Voice of Eve
ISSUE 16 - JULY 15, 2019 COVER ART - MILA SUPINSKAYA GLASHCHENKO
Contents Allison Janicki 4 Ann van Wijgerden 12 Brooklyn Raines 20 Carmen L. Brown 34 Caroline Fearns 40 Colleen Geraghty 50 Courtney Hilden 56 Da’Niecia Washington 62 Darianne Maclin 68 Kay Vandette 72 Lorraine Caputo 80
Nicole Carey 88 Robin Throne 96 Sarah Ellis 100 Sylvia Sarae Ticeakhie 106
ALLISON
N JANICKI
Alphabet Soup
ALLISON JANICKI
My brain travels faster than my hands do Words pouring from my ears and my nose And out of my mouth Falling like they think they’re good enough To be caught But my hands are afraid to catch them Afraid that if I cup my palms together And catch my falling alphabet That the words will burn my skin Searing off my fingertips until I no longer have a fingerprint Until I no longer have An identity
Pavlov’s Dog
ALLISON JANICKI
You’ve made me conditioned to think about you this time of year. The way I met you with woolcovered legs that shook from the frozen air. The way I would pull up to your house in my toosmall car and wince as I tried to climb up your steep ice-covered driveway. The way we turned the heat and the music all the way up as I drove us to Sunday night rollerblading. How I watched you spin and twirl and fall down to pretend like it was nothing and I would laugh at you in my too-big rollerblades that I found at Goodwill for $7 and the lights would be too dark but you would hold my hand anyways (but only that one time). And it felt like in that rink time ceased to exist and it wouldn’t exist for a little while longer once I drove us to the nearest late-nite diner and you would order a pita
and I would get a grilled cheese and I would pretend that it didn’t bother me that I hadn’t washed my hands. But you and me and sometimes someone else would sit in those plastic booths with our long sleeves damp from our own bodies mixed in with the sloppy snow and we would talk about love and drugs and movies we hated and you smelled like sweat and weed and it’s a fragrance that only you had. And sometimes when I close my eyes and breathe deeply enough through my nose it’s like I can take myself back to that diner at 11:30 at night with you on my left and the frosted windows on my right and I can hate how you’ve done this to me, how you’ve made the whiteness and the quiet and the diamondstudded eyelashes and the hazelnut coffee on fogged mornings and my fucking rollerblades still tossed in the back of my car— how you’ve made everything that should be good for me, about you.
ALLISON JANICKI
About Allison Janicki
Allison Janicki is an artist and writer from West Bloomfield, Michigan. Her Volney Road Review, and Storm Cellar. When she isn’t writing poetry or dood local library. Her favorite food is cheesecake.
r previous publications include The Sonder Review, Goat’s Milk Magazine, dling in her sketchbook, Allison can be found wandering the shelves of her
ANN VAN W
WIJGERDEN
Fatherless In memory of all those being killed in the Philippines’ on ANN VAN WIJGERDEN
I died last night though death and sickness were connected (those all too familiar signs) it was not my sickness killing me not my madness sending five masked men Audience cruelest of masters you find entertainment elsewhere your backs the accuser: I am to blame Eyes on my body no politicking here kumpadre dampening hope’s dreams with tears unfulfillment laced with life not for you perhaps my children’s children Remember my new friend earthbound judge her name is History
ngoing ‘War on Drugs’
Re-Entry Commute
ANN VAN WIJGERDEN
circle of friends shrunk to a cavernous zero digital chatter silenced washed up on the shore of independence ejected from the sea of circumstance ripple of dark over green velvet shimmering ruffle of time caught in a vision of fields skimming the tracks between cities of purpose glorified limbo melts sweeping down stairways surfing through tunnels the magnificence of this animal humanity
Riding the Earth
ANN VAN WIJGERDEN
Riding the earth as we roll down the waves of rhythm and truth beauty and dissonance Victims of current stirrers of medium we all have our say yet we all fall silent Ancient and newborn in one fell swallow come to our senses in bitter sweet night then dawn we awake sand on our tongue
About Ann van Wijgerden
Born in London, U.K., Ann van Wijgerden has spent most of her life in the Lady, Orion (The Place Where You Live) and Lemon Theory, as well as poetry a Spadina Literary Review, Every Writer and Genre: Urban Arts. Ann works with www.youngfocus.org
Netherlands and the Philippines. She has had nonfiction published in The and fiction accepted in Slamchop Journal, Pulp Poets’ Press, Collective Unrest, an NGO providing education for children living in Manila’s slum areas.
BROOKLYN
N RAINES
My Routine
BROOKLYN RAINES
No matter how many times I practice in the mirror, my nerves force the words from my tongue, “can you please turn off the lights?” or the most fabricated lie I create, “can you light a candle? It’ll set the mood.” But, I do appreciate the shadows our bodies make in the candle’s glow on the wall, mimicking ancient cave art once we are intertwined. I pace in my room, “that stomach gave you a reason to live, it gave that precious little boy a home for nine months, be kind to yourself.” It sags like a deflated tube of biscuits and my breasts race toward my belly button.
I turn to the side: my ass is still beautifully round and my legs strong and sturdy. Maybe the next lover won’t see the stretch marks gnawing at my stomach or the scar tissue proudly positioned there. I hope that lover remembers I have a son and my body was brave and reliable when I was cut open and my soul ripped from my c-section incision. I want to take my clothes off slowly and stand there in the light naked, I want to scream until my lungs burst into forgotten fragments of pink carnations “here I amswallow me whole fuck me hard,” but I won’t dare be that alive. I’ll rip my clothes from this body that deserves so much more. I’ll engulf myself in the
other person’s warmth and allow my stomach to giggle in the dark until the pain is moaned away.
Black Man
BROOKLYN RAINES
I The first black man I fell in love with was you, dad. Before preschool every morning we watched Little House on the Prairie, you with the white comforter you used as a blanket draped from your slender body and me close by in my Barbie nightgown with two frazzled, braided, piggy tails framing a face that looked just like yours. Later you would teach me how to dribble a basketball, rap along to Cam’ron, and make s’mores. How could the brightest star in my life fall victim to mistreatment by the police?
Dad, why on that day did that officer pull you from the car and humiliate you in front of an entire subdivision? Why didn’t he listen to my cousin when she told him that was her cigarette bud flicked from the window? Didn’t he know a little girl was awaiting your arrival back home? Officer, didn’t you know my dad used to chase my sister and me around the house with our stuffed Barney? Did he not know a black man is capable of such love and affection? You returned to us that evening as a hologram of yourself. I didn’t know it then, but how blessed am I to have you back alive. You were embarrassed, the heaviness in your brown eyes gave it away, but, dad, how brave of you to walk around in your black
body knowing you are viewed as a threat every time you leave the house. Safety is a foreign concept to you. II I admire you, black men with your imperfections hanging gracefully from the cupid’s bow of your lips. There was you Ceddy: I watched you krump in my sister’s garage. Your arms robotic, your torso full of passion, your legs twitched like an insect caught in a spiderweb. You bought Taco Bell for my friends and me the same night you introduced me to Attack on Titan at that shitty house party that was too much fun. You were so sweet. How could America ever perceive you as a threat? Come confide in me, spend time with me, unwind with me.
There was you Ronnie: We caught up at Applebee’s. You talked about your sisters, how they were growing up. I’m guilty of not listening to a single word. Every time you smiled and your golds shined, I wanted your mouth in the crook of my neck. Hold me tight in your arms: I feel safest when my ear is to your chest and your heart asks if we can listen to that one Kanye song, then Bun B, and oh, can we make love to Andre 3000? III My greatest love is you, son. At only two, your height and strength confuses most people. “Oh my, I thought he was five.” I smile politely, but people already assume. I want you to enjoy your childhood. My little angel
play without fear. One day in your car seat, I put your dinosaur hood with the spikes around it over your head. I burst out in tears, we talked about Trayvon Martin in class that day. George Zimmerman, Trayvon was a child in a hood, just a child with an Arizona and Skittles in hand, but black kids are stripped from their innocence and childhoods every second of every waking minute. Landon you smiled and your dimples turned the gray sky to fireworks and butterflies. I know I couldn’t protect you from the George Zimmerman’s of the world forever: One day your physique and passion for life will intimidate someone. I pray I’m there when it happens.
They Say I Can’t Call Myself a M.I.L.F at Twenty-One BROOKLYN RAINES
Whore is the word they like to use when I spend late nights over cocktails discussing cock
“ “Wh “Should a mo Slut is the word they like to use when I wear a tight dress and dance in tight spaces.
Hoe is the word they like to use when I kiss my lover and then kiss my baby.
“Should a moth “Why are you spending your “Should a mother
“Where else h “How do “What kind of mother dates with Bitch is the word they will use when I say it’s nobody’s business.
“Where’s your son?” ho’s with your son?” other talk like that?”
her dress like that?” money in the club?” r dance proactively?”
have your lips been?” you sleep at night?” h a child so young?”
About Brooklyn Raines
Brooklyn Raines is a senior creative writing major at the University of Indi attending Ball State’s MA program to earn a degree in creative writing in t
ianapolis. She is the proud mother to her beautiful son Landon. She will be the fall.
CARMEN L
L. BROWN
Scattered Stones “At the same time, she seemed to recover her roots trembling.” Albert Camus CARMEN L. BROWN
And she remembered who she was— At her core, now naked and hungry, Star-kissed and illuminated For the first time. In the starkness of the wilderness—she knew. Stripped to her essence Like the fragrance of a crushed Rose petal, the pinkish-red Tinged between her fingers reminded Of her blood. Bought and paid for—a truth She knew but lived not In its ecstasy. Instead, she had huddled behind The wall of stacked rocks Pelting herself until she bled With the pebbles of perception and pain. Until one day she remembered— And kicked the pile of stones Until they scattered— Like the stars That fell among them. Transforming detritus into direction. And, granite into grace.
s and the sap again rose in her body, which had ceased
About Carmen L. Brown
Carmen L. Brown is a community college English professor living in East T Academic Exchange Journal, and The Penwood Review.
Tennessee. Her work has been published in the Abbey of the Arts,
CAROLINE
E FEARNS
Beauty in Polarity
CAROLINE FEARNS
Darkness and light, Drop the struggle and the fight. Surrender to the beauty of both polarity, Darkness comes with light like love comes with grief and day with night. Nature shows us gracefully, that opposites are needed to live life completely. So why do we fear what lurks in the darkness? Preferring to dwell out in the safety and brightness. Sink into the juicy darkness to see the way forward rise up and manifest. My intuition my trusted guide, Sink into the glorious wisdom my body has always held inside. Allowing myself to truly witness and feel my fear, As I do this my bodies truth sings out loud and clear. Showing me how to live from a place of love and connection. The divine feminine within me crying tears of joy at her resurrection. Alive and well inside of me. Showing me how to step into my power and be truly free. But first I have to sink down and be brave. Some deep journeying is calling me to retrieve parts of myself that I need save. Part of me wants to run and hide. But my wisdom is calling me from deep down inside. This is your time I hear her say, I’m here with you on this journey and I’m here to stay.
.
.
d to
Yoni Knows
CAROLINE FEARNS
Surrender to her wisdom and trust the flow, Follow her lead and see the opportunities manifest and grow. Get curious about how she communicates her yes, Then life becomes intentional and less of a wild guess. No need to push and muscle your way forward, Just carve out some quiet where you can sink inward. Build up your connection to the sacred temple within, And get ready for an amazing adventure to begin. Seek out teachers that help your confidence grow, As they really tune in to what you intuitively know. It won’t be plain sailing because what she tells you will be true, Living in honesty and realness may feel messy and new. But trust in the process and the flow too, Because its a journey filled with love which aligns you so authentically w
with you.
A Mother Is Born: From Maiden to Mother
CAROLINE FEARNS
A spiritual journey that transcends time and space, Two souls colliding in their other worldly meeting place. From beginning to end neither are quite of this earth, That is the magic and mystery woven by birth. Reality and time fades softly away, Tuning us in to the truths our ancestors used to pray. Mother and babe connected to all that has ever been alive, Into the depths of her strength and wisdom she must dive. Crossing the bridge from what she knows to that which she cannot yet comprehend. Journeying to the sacred space where some step into their bodies and oth transcend. Mother a warrior, open and strong, The universe works through her to deliver the one she has dreamt of for s Primal and fierce, heart beating in her chest, A mother is born as well as the babe nursing at her breast.
hers
so long.
About Caroline Fearns
Caroline is passionate about holding space for women to connect to their in women’s circle facilitator. Caroline has been on her own journey of recover different healing modalities such as counselling, yoga therapy, coaching an spirit and her voice which she didn’t know she had lost touch with. In this speaks openly and from the heart about the struggles she has had with the empowered to speak their truth in a world that often undermines and dise
nnate wisdom and does this through her work as a counsellor, doula and ry from PTSD and a chronic health condition which saw her seek out many nd sacred sexuality work. This powerful work served to reconnect to her s process she rediscovered her love of writing and performing poetry. She e intention of inspiring other women to connect in with their voice and feel empowers.
COLLEEN G
GERAGHTY
Bean Blather
COLLEEN GERAGHTY
The old woman is at it again, lumbering through the summer heat bound for our fragrant golden beans. She wants to hold our pregnant pods, waxy in her wrinkled palms. The crone covets our sunlit lovelies, yearns for more and more. Her foraging fingers rummage through our leaves, plucking our tender-fleshed babies. We surrender to wind and rain, to blistering heat, our fragrant blossoms, birthing beans, beans, more beans. Into her dry mouth, she pops one yellow bean, and then another. Her weathered teeth grinding our bean flesh, filling her belly, her basket overflowing with our bounty. Old crone, bean thief, ravenous woman stalks us, pinches our babies, devours our kin. She thinks she owns our fertility, but the fickle sun understands— how the earth splits, steals every tender maiden, leaving paper-thin ghosts to haunt the frosted wind. The crone will mourn and rage, her bony fingers wrenching our withered stalk, tossing our birthing legacies into the Mother-mouth where like stars we will plummet too through time’s eternal churn, winter over, and bean-dream something new.
Blood Memories
COLLEEN GERAGHTY
My mother never apologized for my childhood, never said she was sorry for the hot September day she died. She never apologized for her half-dead eyes her pleading near-comatose requests, her mouth wide as the moon, her eviscerated belly slopping wet loops of bowel, into my small hands. She never apologized for spilling her blood into the Philadelphia heat into my daydreams, into my night dreams, into my wanting, wanting anything but blood memories and the questions about what to do what to do with the rest of my shattered life.
About Colleen Geraghty
Colleen Geraghty is a professional social worker, activist, writer, and music The Story Cottage, a creative space for women writers and artists. Her stori of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley as well as in An Ap Valley Writers Guild 2012 Short Story Contest. Colleen is a member of Wallkill V
cian. She is a certified Amherst Writer and Artists’ facilitator and founder of ies have appeared in Wallkill Valley Writers Anthology 2012 and 2013 and in Slant pple In Her Hand. Her story, “The Beer House,” received first prize in the Hudson Valley Writers and a writing facilitator at Women of Woodstock Writing Retreat.
COURTNEY
Y HILDEN
A Letter to my Immigrant Support Group
COURTNEY HILDEN
Thank you for offering me an entire worry of mothers because my own is both a boon boom and a boomerang that hasn’t come back around yet.
You Can’t Take It with You
COURTNEY HILDEN
I often think about returning to my first country because I want to know home again as well as I do the everyday tablecloth, but it is not as easy as following a bread crumb path. And where, exactly, to go? Cities, for all their purr, are too expensive. And I would need familial bonds succulent -thick for anyone to lend me their couch. Furthermore: It would also mean annihilating everything I have here.
Perfidy
COURTNEY HILDEN
They have the best tools: their whirligig mouths, their personalities like a sweep of ocean, the winking they must do in the mirror, to egg themselves on. They make friends like most make dinner, but consume more voraciously. And I, left like a church bell who cried death too often, now alone, now turned cold.
About Courtney Hilden
Courtney Hilden’s work has recently been published in Bustle, More of Us, Dodging the Rain, Panning for Poems, among others.
DA’NIECIA WASHINGTON
A Place Called Home
DA’NIECIA WASHINGTON
Bible scriptures, premeditated gossip, and infidelity Church hugs, casket sharp suits, and a book of secrets. A place where looking the best is better than living the best A place where finding true love fades because of momentary infatuation Marriage is a business contract that can only be broken by death A husband who works to satisfy the needs of his family, and another A husband who doesn’t know how to show emotions Unless he is clogging the holes of a woman with his insecurities, self-hat A wife who is oblivious or knowingly settling for sharing a man who is a Craving to be caressed, acknowledged and cherished A child growing up in a broken home having to figure out what family lov Ultimately having to figure out what love is A city of people knowing the private lives of everyone Creating generations of confusion, detachment and enmity Creating their own families filled with anguish and questions that will ne Tenderness embroidered with onerous love and hopelessness. The time seems to move so fast, even though the living is so slow. A city of spiritual demons.
te and lack of masculinity provider
ve is
ever be answered
About Da’Niecia Washington
Da’Niecia Washington, a high school English teacher, received her Bachelo her Master’s degree in English soon. Writing has become a passion of hers stories.
or’s degree in English from Jackson State University and is close to finishing s and she expects to continue writing and publish a book of poems and short
DARIANNE
E MACLIN
“Black Girls Can’t Swim“
DARIANNE MACLIN
Warm sunlight brightens my closed eyelids. I close them again and again, and yet again just so I can re-experience the beauty of seeing nature from freshly closed eyes. The beauty makes me hold my breath. My peaceful serenity is starkly interrupted. “Can you even swim?” “For my life”, I respond. For my life. Not just for my life. But for all my life, Nature has been my caretaker, my sister, my friend. Its branches cradled me as an infant, Its wind taught me to walk. Its sun bronzed my caramel skin, Summer after summer. Yet, here we stand, interrupted. Nature and I’s Intimate relationship put on trial, As if the sage, running waters were waiting to attack. Betrayed. By the same skin that sensed the warmth of its waters, And the breath of its breeze. We’re painted as natural enemies By those who believe. “Black girls can’t swim.”
About Darianne Maclin
Darianne has a background in Social Work, creative pursuits, and petting all of the cats. She currently serves as the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at a University located in Mid-Missouri where she lives with her husband and three kids. She is dedicating this year to personal growth, and creating lasting change in the lives of others.
KAY VAN
NDETTE
6/31
KAY VANDETTE
I imagine you here Just sitting across from me Drinking macchiatos Which you happily explain are not dripping with caramel To anyone who would happen to inquire And I dazzle at your ability to make a soapbox out of anything
Self-Love
KAY VANDETTE
I have carried myself for as long as I can remember Big, bold beautiful strong confident I have been there through thick and thin The good times and bad But I am tired Every time I pull myself back from the edge My arms get weaker I have unconditionally loved every part of me Even when I was so full of self-loathing I thought it would ooze from my pores like a puss I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m in a toxic relationship with myself And it’s exhausting I just want someone to help take a little of this weight And give me a break from myself I have been carrying myself for so long It is really so bad to ask for someone To bear a little of the burden that is loving me
Ritual (pt 2: a quick portrait of my depression)
KAY VANDETTE
Ok So Today was a bad day You crawled out of bed with a weight attached to every limb Even talking you feel like your tongue has been injected with botox It flops like a slug on your teeth But you remind yourself that it’s fine There have been worse days Someone keeps pulling down the corners of your lips Even when you want to smile Your expressions don’t stay in place too long And as heavy as you feel There’s an inexplicable hollowness in the part of your chest Where you swear you put your self-worth You could scramble around in there Really dig in around the muscle tissue Slipping past the ventricles, valves and arteries But as you lift your arm You forget it’s been superglued to the list of every little thing you have ev You could shake it off but they don’t make solvents strong enough dissolv When did sleep become such a radical necessity? And yet so unattainable, the sweet call of REM just hangs above your bed Floating always out of reach You replay the day over and over again And Again And Again until the ritual of it becomes almost soothing
ver done ve the stick of guilt
About Kay Vandette
Kay Vandette is a writer, author, freelancer, and travel writer. Recently she lyricism to craft pieces based on personal experiences that have impacted b
e has discovered the freedom and joys of poetry and uses her love of words and both her and her writing career.
LORRAINE
E CAPUTO
I Cry for the Night
LORRAINE CAPUTO
This evening I watch the blaze climb the volcano’s slopes lava-like reaching close to those sleepless homes the smell of burnt wood burnt grass, burnt alpine brush stings the sky & on the other side of the valley … & another wildfire to the south & another & another & beyond that far side of the vale, when the clouds part billowing columns of acrid ash come from the depths of another fiery giant We wait, we await for the explosion from the earth’s heart from the indigenous anger gathering in the sierra & the jungle We wait, we await silenced by decrees
& in the ash of wildfires & volcanoes & in the ash of burnt homes I cry for the night that has befallen this earth ~
~
Why is the moon full again tonight behind those broken clouds whisping across the sky torn & frayed by a wind ripping at tin roofs nails straining to keep them from flying through this cold, silent night wind howling through cracks down chimneys Something is afoot some fate awaits us …. Why is the moon full again tonight? ~
~
~
From my terrace I used to watch the sun hitched to this hill across the valley On Inti Raymi, riding the north slope
On Kapak Raymi, touching the southern rise But now it seems to never slide southward …. I think of the Inuit elders’ warnings: The stars have shifted … & I cry for the night
Bearing the Bundles
LORRAINE CAPUTO
Climbing the stony road up Uchumachi Mountain A woman in simple black prays at each station of the cross A bundle weighs upon her thin back At the chapel overlooking the cloud darkened cordillera Her young daughter guards the rusting white-carmine door Inside her mother lays her bundle upon a pew & kneels weeping before the crucified lord
About Lorraine Caputo
Lorraine Caputo is a documentary poet, translator, and travel writer. Her w Asia, Australia and Africa; 12 chapbooks of poetry – including Caribbean Nig 2017) and the upcoming On Galápagos Shores (dancing girl press, 2019); and 2011, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada chose her verse as poem o Patagonia. She travels through Latin America, listening to the voices of the
works appear in over 150 journals in Canada, the US, Latin America, Europe, ghts (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), Notes from the Patagonia (dancing girl press, d 18 anthologies. She has also authored a dozen travel guidebooks. In March of the month. Caputo has done over 200 literary readings, from Alaska to the e pueblos and Earth.
NICOLE
E CAREY
Her Masterpiece
NICOLE CAREY
Her masterpiece No longer unscanned, Loses value With the touch of his hand. If not pure, Then where is her worth? A woman’s body, Uncovers the earth. If she a shout, A bellowing thunder, Then he is a whisper, Avoidant of blunder. She needn’t roses of red To prove her merit, But respect and equality, And someone to bear it. Compare her not To the summer air, She can be cold, A winter affair. Today, tomorrow, And all of the rest, A woman’s importance Goes unaddressed. For her beauty is not A figure or breasts, But the intricate valleys Her mind manifests.
And if this masterpiece fills beds In empty galleries of a man’s head, Her value has yet to dwindle, Art and elegance permanently rekindled.
What Motivates You to Stay Afloat?
NICOLE CAREY
Bottled temptation So you carry me, lovely To rest my worn bones. Touches shock pure skin, Balance a life we have built, Beneath the lovely. Our defined boundaries, Never mine and never yours, Make me feel lovely.
You Made Me Run
NICOLE CAREY
Racing made simple Sweat, hands, and a made up world Now I’m pulled to you. Bubbling passion You have never known the hush, Even silk skin fails. Clouds, our affliction Fearing the hands of our own Draw blood, cherry wine. Teeth hooked, slip through tongues And I’ll sit in hell with you Offer me more time.
About Nicole Carey
Nicole Carey is a freshman at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennesse in their Presidential Ambassador program. Nicole is double majoring in En digital copywriting. Nicole specializes in writing memoirs and poetry.
ee. She is a member of the college’s volleyball team, as well as a representative nglish and Creative Writing, which she plans on using to pursue a career in
ROBIN T
THRONE
Irredeemable
ROBIN THRONE
I tilted most that vernal equinox when an hour was lost or was it two or three as balanced light to dark mocked equity a weathered woman once said when I knew she meant most the predictability for light and dark to exist along parallel lines not as a race, never intersected nor converged. Do we not all drink from the goddess at some point to drown darkness amidst a bleak and weary life mucked up from our own goings-on until such thirst drove out the deepest ama hallowed and burnt in the flames so hot no amount of water could squelch what had taken a lifetime to scorch.
About Robin Throne
Robin Throne is a writer + researcher inspired by moving water, especially rivers, oceans, & tears. Her work has appeared most recently in Drabblez, The Ravens Perch, and The Mystic Blue Review among others. Visit RobinThrone.com
SARAH
H ELLIS
Rose Water
SARAH ELLIS
Golden dusk light Illuminated your peaceful face Head swaying side to side Like you were caught half in a dream Half in a conversation with an old friend You liked the flowers I gave you for your birthday Adoring the pinks and the yellows and the greens If you put them In the right window The whole world Looks like spring And it’s so wonderful They stay a long time Quite a long time I believe it was your understanding That forever was in your favor Because there was never anywhere to look Except down a straight line You convinced me just as well Oh but isn’t it terrible? Growing older Quite terrible indeed When we get home There’s much to do And so little time Now past tense will never suit you Sagging like aged skin Satisfying like the stale crackers You left out on your kitchen table
You’ve been so good to me Just the greatest And I hope you the best Be sure To tell me all about it Once we get home Your house is cold And smells of withering petals Prematurely losing their hope The achingly sweet aroma of rose water Reminds me too much of you.
About Sarah Ellis
Sarah Ellis is a high school student from Iowa. She has been writing poetry with her friends and families, going to concerts, and photography. She pla
y since elementary school. Along with writing, Sarah also enjoys spending time ans to pursue a career in psychology.
SYLVIA SARAE
E TICEAKHIE
Someone
SYLVIA SARAE TICEAKHIE
I am someone who is in love with the idea of love. I am a hopeless romantic, the thought of a real-life fairytale consumes m I am someone who believes that we all have soulmates. The one who was But also made to devour our souls. And yet, still make us hungry for love. I am someone who believes in tragedy. Knowing that the same person who makes you feel whole, can make you I am someone who is deeply in love with love.
me. s made to complete us,
feel so terribly empty.
Deceived Eyes
SYLVIA SARAE TICEAKHIE
The Gods blessed the earth with your presence Your flesh glistens in the rays of shine I gaze as you frolic through the flowers, But soon it would all become evanescence
The Girl at the Bar
SYLVIA SARAE TICEAKHIE
My love With eyes of green Below, marks of beauty Drowned by oceans of deep blue Her loss
About Sylvia Sarae Ticeakhie
Sylvia Sarae Ticeakhie is a 25-year-old woman from Lawton, Oklahoma wh Production graduate from Cameron University. She found her passion when Collegian, two years ago. She soon began writing in different style forms, a to branch out and expose herself, both emotionally and spiritually, in her w to peace with herself — what has held her back and what has pushed her f
ho speaks her peace through her writing. She is a Journalism/Media n she first began writing for the university’s college newspaper, The Cameron and had the idea that her writing could help others. She has encouraged herself writing and her life choices. While writing these poems and stories, she came forward.
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