Voice of Eve Issue Three (January 2019)
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Contents Issue Three (January 2019) ........................................................................................................................... 1 To Call Her Woman ....................................................................................................................................... 5 The Appetite Collector .................................................................................................................................. 8 Wedding Bones ........................................................................................................................................... 10 About Jacqueline Sue Farley ....................................................................................................................... 11 An Ode to the Trees .................................................................................................................................... 13 Twenty Candles ........................................................................................................................................... 15 Sticky Pink ................................................................................................................................................... 17 About Atika Dunlop ..................................................................................................................................... 18 Always in Beauty ......................................................................................................................................... 20 Collect Your Thoughts ................................................................................................................................. 22 About Liz Kelso ............................................................................................................................................ 24 Why Can’t Good Girls Say “Fuck”? .............................................................................................................. 26 The Fountain of Youth ................................................................................................................................ 28 Plum ............................................................................................................................................................ 29 About Rachel Caruso-Bryant ....................................................................................................................... 30 Calla ............................................................................................................................................................. 32 Maggie Sees ................................................................................................................................................ 33 Banshee....................................................................................................................................................... 34 About Catherine Zickgraf ............................................................................................................................ 35 Lay ............................................................................................................................................................... 37 Specifically................................................................................................................................................... 38 I had ............................................................................................................................................................ 39 About Merlin Flower ................................................................................................................................... 40 After the Rain .............................................................................................................................................. 42 Mothering My Adult Son............................................................................................................................. 44 Dreaming of Forest ..................................................................................................................................... 45 About Marya Parral ..................................................................................................................................... 47 Trying To Say ............................................................................................................................................... 49 From One Left/For One Leaving.................................................................................................................. 50 A Chance Meeting ....................................................................................................................................... 52 2
About Kelly Shaw ........................................................................................................................................ 54 Breathe Into Me .......................................................................................................................................... 56 About Jenue Brosinski ................................................................................................................................. 58 my return .................................................................................................................................................... 60 hurricane ..................................................................................................................................................... 61 the diver ...................................................................................................................................................... 62 About Anna Arnold-Wallen ......................................................................................................................... 63 always her ................................................................................................................................................... 65 Passive Relations ......................................................................................................................................... 66 you can’t fly on pity..................................................................................................................................... 67 About Amara George Parker ....................................................................................................................... 69 A Matriarca ................................................................................................................................................. 71 Self-Discovery.............................................................................................................................................. 72 Turning Point............................................................................................................................................... 73 About Aimee Nicole .................................................................................................................................... 74 A Child’s Letter ............................................................................................................................................ 76 Thank You.................................................................................................................................................... 78 About Judy Rainbow ................................................................................................................................... 79 A Heart Can Grow Old ................................................................................................................................. 81 The Jerusalem of Florence .......................................................................................................................... 83 President Thabo Mbeki’s Foundation ......................................................................................................... 85 About Abigail George .................................................................................................................................. 87
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POEMS FROM JACQUELINE SUE FARLEY
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To Call Her Woman By Jacqueline Sue Farley
She is Woman. She is female crawling down on her belly, mucked in red river gravy and scrambled over her eggs. She is Woman. The sun watches its tongue lap at her wet nose as white stones called scales dig holes in her dorsal fin. She is Woman. Man becomes another face admiring her beached back, bent and licked clean beneath the pad of his palm. She is Woman. She knows this spawning by the lure bobbing in her bed like worms in the dirt know of grosbeaks. 5
She is Woman. Man angles the hookword as a jagged curve against her cold-cut cheek. He reels because he knows Woman has never meant female. Woman is fish. Woman is baited on a translucent wire and courted with worms. She is Woman. Her earholes run deep and still so when Man says “Woman”, it falls alive, retching and screaming. She is Woman, but if she let him call her that, he’d fuck her until the water 6
begged him to stop.
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The Appetite Collector By Jacqueline Sue Farley
I know you still hunt in the shadows of my underwear drawer. You learned to forage through a buffet of bodies until you can’t remember what the word hungry means, how it tastes like a bloody filet staked beneath a stiletto heel or how it burns down your throat in pairs of hot white stripes to the boom box noise of Machete Kills. If I had been caught between the bars of your cage, locked jaw, and molded into the dinner plate you eat off of, you’d have me feed you for a thousand hot summer nights on the floor of your garage, my body halfway slid beneath your red Mercedes, my back drenched in a puddle of oil and sawdust and sweat. You’d carve your initials into my stomach with your tongue, your faithful instrument, glistening and silver. I’d be just another cadaver to you shoved under your bed as soon as your mom knocks on your door to ask if you want any tater tots with dinner. I realize now that she knocks because I’m not the only body she’s found here smothered in unwashed, matchless white socks. I see you gutting me, spilling my sour mess across the maroon throw blanket that you kissed my shoulder under 8
when you asked me if I was a virgin. I’d just exist in the dugs of your digits as leftovers, Thanksgiving giblets, frantic scraps of unagi over a molded bed of rice. You cannot keep me between your teeth to pick out when it’s convenient for you. I refuse to linger in your mouth like the rest of your curiosities. I am now taking back my taste from lips that I never belonged to.
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Wedding Bones By Jacqueline Sue Farley
This is the swan-making. It dives deep down between twenty-eight pearl knuckles, indulged in stringing sticks together with shear knots of silk tendon. The chime is hushed and rattled, breath pressed from a dead man’s stroke, and hung over the neck. Swans nest as vultures do: Words like please and hurting are not heavy enough to pin the fingers. The right to ceremony pours wax over those old bones after they are worn out, like wings in the white heat.
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About Jacqueline Sue Farley Jacqueline Farley is a senior undergraduate student of English and Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. Her work has thus far been published in Colorado Crossing and hedra Helix. She currently reads poetry and flash prose for Sonora Review.
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POEMS FROM ATIKA DUNLOP
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An Ode to the Trees By Atika Dunlop
i want to know how they do it i want to know how they have the patience to sustain hurricane and drought they wait for rain, not knowing when it will arrive but waiting anyways as if the e.t.a was irrelevant and yet they still choose to grow i want to know how they do it how they choose to adapt regardless of how harsh or unpleasant their surroundings may be cold days wrap themselves around their trunks, gray skies loom above menacingly do not phase the trees they simply shed their leaves shifting shape and forever unfazed and wait for the sun that spring promises i want to know how they do it how they are naturally creatures of selflessness how they were made to give when all we do is take no matter how many times they are cut down to size they do not refuse to grow again 13
always seeing the best in us, they are simply happy to be here, simply happy to help i want to know how they do it because i could always use a sequoia sized dose of patience grant me the ability to wait for the rain even if i am in a drought i want to be a natural creature of selflessness canopying my leaves over you so you can rest easy in the shade
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Twenty Candles By Atika Dunlop
i have no wildfire ashes no barren paddock the color of tar in which i am shackled to sow seeds. no inhospitable claustrophobic closed in quarters in which i was called to claw myself out of, no. i have no history of tragic unloving neither bitter & cruel nor ugly i have no scars the size of white blank pages to lend my blood soaked words to i have been granted the luxury of always knowing there will be another human heart for me to fall back on a best friend to nurse a bruise to suck venom out of wounds and to make me laugh a laugh so sickly saturating that the pain dissipates, never sees the light of day i look behind me and see only an idyll. grass as green as tree leaves the day after rain it is with great reluctance that i tip toe my way into the next field over grow they said 15
but never on your own here is water and sunlight and a phone to call home
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Sticky Pink By Atika Dunlop
pink frays weave themselves through the blue of an almost winter sky on an almost June night and everything is quiet except for the hum and buzz of the five o'clock traffic home / beyond my glass sliding door /the pink disappears with every / second glance up as if the gods were so hungry for something new that they swallowed it whole /now their teeth ache and their bellies are full of cotton candy sugar / only a few minutes have passed since i first noticed the pink in the sky and now it is gone and soon it will be the color of blotted fountain pen ink not a single strand leftover of pink /and i have almost forgotten what it looked like to begin with / i always wish iPhone cameras could take better pictures of skies so i could show you what my movable feast looks like / but they don't so i fumble / through a poem about deities with wicked sweet teeth instead and i know that sunsets happen everyday and this is calling what is not as though it were / there are no gods licking the sticky pink off their fingers as they turn off the lights / there are only silent sunsets that turn to darkness all on their own / and isn’t there always a little magic in that?
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About Atika Dunlop Atika Dunlop is a writer and student living in Brisbane, Australia. She self-released her debut chapbook “Fast Flying Youth� in the summer of 2016, which explores the tumult of the tail ends of teenage girlhood.
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POEMS FROM LIZ KELSO
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Always in Beauty By Liz Kelso
The poems I read are breathtaking and ethereal; like Longfellow writing about Chaucer’s song. I sit down to write, but before long, doubt meanders along the rivers in my brain. They flow along at this gentle pace until, it finds the mouth of the waterfall. My eyes, cheeks and paper damp with my efforts. I am not Emerson; his words float on an eternal transcendental plane? I fail at beauty because my eyes fall on gray and brown, concrete and asphalt. They fall on river muck and broken piers of dead commerce. I can find a piece of peace in the center of existence. Butterflies and bloom envelop me from all angles. I breathe it in and commit it to memory, but by the time I get them home, the words have traveled downstream. I want to write about soft sunlit rays poking through the dainty holes of my lace curtain, but the rattle of the garbage truck and the siren—rising and falling and rising again, make it all seem frivolous. The sunlight that falls on my hard wood floor is not as beautiful as the sunlight that falls on Hyacinth. I cannot smell its beauty. I cannot taste the pink, purple and white gift that God made for those with secret senses. Here I sit, with pen in hand and stare out at the world through a piece of Chantilly. Wading in a wordless reality. Can it be as effortless as the old masters would have us believe? Thoreau dug deep and found his God on a nib, while across the vast sky, three sisters wrote as men. But not me—not I. Here I sit, with a click-click of the push button on my forehead to the tune of 20
iambic meter. I click-click until—the song begins to peter. I am left with an inkless sheet of a failed promise. But who says poetry has to be delicate like a crystal flute? Poetry can be an empty Corona bottle with a half-squeezed lime lying at the bottom. Poetry can be about lips, hips and thighs, cheating husbands with endless lies, heartbreak in love, of children, of loss. Poetry is the lava that simmers in the invisible and then, without warning—gushes. Sometimes with a purpose, sometimes in anger, but always in beauty.
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Collect Your Thoughts By Liz Kelso
Collect your thoughts put them down on paper let the world read what you have done let the world know who you really are let your flag fly high & strong it ain’t wrong to want to be noticed by everyone big & small it ain’t wrong to be liked by black & white put them down on paper some will hate you they will wrinkle brow & frown at your efforts they ain’t living to the highest good they ain’t living as they should 22
they know it, deep within their cells, but admitting it, that’s a different animal & life continues in this vein, an incident without a fight until one person stands up, shines a light— does something unexpected & unprotected then they will scream ugly hate to the air it will reverberate in all ears it will change the molecular structure, turn love into fear for all to hear— today hate wins & smiles.
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About Liz Kelso Liz Kelso lives in New York City. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from The College of New Rochelle. Her works can be found in the Phoenix Literary & Arts Magazine, Herstory, and Breadcrumbs.
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POEMS FROM RACHEL CARUSO-BRYANT
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Why Can’t Good Girls Say “Fuck”? By Rachel Caruso-Bryant
Since when was cursing not good for the soul? A well-placed fuck has helped many a good girl stay the path, forge forward with ever greater conviction to admonish or applaud those events in life that require more than imperative punctuation – a stubbed toe, the winning goal, forgotten keys and dropped phones, getting the job, coming… all made manifest with one word, Fuck. Less confident ladies cite manners and etiquette, obsequious aspirations meant to mute, demean, and confuse – they struggle and fumble their words, sounding more like babbling babies than self-assured goddesses. If you are a good girl, an honest girl, a girl with gumption, seize your words unapologetically; concern yourself with your actions more than your mouth. Shuck a fuck into the wind and ride it 26
like a bucking bronco into the twenty-first century because what the fuck is a “good� girl anyway?
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The Fountain of Youth By Rachel Caruso-Bryant
I see her burgeoning belly. I never made it that far. You were nothing. I mean it was nothing. So I became nothing. Her shirt flows out in front of her stomach And hangs there like a portrait In which I can see dozens of smiling faces. Does she see it as a shield? Does she think she needs one? How perfect is perfect When it’s something you don’t even think about. God she’s beautiful – Her swollen feet, her grand belly. Her breasts move like water. Surely she is the Fountain of Youth.
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Plum By Rachel Caruso-Bryant
I bit into you and you gushed forth The way I imagine stars are born My chin was wet with red sugar And your skin was caught up In my teeth in jagged pieces I held my head over the sink Letting you flow wild White water over my knuckles I swallowed feverishly Suckling on you like an infant Reaching for the nipple Before knowing what it is I put all of you in my mouth Scratching life from seed Never born newborn Your mother has bloomed
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About Rachel Caruso-Bryant Rachel Caruso-Bryant is from Florida and is now an English language lecturer at a university in Saudi Arabia. She lives with her husband and cats and travels the world whenever she gets the chance. She enjoys writing about cultural identities and displacement, her experiences abroad, and what it means to be a woman of the world. She misses the smell and sound of rain storms terribly. Her poems have appeared in the Crossways Literary Magazine, The Stark Poetry Journal, Rat’s Ass Review, Gambling the Aisle, The Skinny Poetry Journal, A Lonely Riot, Gravel, The Red Eft Review, HitchLit Review, and more.
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POEMS FROM CATHERINE ZICKGRAF 31
Calla By Catherine Zickgraf
She beds him here where islands convect in open sea, breath shifts far off fault lines. Here they are, sheets surround them like mountains they twist from the ground. An afternoon erodes, time-sift dampens it. They are here, their map will sprout trees she ascends and then accepts that he may just upanchor and leave.
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Maggie Sees By Catherine Zickgraf
His voice comes rounding the corners of her eye most midnights, hissing at her to inspect the cellar oil tank from which he exhales h’s up to the baseboard radiators. Not dreaming, she hears water bugs spot her walls, their antennae undulating from bone paint, plaster sprouting its whispers. While her hall carpet lies saturated where his shadows still bleed at times, she gives up climbing curtain vines trying to escape. Thus she sweeps his silhouette into a trash bag, stomps it, stuffs it with the dust mites and pipe rust behind her washing machine.
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Banshee By Catherine Zickgraf
Her follicles have slowed releasing auburn and gold into their pale straws. Warmth dissipates from her hair. Sungrazing comets flame their brightest before death— all glow with no dying flicker. Gusts wail the valley out back. Claws rip tangles, scalp mind. In her sleep a barn owl shrieks. Wet strands circle the drain. Ashen threads drip fingers, stick to walls, wrap toes. Still she brushes her hair on the porch, sheds and renews for spring’s nesting lark who will cushion her hatch by instinct.
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About Catherine Zickgraf Catherine Zickgraf’s main jobs are to hang out with her family and write poetry. Her work has appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Pank, Victorian Violet Press and The Grief Diaries. Her recent chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published through Aldrich Press. Read and watch her at caththegreat.blogspot.com
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POEMS FROM MERLIN FLOWER
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Lay By Merlin Flower
The winding lanes creaked, pleading for abundant love. I am looking for a trace of it, I replied. Post me a mail, a small one will do, when you find it, I added to the winding lane looking for love in abundance.
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Specifically By Merlin Flower
I met a dog lover on the road. He gave me two fortune cookies. Money, wealth and love will come to you soon, said one. great days ahead with shattering wins, said the other. I waited for the flourishes that never came. After five years I met the dog lover again. I asked. He said, Those weren’t fortune cookies, They were contrary cookies. He walked away with the cat In tow.
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I had By Merlin Flower
radiant charm for breakfast shock for lunch and spiral confusion no, shy desire for supper. Now, pick out the nought.
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About Merlin Flower Merlin flower is an independent artist and writer. She lives in India.
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POEMS FROM MARYA PARRAL
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After the Rain By Marya Parral
The sky woke up clean today scrubbed fresh and polished to a soft blue shine and the sun arose renewed, its burning heat tempered into kindly warmth. The earth, responsive, reached into the reborn air as if to hug it backI saw this with my own eyes when I glanced outside and caught our cedar fence breathing the moisture from its rain-soaked boards upward into the embracing nothingness. I called to my daughter to look, oh look with me at this, and when she saw she bounded down the steps outside to cross the yard to scale the fence to cast her hands into the plumes of wetness lifting dreamily. "It's warm," she yelled to me gleeful, amazed and when she was inside again, "That was epic." The sky woke up clean today; I called to my daughter to look, and wished as I did that after every rain 42
I could be a sun renewed for her an earth responsive.
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Mothering My Adult Son By Marya Parral
My mind swims with thoughts of bathing-not mine but histhe daily ritual that contours my evening like the high-water mark left as tide recedes from beach to darkening horizon. I wade into the warm familiar waters of him, where he sits short and fat and not a bit interested in his own self-care, needing me to float slowly through my time with him because he doesn’t like to rush and besides, his sinuses are clogged of late and will need to steep in the tub’s moist heat. He’ll lift his chubby feet for me and maybe he’ll even lift his arms, and I’ll glide a bar of soap all over him, my hand arcing over the rotundity of his abdomen and zigzagging down the thick soft flesh of his back. When he’s finished he’ll step out and after drying him, I’ll kiss him hard on the flat bridge of his nose and he’ll look at me, smiling, enough joy suffusing his face to last both of us another day.
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Dreaming of Forest By Marya Parral
When I receive those fundraising appeals for the starving children in Yemen with big eyes floating above limp wasted bodies, I like to dream of that forest where we go sometimes, the one with wild blueberries lining the trails juicy and delicious. I imagine them no longer hostage eating until flecks of blueberry dot their cheeks and the color purple stains their fingertips. When I hear on the news about the homeless vets in Washington DC standing outside shelters hoping for mattresses without bed bugs, I dream again of the forest with its plush beds of pale green moss, scented with lily-of-the-valley and cedar and damp earth. I see them in my mind, lying down, their careworn bodies relaxing into the giving ground. When I read about the kids in Syria encountering bodies gunned down in the cold blood-spattered streets, I dream of the forest in noonday sun as dappled light plays over its floor and a breeze rustles its branches gently. I watch them as if in a movie running gleefully from trunk to trunk laughing and calling each other's names. 45
And even when I myself, in my insignificant world, am so used up that my thoughts spin like tops in the middle of the night when I want to sleep, I dream of the forest in the still of darkness when moonlight casts softly shifting leaves into its shadowy glow. I look on as I sink to my knees and fling my arms upon the earth, the tears of my pent-up sadness falling freely into fertile soil.
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About Marya Parral Marya Small Parral is a poet with two principal themes: the experience she has had within her family as a wife and mother, and the great beauty-though tinged with sadness-of the wider world around her. She maintains her perspective on the beauty of the world with stubbornness, for she believes firmly that perspective creates reality. Can it not be the poet’s role to create a beautiful reality? Indeed she insists that it can. She lives in Ocean City, NJ where sometimes, at night when all is quiet, she can hear the ocean’s gentle roar. She has been published in Poetry Quarterly, the Sandy River Review, and Friends Journal.
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POEMS FROM KELLY SHAW
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Trying To Say By Kelly Shaw
I have a habit of talking about how bad I am at driving when there’s someone else in the car with me. I’m sure it scares them and truth is, they’re perfectly safe; I just can’t help it. One day, I woke up and I couldn’t stop warning people about me. And that voice became my own and only. And it never went away. And it never went away.
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From One Left/For One Leaving By Kelly Shaw
There are some days when your empty is very much there. A little kid can’t stop poking their tongue in the hole where a tooth was. Things that have simply been for a long time leave a more present kind of absence. A scene: your empty knocks on my door, rapping smartly so I am reminded to hear it. I check the window to see if I know who it is. I do. I let it in. It wipes its feet and makes itself at home. It looks me in the eyes and I look away and it demands forgiveness. and I give it and it rolls its eyes and I apologize for taking so long. A familiar dance around. 50
We sit among our loud silences and notice the time pass. It taps its foot. I cough. We wait.
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A Chance Meeting By Kelly Shaw
We exist in the moment when we, wandering, stumbled upon a deer in the early morning fog of a field. Both stopped to stare at one another. Every step was matched, every shuffle or irregularity alerting the other, every noise in the dewy air noted. Each tried not to startle the other and both did not recall how to do this. Even though they were sure this has all happened before. The stillness is different every time.
That is the keystone on which nature leans: everything that is will 52
become.
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About Kelly Shaw Kelly Shaw is a 19 year old bisexual poet and writer in LA, by way of Austin, who already loves you. She has been writing poetry since she could put two words together. Hopefully you’ll agree it’s continuously improved since then. She has been published in many online publications, including being featured on Hyrudes, a blog with over 14,000 followers. Her poems have also been featured in print, including in a book of poetry by Uber and Wein Publishing. She was a semi-finalist in Poetry Nation’s National Amateur Poetry Competition.
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POEM FROM JENUE BROSINSKI
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Breathe Into Me By Jenue Brosinski
I remember you promising a night of pleasure. I’m holding you to that. One night is all it takes for you to breathe into me. For me to breathe into you. Exploring each other for the first time. Perhaps, for the last time. Forever doesn’t exist. But now is all we need To discover what lies beneath the hard edges And smooth curves. Finally fitting those pieces together. Imagine how delicious. Breathe into me. You know what I like. I know what you like. No rules. Remember? Let’s use one moment. Feel into me. Can you see me? I can see you. You’re so beautiful no poetry can describe you. You’re corn silk and baby’s breath Thrown into a storm of car engines And cigarettes. 56
I want all your parts. Give me the green of your eyes and the heart of your jewel. I’ll take the good of your humor and the harsh of your anger. Breathe into me. Feel into me. Come into me.
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About Jenue Brosinski Jenue Brosinski is a junior accountant. She writes in her spare time and has published two short stories and two poems. English is her native language. She is fluent in German and proficient in Portuguese. Her hobbies include traveling and sitting in coffee shops to watch people walk past. She, however, hates coffee.
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POEMS FROM ANNA ARNOLD-WALLEN
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my return By Anna Arnold-Wallen
A thousand whales bellowing for my return to the place from which I came. I dreamed it was my time to die.
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hurricane By Anna Arnold-Wallen
what business do I have to be here? I am a destroyer of things. I submerge, expand, and explode. wreckage ensues. mostly mine. probably yours. I intend no harm, only wishing to cover every surface with my ever-present affections. my love can build cities from ash, from bone, from sky. my love is a raging hurricane from the sea. we are in the eye. we are in the eye.
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the diver By Anna Arnold-Wallen
she was terrified of how deep inside I could go and see.
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About Anna Arnold-Wallen Anna Arnold-Wallen writes poetry because she can't not. She currently resides in Colorado.
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POEMS FROM AMARA GEORGE PARKER
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always her By Amara George Parker
she leaves her hair on the pillow like tangles of sunset cobwebs poised to snare my thoughts throughout the day soon, in them, I will be wrapped and helpless like a near-dead fly cocooned in a prison of the softest thread unable to pick myself free left hanging, waiting for her return.
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Passive Relations By Amara George Parker
he was like a giant slab that a god had once thrown from the mountaintop, sunk into the earth under his own weight aligned with gravity. and there he laid, cheek pressed into the dirt, waiting for feet to stand in front of his weather-pounded face and pass a few words or strew some crumbs that his big, long tongue might loll on to and manage to get stuck on its furred surface‌ drag them back in. the tree that clung to the crags above him, all thick, wiry root and hard sinews, was his ever-constant sentinel, either dropping idle tears or watching with impassive indifference as the sun baked his face to cracks. occasionally, and with sun-blessed consent, she’d shelter his face with the long fans of her fingers, his cheek swollen with silent thanks around her shade. rarely, she’d send part of herself fluttering down to rest in his cheek, a discarded comfort he was never sure was meant for him. 66
you can’t fly on pity By Amara George Parker
they stroked me with feathers for an age until the too-tender tickling became an agony and I begged them to shred the down from the shafts and scratch me with the broken remains they were sad I had rejected their softness the not-quite realness of themselves. I tried to explain that I did not see my reflection in theirs that their mirror was making me cry tears streaking the cheeks of the ones they proclaimed to love (but only as a way to unburden themselves to heighten themselves) I seek something to trust a reflection love ? may it seize me as it pelts, mad into the sky a carnivorous wind ready to consume my little feathers that no one will use to stroke or tickle 67
but that I shall use to fly
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About Amara George Parker Amara George Parker is a writer whose poetry has been published in literary magazines i n k s p a c e and She Who Knows. Her poetry and other writings have also appeared on the social media sites of literary publications and in scruffy notes thrust at people she loves. When she isn’t writing, she is most likely to be found either tangling her fingers into herbs and garden veg, pootling on the river, listening to something sultry or funk-ridden, or trying to fuse her over-elasticated body back together.
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POEMS FROM AIMEE NICOLE
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A Matriarca By Aimee Nicole
Everyone sees the trays of avô’s biscoitos and fresh brewed coffee planted like a curse, unwavering and formidable, in the center of your granite counter. Everyone kisses your check as you arrive to cook feast after feast at St. Anthony’s. Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Peeling, slicing, roasting. Potatoes and pork, bread dragged in by the bag. Everyone wants the first hug but the last Papo Secos. Everyone misses afternoons filled with telenovelas and dozing off in the recliner. They miss the sneaking around, the refills, and the top offs. When someone finally arrives, everything is a joke and your cheeks are rosy with escape. Everyone wants the grandfather clock or the china set or the dining table when you go. No one sees that you have given all that you have to offer. If cracked open, pearls of neglect and surface love will rain for years.
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Self-Discovery By Aimee Nicole
You are at Diegos in Newport sharing pitchers of margaritas with work friends. The apartment feels bigger without you and the dog has to run further down the hall to greet me. The cat lounges in a closet, peeking out to ensure no stranger will threaten her third nap. I eat my takeaway garlic broccoli while watching telenovelas without subtitles. Candles flicker dimly, desperately in both windows dangerously close to the wicks. I reach for my punch color vibrator and like the moon, it rises my body like the rides all night – knowing that at any moment, you could walk through the door.
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Turning Point By Aimee Nicole
Dark grey clouds cloak Bristol in darkness. Another Thursday…I resign myself to a half-hour commute, staring at two vacant monitors, and typical house-wife errands after the 5PM punch. I sip coffee from the driver’s seat and press play on Horses. Courage beats through my peeling speakers. The sound is less authentic when forced from my iPhone 5S. Still, this situation allows my lunch to sit in wait on the passenger’s seat and my hefty 10-pound record player leaving divots in the floor of our 3rd story apartment. I drive north toward Warren and brightness breaks free, alerting my migraine to awaken from its dormant sleep. Quickly, I fish hot pink plastic sunglasses from my Jansport bag. A buffer, a safety blanket. The tides are turning. A sunset is on the horizon. Just not mine, just not now.
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About Aimee Nicole Aimee Nicole currently lives in Bristol, Rhode Island. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Roger Williams University and has been published by the Red Booth Review, Psychic Meatloaf, Petrichor Review, Dying Dahlia Review, and Balloons Lit Journal, among others. On the weekends she enjoys staring at her cat.
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POEMS FROM JUDY RAINBOW
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A Child’s Letter By Judy Rainbow
Dear Mommy, Dear Daddy, I’m your child, I’m your dance I’m your music, your young romance I’m your magic looking glass reflecting you. I’m your greatest work of art Created deep within your heart I’m your wonder, your miracle of love. See my hand prints on the wall Hear my laughter down the hall A symphony of sight and sound you can’t compare O happy me just being me In a timeless reverie I’m your wonder, your miracle of love. I’d like your child within today To come out with me and play I’ll bring back memories that set you free Of cowboy boots and dressing dolls A caterpillar’s lazy crawl I’m your wonder, your miracle of love. I’m the treasure that you seek And I’m right here at your feet I’ll bring you priceless pearls of wisdom if you choose A wealth of joy I’ll give to you Oh...P.S. I love you too Cause you’re my wonder, my miracle of love 76
Oh, you and me can be a first We can play with this whole universe It’s a wonder, it’s a miracle of LOVE!
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Thank You By Judy Rainbow
Thank you for today in allowing me to play With magic, story, dance and song Remembering all the while I’m not hampered as a child But am wise, courageous, beautiful and strong. So help me I implore to continue to explore Life and all its many avenues Highs and lows, both joy and pain Noise and silence, loss and gain And responsibility for all I choose. For then I’ll understand How to serve and to command Destiny, in accordance with God’s Plan And when my days of little me Become known as history And I have walked beyond a child’s land I’ll remember you and me And your love that set me free On my journey to discover who I am. Thank you, thank you Gratias, merci beaucoup Mommy, Daddy, Thank you.
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About Judy Rainbow “I published WEE WIZARDS ONE-DER KIT in 1996. It was a compilation of songs and short stories targeting 4-8 y/o's. It was meant as a teaching tool for teachers and parents to emphasize self-love and the oneness of all people and things. My desire was to lay a fertile foundation of love and respect for one's self, all others, and also show the connection we have to our environment and nature.�
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POEMS FROM ABIGAIL GEORGE
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A Heart Can Grow Old By Abigail George
I think that she can be as great as a photographer as Annie Leibovitz or even Dianne Arbus. On the telephone I can hear the noncommittal drawl in her voice. She does not know who those famous photographers are or what role they play in history. She cannot place their faces in history the right side up in the universe. I still remember all of her adolescence. I can even if I try hard enough or rather imagine that I can see her smile. I can see her smile reaching her coy brown eyes. Her lashes and cheeks wet. ‘No, I am not depressed’, she says. She tells me she has made potato soup. Comfort food. Soul food more of a tea made out of vegetables than a meaty broth. I remember when you were all mute. I remember all the details 81
of adolescent you but now you’ve moved away from home. Grown up you live by your Own rules. You’ve travelled the world from North America, Thailand, India, the city of Prague.
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The Jerusalem of Florence By Abigail George
The blood of the Cape runs through her veins. The blood of the Cape runs through my veins but it doesn’t make us kin. It doesn’t make me her daughter. It doesn’t make me her flesh and blood. I don’t talk to her anymore. Not the way I used to. Our relationship just feels different. She burned my father’s swimming shorts today. She said the iron was dirty. I was the one who felt exposed. Shamed in a way. The other day she got into a heated argument with my mother. I took my mother’s side. My proud, headstrong and difficult to get along with mother. That day I felt exposed and shamed for no reason too. Things are different now I realise. They will always be different because 83
of the class system or the political situation or the great divide between black and white, coloured and Asian. She was like a mother to me but things like I said are different between us now.
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President Thabo Mbeki’s Foundation By Abigail George
I am no stranger to hospital life. In retrospect it seems as if I was always in need of a doctor. A team of specialists. A psychiatrist. The tap root of a psychologist for cognitive behavioural therapy as if my life depended on it. I wanted the good doctors to cut out the cancer of chronic illness. You see the thing about chronic illness is that it always threatens to misbehave. It doesn’t have those neat hospital corners that beds have that you wish for. There was always a shift. Paradigms. A tightness in my throat. I could feel every breath I took at each vertebrae but I wanted to survive. My memory of needles is as long as eternity. Oh I know that they are convenient. Their aim leaps through the air. I find myself every six months or so in ‘Needle Park’ at the hospital. Arm pale. Arranged on the table. This is what the 85
rest of the world doesn’t know. I sob in my room late at night. No one can hear me. There, there, now. You’re almost human. I tell myself repeatedly until I am sane again. Vanity restored. I’m whining. I’m unhappy I know. I drink a glass of water next to my bed. My nightly ritual and suddenly I’ve inherited the house again. I’m whole in the sanctuary of my bedroom.
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About Abigail George No biography provided.
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