Waiting

by Abdulmueed Balogun

“I want to go home, but home is the mouth of a shark.”
 –Warsan Shire

For the gloom laden nights to slumber and
never arise, for a healthy dusk to awake like

fresh spring, and unfurl like wings into fields—
where snoring souls are not severed from the

fig of life by death's sharp, shining sickles.
Waiting for ailing dawns to be forgotten like

ancient norms, in the skull of the sky. Waiting
for the gory scenes on the street of dawn

to ride a team of horse into oblivion,
for the blood-ridden news on the lips of

dawn to brood, and embrace a better fate.
Waiting for the day, when we will dread

not the coming of dawn, nor turn yellow
at the mention of night.

The Midnight Drive Home (Disassociation)

by S.A. Bender

My brother led me to this bog
where the clouds spit livers & hearts,

and the Heavens sent forth
their bloodied, romanticized fragrance.

the salt of moss lingering in the air,
the gold-leafing of my languish—

***

I have considered the cruelty
of this Merlot. 

the tiring of the body
the wiring of the mind

my ears ring
from the silence of Earth
in the early morning

and in these murky, white waters,
I am seized from my own flesh.
I am seized from my own flesh!

{ I am your head, and you are mine! }

Bind my soul with fishing wire,
and bring Her back to me!

My Most Recent OutinG

by S.A. Bender

so sweet and somber a storm has
gently kissed these cemetery grounds.

love-soaked mosses clinging to worn headstones
embrace my bare feet
in a most honorable union of the old and new.

a moment ago, I left a parting kiss to the light, and fled into
these damp and foggy fields— 

the cold winds met me on the edge of a steep hillside.
ancient caskets creak soft “hellos”
in the wake of my homecoming.

it was here that I first felt myself born,
burying my heart deep in the soil.

and it is here
where I remain.

Narrow Gauge

by Shereen Rana

My face: a clenched fist.
I sleep inches above the sea,
it's dark enough
that I can't face the right way.
My shoulders bury the sunrise.
I want (can't even try)
to feed the claw 
of the beast.
I've only felt flooding windows
erasing my mouth with my tongue.
Empty wrapped around my chest.
I could never really
howl, I can’t even
whistle. I put someone
by the fireplace.
I call it beautiful. I wait until the cheers
carry it to the grave, burial by an animal.
The people turn blue, red, wildfire
right before me.
I can only growl the way I long.
Displacing.
Also chest-clutching,
chest-restrained. Cherry-hungry cavity.
There are two animals under me.
Sorry, can you tell me where the light turns on
in these trains?
Only a candle killed into the window:
You're supposed to be it, you know.
Where have you been?
I know. I said I'm sorry.
Hearts built in an underwater mine,
I lose my bones before I can ever reach.
I want to know everything better;
someone to turn my head
the right way. When I open doors
I get so thirsty I can't bear talking about it.
I keep up with the unlit flowerpots.
Nobody told me of the scavenger
in the middle of the field full
                            of harvest.
Nobody told me I have its marrow.
Sunlight so injured it lashes out
over nothing.

The Arthritic Goes to Bed

by Kathryn Pratt Russell

There is a secret I know that you don’t,
because your mother was always there
when you fell and skinned your arm,
and once, she stopped you from cramming
your mouth with dirt.
(Dirt tastes as rich and bitter as it looks.)
Sleep is a mother you are looking for. 

I watch TV, unsettled after dinner
in the summer, when the dim evening
drags on.
My husband and daughter would be disturbed
if I climbed the short flight of stairs
and left them behind, once again.

My bed is raised, old-fashioned, dove-gray.
It hardly ever gets made,
just the duvet pulled across,
with extra blankets, straggled blue
off the edge and draped down. 

I curl up on my right side
because the other shoulder is chronic.
With a pillow between my knees
to keep the sore one aligned,
I lie on my bed’s cushioned heart.
I wait for the darkness to wrap
itself round me.

Through the closed door, I hear
the faint hum of wide-awake people.
My first mother is coming for me.

Morning in the Madhouse

by John Grey

Come morning,
for a brief moment,
I’ve no idea who you are. 

I’m just out of dream world,
with dream people
too precious too harm,
too lovely to dismember. 

So much of my mind
is temporarily unavailable.
That’s why the blood doesn’t register.
And the pale, distorted face
is a stranger.

I’m still partly with my heart’s desire,
as the rest of me
struggles with the body
in the sheets beside me. 

But then, a name forms slowly
on my tongue.
It’s not that of the corpse.
Proxies are, by definition,
nameless.

The Bees Behind Our Walls Became the New Thing to Ignore

by Aaron Sandberg

Some leak,
burrow in our ears—

make hives of our heads
while we sleep. 

I wipe the honey
from your nose

when I wake first
and never speak.

I couldn’t
even if I tried—

over this buzz
that built

to a stinging,
numbing hum.

True Order

by Aaron Sandberg

My past lives came and sat next
to me as I sat in the back booth 

and asked if I could
answer some questions. 

But I walked away and
left them sitting there 

and started this poem at the bar
across the room and began 

breaking these lines in two to give
us the appearance of order,

knowing all the time that true order
cowers in the dark.

And sometimes you can walk
across the room to escape, 

to break your poems into quiet
parallel lines that never cross

while you keep the corner
of your eye

on the ones who claim
they’re you in the corner.

And sometimes you howl—
trapped but reborn

just like when, suddenly,
the dog stares at the dark crack

in the closed closet, oh
God, and begins to growl.

Uncertain Cartographers

by Gabriel Morgan

when you feel like a ghost
sometimes,
is it that
in the strata
of accumulated memories
you worry
you lost sight
of it

the ore of a memory
before trauma 

before the anesthesiologist
cracks a joke
and puts the needle in 

before cancer

before the unspooling you that rolls away
as you hold the thread,
bouncing down the stairs

the forgotten thing
that you suspect
as you look around the corner of
self 

and the you that you might lock eyes with there

sometimes it's the suspicion that you're missing a memory
the it that happened before you began

or the it with the blanket over it
from the attic of your childhood 

maybe it's a locus point
of disassociation,
an event in place 

the point where it all split,
and you wonder at the before
like a lost dog 

uncertain cartographers,
we all have shoals,
unmappable,
and lurking just below the waves. 

and then to stop on the street
and ask a stranger 

am I a ghost?
and if so,
then of what? 

but they just laugh,
covering their mouth 

a reflection of your fantasy
or as real as you,
and no way
to tell the difference.

Dearly Departed,

by Callie S. Blackstone

I have sifted through 
the e-mails and poems 
you sent. I have translated
the beeping and whirs of white noise
you left on my message machine. I have documented
cold spots, glowing orbs, misplaced keys: even
after death, you lack originality. 
The message has been played from horror movie to horror
movie: the dead desire the living. You want me
to travel beyond the veil, to follow 
the light down the tunnel. And I imagine 

it: following the light, cool hands on the damp
walls of a dark tunnel. I discover that it originates
from a glowing body, a pale face—even your glasses
still in place. The cuts you made
up and down your legs still in place, burning
red, but the ink that covered them slowly 
fading out. Your body, slowly 
fading out. Your mouth, still 

uttering my name