The Adriatic Issue Three, 'Mind & Body' by The Adriatic

The Adriatic Magazine Issue Three: ‘Mind & Body’

CONTENTS A Note from the Editors………………………………………………………………...2 Featured Poets…………….……………………………………..……….……………...3 Lyndal Frazier-Cairns- ‘Vigil’……………………………………………………………7 Mark J. Mitchell- ‘A Blind Focus Puller’…………………………………………………...8 Jenny Wong- ‘Lunchtime Yoga on the Conference Room Floor’………………………………...9 Zach Hirsch- ‘25 April 2019’…………………………………………………………...10 Mandy Macdonald- ‘Palaeontology’………………………………………………………11 Lake Vargas- ‘I Don’t Want to Love Anybody’…………………………………………….12 Joe Cottonwood- ‘Jason never cusses’……………………………………………………..13 Amy Acre- ‘Gillian Kisses Gravity and Somewhere, I Begin’………………………………….15 Scott Redmond- ‘Hot Tap Rhyme Machine’………………………………………………16 Marissa Glover- ‘Self-Concept’…………………………………………………………...17 Z. R. Ghani- ‘The Red Queen’……………………………………………………………18 Jonathan Greenhause- ‘Combustible’…………………………………………………….19 Rebecca Gethin- ‘Late to Learn’………………………………………………………...20 Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………….21

CONTENT WARNING: This issue contains poems which refer to, or are themed around anorexia (‘Hot Tap Rhyme Machine’, page 16), blood and self-harm (‘I Don’t Want to Love Anybody’, page 12). 1

A NOTE FROM THE EDITORS Hello! Over the past few months I have been helping to edit this quarter’s issue, ‘Mind and Body’. I was so excited when Ella invited me onto the team, and couldn’t wait to get involved! This past quarter, time has really flown, and I can’t believe we’ve reached the point where we can publish all of these excellent poems. I have to say, we had an extremely tough time choosing which ones to put in this issue - there were too many good poems to choose from! A number of poems even made me tear up as I read them. That being said, I couldn’t be happier with what this issue holds. It really showcases a broad range of talent and gorgeous poems - I’m not sure if you’re ready for what’s in store! I am so proud of this issue, and I hope you enjoy reading it just as much as I enjoyed editing it! -Hannah

Welcome to the third issue of The Adriatic! We can’t wait to share these thirteen brilliant poems with you! As always, we want to thank everyone for submitting to usit’s such an honour to know that you trust us with your work. This issue’s theme is ‘Mind and Body’, chosen by our wonderful guest editor, Hannah Spurr, who has since joined us as the editor of our monthly newsletter. We have also welcomed the brilliant Riley Moore to the team, as our marketing and outreach manager. The relationship between our minds and our bodies is both beautiful and disorientating, and many of us have felt trapped in or disconnected from ourselvesnow more than ever. We know that existing within ourselves and within the outside world is not always easy. We hope that this issue brings you comfort and catharsis in whatever way you need, as it did for us as we put this issue together. As always, we recommend listening to our Issue Three playlist while you read, sitting somewhere with a lovely view, with a big cup of something warm…

-Ella, Kelsee, Mel, Rhi, & Riley

FEATURED POETS Amy Acre Amy Acre is the author of And They Are Covered in Gold Light (Bad Betty Press) and Where We're Going, We Don't Need Roads (flipped eye), each chosen as a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. She runs Bad Betty Press with Jake Wild Hall. Twitter: @amyacrepoet Instagram: @amyacre

Joe Cottonwood One of Joe Cottonwood’s poems recently appeared on a billboard in the Kew Gardens in London, England. His latest book of poetry is Random Saints. He’s a semi-retired home repair contractor and a lifelong writer dodging wildfires and sheltering with his high school sweetheart in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California.

Lyndal Frazier-Cairns Lyndal Frazier-Cairns is a Portland-based poet who writes about science and the environment. Her work has been featured in Cordite Poetry Review, Wordstorm, Beast Crawl, 100 Thousand Poets for Change, Writers Victoria, and Australian Poetry. In late 2020, she self-published a chapbook of poems about the tragedy of Pluto called Planet-ish. Twitter: @lyndalcairns

Rebecca Gethin Rebecca Gethin lives in Devon. She has written 5 poetry publications and her work is published in a variety of magazines and anthologies. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow and a Poetry School tutor. Messages was a winner in the first Coast to Coast to Coast pamphlet competition. Vanishings was published by Palewell Press in 2020. She blogs sporadically at www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com 3 Twitter: @gethin_rebecca

Z. R. Ghani Z. R. Ghani is a writer from North London, UK and spends her days working as an Editorial Assistant for Dorling Kindersley. She has a BA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. Her poems have been published in Magma Poetry, Black Bough Poetry, and The Willowherb Review. Recently, she was a Best of the Net nominee for her poem, ‘The Pink Mosque’. Twitter: @zr_ghani Instagram: @z.r.ghani

Marissa Glover Marissa Glover lives in Florida, where she teaches at Saint Leo University. Marissa is co-editor of Orange Blossom Review and a senior editor at The Lascaux Review. Her poetry recently appears in Psaltery & Lyre, Gyroscope Review, Louisiana Literature, The Opiate, and Dwelling Literary. Marissa’s full-length poetry collection, Let Go of the Hands You Hold, will be published by Mercer University Press in April 2021. Twitter: @_MarissaGlover_ Instagram: @_MarissaGlover_

Jonathan Greenhause I was the winner of the Telluride Institute’s 2020 Fischer Poetry Prize and shortlisted for The Black Spring Press Group’s 2020 Sexton Prize for Poetry, my poems appearing or forthcoming in The Dark Horse, Poetry Ireland Review, The Poetry Society website, and The Rialto. I’m currently – joyously – wearing a mask with my wife and 2 children. www.jonathangreenhause.com

Zach Hirsch Zach Hirsch is a journalist, editor, and closet poet based in New York. This is his first appearance in a poetry magazine. Twitter: @zdhirsch Instagram: @hirsch_z

Mandy Macdonald Mandy Macdonald is an Australian writer and musician living in Aberdeen, trying to make sense of the 21st and other centuries. Over 200 of her poems have been published in anthologies and journals in the UK and further afield. Her debut pamphlet, The temperature of blue, was published by Blue Salt Collective in 2020. She survived 2020 by writing Lockdown Lyrics, singing increasingly tunelessly round the house, and gardening.

Mark J. Mitchell Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collection is Roshi San Francisco from Norfolk Press. Another, Starting from Tu Fu was published by Encircle Publications last year. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist Joan Juster, where he made his living pointing out pretty things. Currently, like everyone else, he is unemployed. Twitter: @MarkJMitchellSF https://mark-j-mitchell.square.site/

Scott Redmond Scott Redmond is a Romani poet and comedian based in Scotland, who has performed in six countries over three continents, and has his work printed in a number of publications including Laldy magazine and Inkwell. He likes deep conversations, long walks on the beach, and esoteric knock knock jokes. Facebook: @RedmanRulez Instagram: @ya.boii.redman

Lake Vargas Lake Vargas primarily writes poetry and creative non-fiction. Her work has most recently been published by Periwinkle Literary Magazine, Tealight Press, and Butcher Papers. More of her work can be found on her Tumblr, @stonemattress. Twitter: @lakewrites

Jenny Wong Jenny Wong is a writer, traveler, and occasional business analyst. Lately, her writings have been more about indoor things, but she still dreams about evening wanderings around Tokyo alleys, Singapore hawker centres, and Parisian cemeteries. Recent publications include Truffle Magazine, Split Rock Review, Burnt Breakfast Magazine, Parentheses Journal, and Crow & Cross Keys. She resides in the foothills of Alberta, Canada. Twitter: @jenwithwords http://opencorners.ca/about

Vigil Lyndal Frazier-Cairns

I know nothing of God but at hour six an unconscious hum escapes me by way of prayer. What I do know is that 25mg is the regular dose of promethazine and that you tear, not push, the ondansetron packet. I know the zofran goes in the drip with the painkiller chaser so you sleep long enough for it to work. The nurses never told me that but this is not my first Sunday here at this Catholic hospital moralism is dosed out too, and too many people have asked me about my relationship to the patient as though my willingness to hold your 6oz sick bag does not speak for itself. A hot washcloth held to your temples does nothing to make you better I know that I must.

A Blind Focus Puller Mark J. Mitchell

The blind focus puller hears every distance: An actor’s perfect, still stance, the tap of a toe. Each cough in a script read to him, is plotted. He could see once, and each slant of light he’s seen stays firm as a follow spot when someone shouts “Rolling!”. He moves perfectly—a thief of space and sound. Never fooled until they shot that biopic about a ventriloquist.

Lunchtime Yoga on the Conference Room Floor Jenny Wong

The only witnesses are tables and chairs huddled in the corner, legs tucked beneath, leaned against the wall, underside screws taking in the view. Tethered by planted hands and grounded feet, mind indulges in muscle memory years ago, I held this posture, as an instructor explained that hip openers are a bitch because that is where sins of past lovers are kept. But where is the relief for those other anatomical places holding onto loved ones that were never lovers, their echoes bound by interstitial stitches that would rather ache than let go. Fold forward. Let breath scrape along the inside of the chest leave exhaled recollections lost in the softness of shoe-worn carpet.

25 April 2019 Zach Hirsch

the bus was a little pill and we rode the bloodstream for less than a dollar out her window the sea unseen, anonymous an organ looming like the liver or perhaps the famous heart — it’s dark inside the body i kept my hands where she could see them my eyes on the other passengers but our limbs were nearly touching and an electric sadness soaked in the spaces between. her gaze rested on infinity, on the underside of its skin and my hands hoped to settle in my lap as the bus deposited us at the terminal we spoke, finally, in banalities making loose plans to meet again but we both knew this was it and it was.

Palaeontology Mandy Macdonald

She never finished it, the great linen tablecloth patterned with calceolaria – a fashionable flower in the 1930s – embroidered on winter afternoons of solitude in a vast top-floor flat that came with my father’s job. On the veranda of her life’s last house, her wistful hands, turned arthritic, would stroke the bulbous cheetah-spotted flowers. Once, they’d handled geological slides, delicate slivers of ancient creatures turned to stone. She strode the Blue Mountains’ hot sandstone bluffs, collected, peered, classified, filled sketchbooks with still-lifes of ammonites, watercoloured against their landscape. I didn’t know her then, of course; nor when she gave up science for marriage and a long wait for children who didn’t come; instead, a decade and a half of dinner parties and embroidery: doilies, samplers, the scalloped hems of silk nightgowns, a fossil record of disappointment. By the time I arrived, she had almost given up again, her hair elegantly greying, her mind untuned to the music of nurture, unprepared any longer for motherhood, or widowhood, soon after. Every few years now, I dig out the calceolaria tablecloth from its hoard in the loft, stitch a few more swags of leaves, a cluster of the strange flowers – chrome yellow, gold and Clarice Cliff orange – alone, on winter afternoons, my own hands slowly losing their skill.

I Don’t Want to Love Anybody Lake Vargas

But I do, and I am the men hunching under bus shelters, studying each pearl of sweat that studs my hairline. If I could be someone else, I’d hurt, maim, kill me too. I’d slit from fingertip to wrist without feeling. I fantasize: my blood a scarf, a glove elbow-high. I don’t want to say anything anymore. If it happens, you can unscrew my teeth for keepsakes, smooth strands of my hair between your fingertips. But I don’t want to love anybody. How would I steady tilted houseplants, stay sane, refrain from kissing you every time you stand? I can’t thread needles, smile politely, or think the sunset is a beautiful thing.

Jason never cusses Joe Cottonwood

because with nine children he keeps clean habits but now I hear an ear-burner. He’s clutching the left fingers with the right dripping red like he’s trying to stop a faucet. From the first aid box I wrap gauze around two fingers half-severed. Jason says at first it felt like a squirt of water. No pain. I spiral orange duct tape over gauze like clown fingers. Say I’ll take him to Kaiser but he wants to drive himself so I say hold the hand elevated above your heart and please don’t pass out. He says now there’s some pain yes indeed but then he runs back clomp clomp big boots to the board he was sawing. Finishes the cut, perfect. Swipes with his shirt sleeve swishing up spatters to leave a clean workspace. Then he hops in the truck. Gone. Gone fast. Because that’s Jason. Not that any of us cared, but he simply had to finish that cut.

Gillian Kisses Gravity and Somewhere, I Begin Amy Acre

Let’s say it’s nineteen eighty. Let’s say it’s a Friday. My sister is turning five. In Norway, a drilling rig lies belly up in the North Sea. In Washington, a rock blows smoke rings. Everywhere, people are in love with Debbie Harry. My sister, thinned with flu, pale smiles beside a Smarties cake. Evening undoes its dresscoat, lengthens on the sofa. A fat palm slaps the headtop of a fuzzing box and it comes into picture: a woman and man are in love in the shadow of a courthouse; in the phoenix of a family. On cotton begonia spread, her Rosetti hair corrugates like a pull-down ladder. His voice is the colour of a blood orange and they are in love. They are loving, as zeros uncurl on solicitor bills, as brothers and sisters design midnight feasts. Between them, a dream of the present sleeping sweetly inside a future where love resembles itself. When they have risen wild as ghosts, given all, the man grips her legs in his hands, lifts them into a capsized letter A. Gravity blows them a kiss and somewhere in the penstrokes of life, I begin. Small gallop. Two weeks later, Sartre dies lung-first in Paris and in London, a county court smiles. At three weeks, after a bloodless concert, the woman takes rain to a chemist. When she exits, all she can hear is Bach’s Brandenburg No. 3 and my hooves where the pain should be.

Hot Tap Rhyme Machine Scott Redmond

I have started bathing twice a day, In the hope that I can scrub away Some of my outer layer. At 3am, the bath has gone coldMy tea is still warm. I consider pouring it in, just For the heat, I wonder if anyone would be Able to tell. I like my tea milky, And I only allow myself Zero percent milk. I am essentially drinking Hot nothings. Does the teabag relax as it steeps, Or does it scream like a lobster? Sometimes I’m not sure which to do. I consider sliding my head under the water, But then my life might flash before My eyes, and then I’d have To look at myself from the outside. I turn on the hot tap, And pick up the steel wool.

Self-Concept Marissa Glover

Passing a security checkpoint to board a plane, I am asked to identify all the names I recognize on the screen. My knowledge of these connections will prove I am the real Marissa Glover. One name is my ex-husband’s new wife. In a single moment, I consider denying the connection, as if not highlighting her name could erase her. Make me ‘wife’ again. Change me into someone I recognize. When I get home, I google ‘Marissa Glover’ and see all the different roads I have walked. Frost didn’t know about search engines when he said we are just one traveler. I am an Operations Manager, a Basketball Player, a Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology. The next time I fly, I remember Winona Ryder as Jo in Little Women. When the man seated next to me tells me what I should have been instead of a poet, I reply, ‘I should have been a great many things.’

The Red Queen Z. R. Ghani There, the moon: chasing time, on a new high, the wool over its eyes- unhinged, wild, deserves a beating from her. Not wolfsong, not my pinafore, tented up to my chin for all woodland creatures to gawp at, will sober it. Have the mirrors been whispering to you again? Perhaps a child or a hedgehog forced into a ball, flung by a flamingo, but never a woman I won’t be. Lady, you must be joking. Certainly a girl-turned-unhalal-pig by the Red Queen. I came out to parade my body. She’s always hungry for your head. White rabbit, weary father of my conscience, I see through your desperate lies; portals choking under the snow. I’ll turn the key on her this time. My skirt is barricaded and my hat cuts throats. You’re outgrowing my house. I was not spun from gold, but my mother’s fallen hair; It’s not easy to unravel me, harder yet to keep me still. Her snaking arms under the snow know the scent of my neck; father serves shards of a broken shoe with a note, Eat Me. I’ve known her to shake with fury until her face is no more.

Combustible Jonathan Greenhause

As the elevator rises, the teenager’s smoking but has no cigarettes, no weed, no incendiary devices secreted away. Trails of smoke slip from his pores, pour from his orifices, impregnate his t-shirt, ‘Going Nowhere’ printed over the image of Mt. Rushmore. The officer orders him to put it out, but he’s been smoking throughout pubescence, his inner core on fire with the desire to be anywhere else but in this growth-addled body, his lower extremities brimming with blood boiling right beneath the skin, his height transformed from elementary to high in a single season. He aspires to be a Lincoln, an orator destined to resolve a nascent civil war, but his insides are inflammatory, his hormones in a pitched battle to prevail against despair or succumb to it. His skin seeks the interplay of contradictory views, of wishing for both permanence & the bliss of accepting everything we do is fleeting, every leap tethered to the abyss, every success an asterisk eclipsed by a viral load of failures.

Late to Learn Rebecca Gethin

I couldn’t get the hang of it – which pedal did what, how to synchronise hand with foot, gear with juice until Cyril, the new instructor, said to take my socks off. In bare feet I sensed the push and bite under the ball of my foot. Through my soles I learned to lift off the gas just enough, how much to press. Over and over he soothed to never jar the stick, but to ease it with a loose hand. He said to drive round corners as if I meant it and that accelerating out of a bend gave grip. At night, he said not to be dazzled by oncoming lights Don’t look at the thing you’re trying to avoid. Look up and beyond - into the dark where you want to be.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The team would like to thank a few fabulous individuals, without whom this magazine would not have been possible: Kelsee Porter, our amazing illustrator, who created all of the phenomenal artwork in this issue. Our fellow poetry and lit mags, who have encouraged and supported us from the start.