ritchie
Cinthia Ritchie is an Alaska writer, ultra-runner and three-time Pushcart P Review, Sport Literate, Rattle, Best American Sports Writing, Mary, Into the Void Women anthology, Gyroscope Review, Bosque Literary Journal, The Hunger Jou novel Dolls Behaving Badly was published by Hachette Book Group and her m
Prize nominee. Find her work at New York Times Magazine, Evening Street d, Clementine Unbound, Deaf Poets Society, Forgotten Women anthology, Nasty urnal and others. She’s a 2013 Best American Essay notable mention, her first memoir Hunger, and Lies releases in November through Raised Voice Press.
KATHERINE
E CHAMBERS
She Makes Cages /or/ The Widow’s Mite KATHERINE CHAMBERS
If one were to take the conglomeration of the men I love and the men wh that data into a Venn diagram, You would be left with is two distinct circles, No overlap That is until I met you. You with good intentions. Before you, my body was a conduit for male masturbation. A montage of fumblings. No eye contact.
I was their figment to be routinely remounted atop a pedestal only to be u down. Cycle. Rinse. Repeat.
By the time you found me, I was an armless Venus de Milo crumbling in a I’m glad I didn’t listen to my Mother about you. Or anything. When my Mother told me I was a gutter slut that deserved to be raped, They said, “She only says that because she loves you,” They said, “It’s because you deserve it,” They said, “That didn’t even happen,” You said... Well, you said nothing. You just hugged me. Me the statue with no arms to hug back.
ho loved me and converted
f fragmented
unsurrepticiously knocked
an abandoned Parthenon.
And for what it’s worth, and it’s worth nothing, I loved you You. A man with the words “I’m sorry” in his lexicon. You. With a Mom who loved you You. With a Dad who taught you how to drive You. With a Mom who loved you You. With a Dad who loved your Mom You. Who can never relate to me. Me. I don’t know who that person is anymore. See, the thing is, when your own mother doesn’t love you, you don’t know h Because now when the pregnancy test results say positive, my life prospects Destined to wear the label of “Single Mother” across my breast in scarlet let Indefinitely When I don’t even know what “mother” means When the only mother I’ve known was eclipsed by her role A phoenix who did not emerge from the ash Forgot her identity before she claimed it Transferred herself from one cage to another She made this cage herself I look forward to the day My daughter Your daughter Gesticulating in my womb Will grow up Not in a cage Not on a pedestal But on a road, A road she paves with every smile she chances With every broken stranger she befriends With every toxic relationship she discards Our daughter spoke to me And she told me not to worry It wasn’t my voice God knows nobody put it there
how to be loved. s say negative ttering
Our daughter is an angel That you have cast out of heaven I will raise her in purgatory I will raise her with the scraps I have And she, too, will know a man with good intentions Or a woman. I’m cool like that. So for now I cook dinner for two For one And her For me Not you But some days I can’t eat any of it I banish it to tupperware stacks for my roommate to eat
My roommate who insists on putting baking soda in the fridge and the freez What kind of monster does that? It makes the ice taste like garlic It makes the ice smell like garlic And you’re the only one who knows that bothers me You who knew that when I said “They’re quite the character,” I really meant, “They’re evil,” When I said “Maybe,” I really meant, “No, and please stop asking,”
zer
You knew that my “Not today,” was your “Never,” That when I said ,”Yes,” I meant, “Yes. But slowly,” But when I told you, “Go away,” You didn’t know I meant, “Come back.”
About Katherine Chambers
Katherine Chambers has been awarded first prize at the Stand and Deliver Spoken Word Poetry Competition of 2018. She was also accoladed for her dramaturgical work for the apartheid opus Master Harold and the Boys at the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. She currently balances her careers in applied behavioral analysis and professional acting with her studies at the Honor’s College at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
KATE L
LADEW
once you wrote a native american proverb on a post-it note KATE LADEW
affixed it to the top of the check for my, what you called, exorbitant water bill, clearly the city’s fault and none of my doing I put the check in the bank, the post-it on the fridge next to the magnet from our myrtle beach trip, every day I read the words after closing the door, quick, to save energy, the way you taught me tape holds all four sides of the yellow square fast to the metal, and sometimes I rub my fingers over it, testing, dreading the day when inevitably I will look down and see an empty white square where it used to be, reminding me of what I had and have no longer, a woman with a heart and a hand who stopped everything to write down letters that formed words that reminded her of me lost in the everyday of opening and closing
you only eat the whites of the egg
KATE LADEW
I only eat the yolks, both of us cutting irregular squares, passing plates and smiling and it’s not how I knew but almost
once i was so young
KATE LADEW
I thought people were good it didn’t last and I can’t remember when it stopped was it a moment all of a sudden or a gradual dawning like turning on a faucet water so hot you don’t feel it then you do snapping your hands back too late fingers red like fire
About Kate LaDew
Kate LaDew is a graduate from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a BA in Studio Art. She resides in Graham, NC with her cats, Charlie Chaplin and Janis Joplin.
KATHERIN
NE PICKETT
Like Visitors Come Down
KATHERINE PICKETT
Like visitors Come down from another world like druids and nymphs, bursting with light, bursting with life to dance on the sand. Innovation, manipulation, texture overlaid with the gray haze of night— and silence. In this place a crumpled sand castle like a constant woman waits to be washed away. Sharp angles against the firm sand— Romance on the beach isn’t as romantic as it sounds. Your footprints end before water’s edge when the night’s play brings danger and unknowing, fun and fear. Gleaming light with no moon, Crashing waves with no water, The dancing lights continue while you disappear.
About Katherine Pickett
Katherine Pickett is the owner of POP Editorial Services, LLC, and the author of the award-winning book Perfect Bound: How to Navigate the Book Publishing Process Like a Pro. Her humorous essay “Dented” was published by Lowestoft Chronicle and selected for the 2011 Lowestoft Chronicle anthology. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her handsome and strong husband and their two awe-inspiring daughters.
K CARLTON
N JOHNSON
Mistress of Information
K CARLTON JOHNSON
My education aboriginal green awash in competition all roads leading to the library, where Miss T resided with her books, shelved according to category Rotating magazines to newer versions Processing lists of timely loans. Her penny loafer/cardigan style mistaken by other students as plainness and repetition in manner Was calculated management teetering between exquisite balance of citizenship, deportment, and lady like behavior. A Caribbean spirit, had defused its natural self years before in exotic Bermuda holidays of skilled entertainment. Long narratives that always contained lost luggage, slender waists and demure poses from a bar stool. Ages had passed since mother had seen to it that lively memories of island affection were exchanged for virginal books all In correct Dewey order. She was pressed into a private school teaching Grammar, the sticky stuff of sentences. It was my first sway into her realm, dressed in a blue blazer, with the imprint of the school’s crest
in the same spot where my heart beat close to my chest. Education, I was learning, was perfect attendance and achievement inscribed on a bronze auditorium plaque.
What else was learned that year The quizzical, normative case of gender? some power went out screaming, Demanding appreciation. Miss T asked me to carry a note to another classroom, And on returning, a friendship, that has never turned back.
About K Carlton Johnson
K Carlton Johnson has had work in several small magazines: Rattle, Diner,
GreatLake Journal, etc. She lives in Northern Michigan.
KRISTEN BAU
UM DEBEASI
And No One Hears It
KRISTEN BAUM DEBEASI
Nobody sings anymore. Even the opera is empty. Songbirds have petitioned for a name change. Henceforth they wish to be called simply… birds. Nobody sings anymore, which is why I have sought the tree—fallen in the forest— that nobody heard to perch upon and warble for myself… alone.
Again
KRISTEN BAUM DEBEASI
Go to a place where your teeth dissolve and aren’t teeth anymore; where the fabric of night is so close you can see the poke holes where the stars shine through; where auroras explode—purple, blue and white behind your closed eyelids; where weeping plants grow like hair, cascading teardrops down your back; where your jaw grows, pulses, your teeth pop like never-ending popcorn; where your flesh liquifies, holding all-night parties for ants and their friends. Tell me even in this mess you wouldn’t come and do it all over…
About Kristen Baum DeBeasi
Kristen Baum DeBeasi is a poet, writer and composer. She holds a Master o currently works as a film composer while also writing poetry and children’ isn’t writing poetry or music, she can frequently be found cooking or dream
of Music in Theory and Composition from Youngstown State University. She ’s literature. Her poetry has been published in Blue Heron Review. When she ming of fairies.
M. M. AD
DJARIAN
24 mai 1968
M. M. ADJARIAN
Not quite a coat hanger, the boy stands skinny tall in Boy Scout khakis and Converse tennis shoes, hands behind his back, knee bones grinning above his socks. He leads a band of yucca plants, suburban soldiers, spears spine-straight and sharp as quills. My brother is posing, legs apart, halting his front lawn march only for the uncle visiting from France who captured him on film, then wrote the date and my brother’s age in blue curves like tattoos on the shoulder back of the photo: 24 mai 1968, 14 ans. Too young for Vietnam, the war our uncle’s country left undone, my brother looks more warrior than boy, unaware that the forearms linked by hands clasped at the small of his back opens his chest as much to attack as to love. Just out of diapers and bunkered down with my mother perhaps, I do not remember this day. Looking now at this sharp-edged boy, I could almost take a ruler, align it to the lengths his body traces and calculate the area of the isosceles triangle he makes in space; but the reality of this boy, subtler than geometry, has roots deeper than the grass where he stands. The arms he hides are new-sprouted with feathers; in a year, he will swear an oath and Eagle then take running steps like Wilbur and Orville Wright into a waiting sky. In four years and a scout no longer, he will use his wings to bear him away from the shadows at his feet trailing east toward our house, the house divided into angry factions, unseen but for half of one eave above and beside him. Loyal only to the wind, he will fly from the war inside that house, a war no more of his making than Vietnam.
Odar
M. M. ADJARIAN
The name waited for you on this side of the birth canal but you never grew into it or found a place among the people to whom it belonged so like the Jews but with a holocaust few rememb they only saw odar the foreigner the stranger with their name born of an odar father who grew up French as Aznavourian and singular as the Eiffel Tower it didn’t matter that his name was theirs or that he was a survivor like they were in the sadness he swallowed like bile he called himsel never good enough for them or their daughters never sure what fraction of their blood was his certain only that he had no strong shouldered hayr to call him degha to bind him to his patrimony the blood apocalypse no almond-eyed to rock his cradle sing him songs and bind his blood through story to the blood of Hayk the king who traced his line to Noah
the name became his burden that he passed on to you but that he eased by teaching you to spell it for the American strangers he did not know to call odar A is for apple D is for dog J is for James a simple song of ABC to make intelligible a name their name in the land of Adams Smith Brown and Jones
you never learned their language your mamma from the boot of the wo filled your mouth with Dante’s tongue before you ever tasted Shakesp or your father’s Balzac you never learned to pray like them and say ez-hats mer hanabazort dour mez aysor forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us or that history is not dust and death and ruins but living and alive and a way of loving of hating that burrows like a worm in memory eating its tail to become heredity being odar kept you from all that
bered
lf half-breed
bent-backed nene
t slowly
orld peare
just as it kept you from learning how to dream of ancient Ararat witness to a diminished world from a border like a gash across the heart or of that saving grace an ark chilled by the wind rain and snow of ages
About M. M. Adjarian
M. M. Adjarian has published her work in journals such as the Baltimore Re Grub Street, Crack the Spine, and Poetry Quarterly. She lives in Austin.
eview, Verdad, South 85, The Missing Slate, Serving House Journal, Pif Magazine,
MARY GA
ATHERU
Response To: How Are You Really Feeling?
MARY GATHERU
Everything became questionable My feelings, my goals, my attitude on life Everyday became a battle against myself one without end I inhale mouthfuls of pain Sleep and drugs my only escape I exhaled bullets contracting my lungs just to disintegrate my only beating organ The one that truly fell for you
About Mary Gatheru
Mary Gatheru is currently a junior at Salem State University in Massachusetts where she minors in English. Her work tends to be about topics such as love and emotions experienced.
RACHEL MA
ARIE DINDY
Ask and You Shall Be Answered
RACHEL MARIE DINDY
You come to me when the hour is late to ask questions, And to feel the carvings on my back, searching for the secrets to my wisd
You took me to the garden when you were suffering and taught me how t And when I am suffering, I remember what we gathered there.
I yield to myself as if yielding in love, as if softening beneath a lover’s tou And reason with my own inexplicable happiness. I feel the potential of my empty womb, And my gluttonous mind crying out to be unburdened. You claim I am wise and anoint me your healer, But it is only because you ask questions that I must find answers. I am building a mountain for you– not because I am great, But because you asked to receive and my hands were meant to give.
dom.
to harvest,
uch,
Lullaby
RACHEL MARIE DINDY
You, a half-formed light, an unspoken idea, A prophecy repeated endlessly As waves smoothing over spiraled sea-shells: We shall ready the Earth for your coming With perpetual harvest of ourselves. You shall feast upon our open bodies, And so ravage the chapels of our wombs, And eat away the space above our ribs. We shall be your life-blood, your sustenance, As those that came before us furnished nests In the crooks at the meeting of their arms. You shall be what the wise call ‘Beautiful.’ Your sun shall burn fearless and You-colored. You shall be loved, and be loved, and be loved.
The Nearest Place I Have Never Been
RACHEL MARIE DINDY
To be quite honest, I have been Happy. I have known Joy and lain in the sunlight, Of Satisfaction, been Reasonable, As if it were my own natural state. Contentment was floating in the spaces, Between all absolutes, and so Delight Was the righteous Uncertainty living In the reflection between two windows, And the sleepiness of light between shades. They were as weightless and immaterial, As the Nearest Place I Have Never Been, But in the same way were ever-present – The way breath and music fill empty rooms, In spaces is unclaimed, silent, and waiting.
About Rache Marie Dindy
Rachel Marie Dindy is soon to receive a BA in Creative Writing and a BS in pursue an MA in poetry in the near future. She has been an editor on The R Why We Deserve to Get out of Hell was performed at a one-act festival. An avi Isles, which furnishes much of the inspiration for her writing.
English from her beloved Green Mountain College in Vermont. She intends to Reverie Literary and Arts Magazine for three years. Last spring, her short play id musician, she has a keen interest in the traditional folk music of the British
SARENA
A MASON
Me and Black-Eyed Sue
SARENA MASON
Sometimes when I have too much to do, I like to hold Black-Eyed Sue. We sit in the closet in the dark, we two, me and Black-Eyed Sue. Our friendship is a short sweet escape from all-encompassing rape: joy being Supermom-give until you scrape, earn neo-femme cape. Buried alive in the nursery, walls putrid piles of laundry, I’m washing sins with darks in purgatory, atoning glory. Prison doors open to go grocery shop. I’m fat, stuffed, yet hungry; sweets can’t quell craving lic-orice sugary small artillery. Shackled at the sink, scrubbing dishes’ scum with tears from black lashes, dreams drain down in whirlpool.
Birthday flame matches burn years to ashes. I fail my family, succumb to strife. I can’t be a model wife. I let down my children. I’ll pick up my knife. Can’t fail after life. Black-Eyed Sue doesn’t judge my wreckage, or urge I salvage courage. Devoid of consciousness, she doesn’t begrudge kids the orphanage. Her muzzle cold, she whispers at ear, she echoes, finding my fears, sweetly promises they’ll disappear, no tears. Eye to eye, we leer. We sit in the dark, hold hands, we two, kiss goodbye and bid adieu-but, before I can go, I’ve got things to do. Hang on Black-Eyed Sue.
About Sarena Mason
Sarena Mason is a student at Middle Tennessee State University. She was Her first published poem, “Tennessee Easter,” appeared in The Tennessee M Tennessee Magazine, July 2018, and “Ill at Ease” was published by The Voice
awarded the 2015-2016 Homer J. Pittard Creative Writing Award scholarship. Magazine, April 2016 issue. “The Sharecropper’s Cabin” was published in The es Project in September of 2018.
SOP
PHIA CHIU
Live Long the Morning Sun
SOPHIA CHIU
i am a collector of moments i seek the dazzling encapsulation of what it means to be young this idea of youth, a siren song that lures the old to crash upon its rocky shores who let their bones turn to ash and their hair into cobwebs in search of this perfect truth and artists who whittle their lives away to carve their nostalgia in the archways of time they let their nows go to waste in search of the purity of their has-beens grandmothers fondly remember a time of vanity and pleasure when they tried to cram adventures every which way into the treehouses when anything was possible everything was painted in brighter hues, it seems lush summer memories spent sprawled across white porches sprinkled with sunflowers and freckled with joy but now it seems they are painted in blue for the time they could have done anything worthwhile seems to have slipped right through their gnarled hands it’s too late now, they say softly, don’t make my mistakes live long the morning sun for it fades quickly from the sky and you nod in agreement, because what can you do? and you launch yourself into grand escapades, scraping knees and runnin from the inevitability of time as you try to forget hollywood for the day but don’t forget what grandmother said, and what the whirlwind of an age-obsessed culture cries out for so you run from it all, wrinkles and liver spots, the tears of adulthood you give all you can, every last beautiful blessing birthed from this life rollicking in the evergreen meadows of meaninglessness and mundanity cutting open heartstrings and throwing time away faster than you can br catapulting yourself into the arms of falsified love
of their childhood
ng running running
reathe
and sucking all the technicolour beauty and charm and illuminated lovelines of you you you down the drain people don’t want that you think casting all the little pieces of soulstuff into lukewarm memory this will help you find those perfect moments your grandmother promised y after all, it’s spelled out in the cliches cascading from snub-nosed media this is where you belong, ironed-out skin and puckered ruby red lips an aging spectacle fighting man’s omniscient enemy the clock, the crow’s feet, the numbered days you grow so tired, your lungs embedded with the bitterness of wasted time and the dull dissatisfaction of a life unlived until the sun beams upon you once more, life creeps through your door and you cry euphoric tears of moments unspent champagne-drenched nights, swaddled by the laughter of loved ones breathless kisses and art showcases glowing pride, flickering birthday candles, lazy sunday duvet covers you were a fool, a captive of sisyphillic irrationality how could you turn your back on hope of a better future, grandchildren of yo the future is unowned by anyone, but the present is yours so you stand, you shake your head free of the falsities that turned your hair your bones into ash, as you rise up up above and you’re soaring above these teetering patchworks land until they’re nothing but ants living their days out under the livelong morni until you’re nothing more than another creature waiting for dusk to come and somehow that’s okay because those wrinkles your grandmother hid from came from times of laughter that so lovingly carved their way into her skin spots where the sun caressed her with its scathing yet beautiful hope and how you could cower in fear of times that we must forge our paths dow we must keep on marching towards the sun in fact, we should count ourselves fortunate to have been bestowed upon the to not be frozen in youth, an ice age of murky times and this toxic siren song, we shan’t hear no more.
ss
you
our own? into cobwebs,
ing sun
wn
e opportunity
About Sophia Chiu
Sophia Chiu is the vice president of Wallflower Poetry and the art advisor o writing-related.
To find more of her writing, follow her on instagram @lemony_snickerdoo
of the Inklings Magazine. She is passionate about all things film and
odles or go to her blog at https://lemony-snickerdoodles.blogspot.com/
STELLA VINITC
CHI RADULESCU
Fragmentarium
STELLA VINITCHI RADULESCU
the bloody boots are boots for human feet to go ahead & to inspire peace up in the sky and down under the tree stop stop saying this your inspiration stinks your mind is caught in heavy sounds bullets for the living there is an army in your room inhaling you from top to top o, and this sentence. it’s snowing hard in town nobody sleeps with snowy. eyes let me tell you a story with a cat going crazy for the rat cric cric the heart— something stops & something goes on o god is it you who didn’t come to heal the wound or else…
Erotica
STELLA VINITCHI RADULESCU
what took so long to be here nine months nine ceturies of sweat & sweet flowering
ghostly
stamens carried away by the wind
leaf
to leaf & mouth to mouth.
a hungry
moon steps in— stop the flow we are as happy as our words I’ll be you stigma
remembrance & you from
far away sowing
hours
scattering
loose whatever remains
Leaves Birds Grass
STELLA VINITCHI RADULESCU
I, the one you love the only one left aside from the storm the big waves of light how I fit in your eyes & you wanted me to open my arms as dead as I was there is no end I conspired with the stars
touch me touch
you said with all the words growing around leaves birds grass — grass & grass
About Stella Vinitchi Radulescu
Stella Vinitchi Radulescu was born in Romania and left the country perman French Language & Literature and has taught French at Loyola University a published numerous books in the United States, France, Belgium, and Rom Grand Prix de Poésie Henri-Noël Villard, the Prix Amélie Murat, and the Gr
nently in 1983, at the height of the communist regime. She holds a Ph.D. in and Northwestern University. Writing poetry in three languages, she has mania. Radulescu’s French books have received several awards, including the rand Prix de la Francophonie.
STEPHANIE
E FIELDING
Tribute to Her Darkness
STEPHANIE FIELDING
At midnight on a camping trip, her outline perches on discarded wood among clumps of sagebrush. With her arms locked around her knees, she considers the empty spaces between stars. Her eyes don’t stroke the faded silhouette of the mountains until calm returns. Rather, those peaks crowd around, tower in unattainable beauty, grace, and strength. It’s at night that she sees herself reflected around her; anywhere light isn’t, dark is. Flat dark in the hollow of her mouth, lining the lids of her eyes, stuffing the caverns of her ears. Even fetal, squeezing to push all but her body out, she creates pockets for black space. Her darkness, like a hidden layer of skin, shudders just out of reach of the rising sun and settles into the grooves of her brain but never fades the shape of her smile.
An Empath’s Heart
STEPHANIE FIELDING
When you break an empath’s heart, she’ll hand you a shard or two as a reminder that for you, someone was willing to shatter. She retains enough to keep some pressure in her arteries— she can’t still love if her body has shut down. Those remaining fragments squeeze each other like a Heimlich and send her loveblood straight to her brain. Don’t worry; her heart is like a starfish. When something’s missing, she regenerates what’s left. But should you poke the tender swelling of her ventricle, don’t be surprised that she stops letting you so close. When you break an empath’s heart…you’ll know. Because she’s about as good at hiding her feelings as she is at feeling yours.
About Stephanie Fielding
Stephanie Fielding is a creative writing student at Utah State University wh human experience, particularly her own, and that of the people around her
here she is cultivating her lifelong love of writing. Her poetry focuses on the r. Stephanie currently lives in Logan, Utah.
Thank You
Thank you for reading. We hope you enjoyed this collection of poetry from these talented poets. You can find more issues of Voice of Eve on our website www.voiceofeve.net or on Issuu. We would also love to hear from you, the reader, at our email address contact@voiceofeve.net. Thank you again, and blessings to you from our staff. Richard Holleman Editor, Voice of Eve Staff Sarah Rodriguez, Editor