Category: Weekly Write

The Weekly Write features a new piece of poetry or short prose every Sunday.

Weekly Write: “Truth Climbs Out of My Throat to Shame My Abusers” by Auden Eagerton

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Truth Climbs Out of My Throat to Shame My Abusers

When she emerges, she is not a beautiful thing,
drenched in a vernix of saliva,
breathless, trembling.
It has taken years to knife herself up my esophagus,
blazing her name red into each rib passed.
A tempestuous, heaving mass birthed into cupped hands,
a reckoning, and did you know,
I placed her amidst the cedar of my childhood home,
let her catch.
And still not as simple as that.
Every time I speak I decide
whether to keep her loaded on my tongue or rage,
because part of her is that I still speak to my father.
Part of her is that my father never reads my poems,
or if he does, sweeps them into the compost
for the worms to read, with the tomato peelings
and blood and how my mother helped us
hide purple omens from his belt, called that love.
How a girl I was seeing hit me fifteen years later
and I remembered that first time, knew now
it was in my hands to make sure hers never touched me again.
What a nice thought,
that I can save my childhood self
with a better cape tied around my shoulders.

 

Auden Eagerton is a non-binary poet located in Kennesaw, Georgia. They received a Bachelor of Arts in English, as well as a minor in Film Studies, at Kennesaw State University. Their interests lie heavily in studying American literature and poetry. In addition to publishing their own poetry, Eagerton aims to one day become an editor for a literary magazine and be involved in both sides of the publishing process. Their work has been featured in Exhume Literary Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, LandLocked Magazine, Across the Margin, DASH Literary Journal, The Bookends Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Digging Through the Fat/Digging Press, and is upcoming in peculiar, The Meadow, and Kudzu.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “The Squall, Soon” by Zachary Kluckman

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The Squall, Soon

I claim the rain as my father.

Who hung its wet form more often in my door
than the man whose DNA wrote the map of my palms.

This body is almost entirely water.
My fingerprints are his, a sand garden

raked by the waves of his movement, by the presence
of tides, anchored to bone as hollow as his name,

whispered in storms. His face was built of screen doors,
easier to witness the world through his rust than see

the man. For years I believed the shriek of hinge
was my name. Named after him, the sound of doors

closing. The sound of absence. Our grass always was
eager for blood. And the rain, eager to sing the skin clean,

pulled the torn skin aside when I fell, open to inspection
by insects, I watched the water pool in the bowl of my wound,

listened to crickets divorce the dark with their legs.
Explosion is common with new birth. The wet

taught me mud, taught me womb, before fathers,
before abandoned, born with the knowledge of water.

We way we slide within our skin, barely contained.
The way teeth form a seawall, to contain our drowning.

Each storm brings the scars to the surface, my feet
to the door, eager to meet the sky halfway through its fall,

a child running to introduce himself to his father.

Weekly Write: “Kore” by Lizzie Waltner

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Kore

She wears flowers.
Let’s them twist around her,
crown, ankles, wrists,
shackles. Daisies fold
in her mouth. Lilies
pulling against vocal cords.
She pretends they are heavy,
wants to sink. To let the river
Styx swallow her whole.

Sometimes, she feels more
at home when she’s drowning.
The sunlight burns her Spring
freckled cheeks – roses
aren’t supposed to wilt
in the Summer.

So, she lets herself Fall.
Be comforted in the tones
of wandering souls and
Cerberus’s howls. They are
symphony. She finds comfort
in the God that does not
pass judgement. The one that
merely watches from a throne
of ebony with the touch
of Winter.

 

Lizzie Waltner grew up in Rio Rancho, NM, attended ENMU for her BS in Journalism, and then completed her MA in Creative writing at Aberystwyth University, Wales, UK. She is now working as a teacher intern.

Weekly Write: “Reflections” by Maxine Peseke

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Reflections

I saw you this morning
slightly hurried,
one eyebrow groomed in
a somewhat socially acceptable
arch
Excusing the other with murmurs of reassurance —
“Sisters, not twins”

you left with a smear
of toothpaste
on the corner of your lip

When I saw you saw, frazzled,
in the afternoon,
toothpaste was replaced
with a crumb from whatever
mediocre lunch you fed yourself —
sloppily
but you’re only human

though it’s safe to say
the toothpaste
was a cleaner look

Regardless, you should eat more, dear.

But keep going —
I’ll send you packing
with a snack in your purse.

When you arrived home,
your eyes looked drawn;
a corner of your prided eyeliner
had streaked from some absent
midday eye rub

and really,
I thought this morning,
you should get more sleep.

But I smiled when the mirror
fogged up with steam —
you probably didn’t see —
and you wiped your face
Clean.

Maxine L. Peseke is a writer, mother, and sometimes freelance editor; she also works closely with Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC, as an organizational assistant. She is currently living in a small Northern Ontario town, transplanted from New Mexico respectively where she originally met each of Saturday’s Sirens as part of the Albuquerque poetry community.

Weekly Write: “Cuba, NM Homestead” by Rene Mullen

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Cuba, NM Homestead

Among dusty mustard sandstone cliffs
fragrant crusted sage
crumbling remnants
of once beloved hearth
now a wisp of memory
melting away with every rare

but torrential teardrop monsoon

In sunset shadows
each individual wall foundation stone
tells what little story
geriatric minds can muster
only to be ignored by deaf ears
of its brethren

Their only neighbor
next room over at
Ponderosa Acres
twisted skeleton juniper husk
whose bark stopped biting
before the house
gave up being home

Rene Mullen is managing editor for a PR firm in Albuquerque. A performance and traditional poet, and a mental health advocate, he is one of two 2018 Albuquerque Slam Champions. He has been a member of four poetry slam teams representing New Mexico, and has appeared on multiple regional and national stages. His poetry has been featured in Poetry Quarterly, 50 Haikus, and is author of This Still Breathing Canvas, a collection of poetry.

The long Amazon link is https://www.amazon.com/This-Still-Breathing-Canvas-Mullen/dp/B08DSX3DD2/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=rene+mullen+this+still+breathing+canvas&qid=1598919217&sr=8-1

Weekly Write: “edges burn more readily than centers” by kat heatherington

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edges burn more readily than centers

edges burn more readily than centers.
setting an edge alight is a simple matter,
though putting it out again may not be,
if it is inclined towards fire.
the center doesn’t light so well
unless you reach it through the edge,
take the slow route in, open its defenses.
only water will put the center out, once alight.
anything else just picks up the blaze,
amplifies, and burns.
you came pretty close to the center,
smoldering your way in from my furthest edge,
taking a lazy course through the perimeter,
tossing sparks, until suddenly, you had arrived
in the flammable heart,
and everything around you ignited.
surprised, you could only
watch it burn, turning in slow circles,
observing, unable
to reach your hands out toward the flame.

Click the image to order the heart is a muscle from Bookworks ABQ.


the heart is a muscle
by kat heatherington

Kat Heatherington is a queer ecofeminist poet, sometime artist, pagan, and organic gardener. She lives south of Albuquerque New Mexico, in Sunflower River intentional community with a varying number of other humans and cats. Kat’s work primarily addresses the interstices of human relationships and the natural world. She has one previous book, The Bones of This Land, published in 2017 by Swimming with Elephants Publications and available at Bookworks and Harvest Moon Books in Albuquerque, as well as on amazon.com. She can be found online at https://patreon.com/yarrowkat and on instagram at @sometimesaparticle. You can contact the author at yarrow@sunflowerriver.org.

Weekly Write: Your Mind Tricks Won’t Work on Me, Jedi by Shanna Alden and Erin Schick

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Your Mind Tricks Won’t Work on Me, Jedi

There’s a kind of music
often played by the sort of therapists
who think EMDR is a panacea for everything
or by the sorts of “doctors”
who think sticking needles into you
while you consume 5lbs of raw broccoli
will cure cancer.
Slow, beatless, meandering treble
just on the mass-produced side
of spiritual
or soothing
The kind of music some executive
with a bottom line hanging over his head
engineered from a formula
of a thousand songs
someone called “calming” once.
A cacophonic story telling the sick
and the dying that
“everything’s going to be fine”

Every time I’ve been admitted to an ER
I stare in terror
at the curtains in the trauma rooms
usually some sort of pastel gradient
just on the institutional side of
easter egg
or sunset
faded towards beige
from the industrial sorts of detergent
needed to turn a biohazard
back into a privacy screen
yellowed from iodine and vein rust
The kind of durable, stain-hiding pattern
some executive, with a bottom line hanging over his head
engineered from a thousand surveys
distilling down the 5 or 6 colours
people call “calming”.
Rows of visible barriers
between the sick or dying
and the world
a cacophony
of “everything’s going to be fine”.

A story whose moral is only denial.
But the oldest fairy tales,
don’t have happy endings.

Once upon a time,
you will die.
When you die, you will be alone.
Even if you are surrounded by loved ones,
or the arms of a person you’ll call your soulmate
until the very moment you start to fade,
and start to doubt whether souls even exist.
Even if someone dies right next to you at the very same second,
in a car crash,
or an explosion, or holding your hand,
you will still go through death alone.
Alone and dying will be the last things you ever are.

And for so many people
these curtains
are the last image
they’ll ever see.
Swinging softly in the bustle
As calming music plays over a p.a.
In a hospital with a bottom line hanging over its head,
as someone whispers in their ear,
“everything is going to be fine”

 

Shanna Alden (they/them) is a queer poet, photographer, barista, and bartender living in Seattle, WA with their chosen family and a couple very soft cats. They sit on the board of Rain City Poetry Slam and consistently host weekly poetry shows.

Erin Schick (they/them) is a queer, trans, and multiply disabled social worker living in upstate New York and focused on disability justice and queer liberation. Their interests include the Pacific Northwest, women’s soccer, and sled dogs.

Find this poem and many others in SwEP’s latest release: A Duet of Dying

Now Available!

 

“A Duet of Dying is a poignant and honest approach to surviving terminal sickness, living disabled, and the constant navigation of the healthcare system of the United States. From honest confessions like remaining with somebody caught cheating “Because I was on his health insurance,” in Why Did You Stay? part 3, to the foreign and familiar feeling of not knowing yourself apart from the “alien” in Pathogen, this collection is a special one for its approach through — and more aptly: with — sickness. Then there is the raw cruelty that is given a voice so aptly in Ringtones into Dirges; here, at last, are words for the battle with collections calls for MRIs and diagnostic tests; those which are necessary to life, but the collected debt of which could easily drive somebody to death. And I think, finally, finally, here is an honest testament — of love, of life (while actively dying), of death (and still living). And wonderfully, a narrative from two powerful queer voices, who offer this bittersweet collection, so purely.”

~Reviewed by Maxine Peseke

As always, we encourage ordering the collection from the authors personally or through an independent bookstore, but the collection is also available through Amazon and other distributors.

Click here to order today!

Weekly Write: “What is Precious is Never to Forget” by Bill Nevins

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Publisher Note:

The team at Swimming with Elephants Publications was greatly saddened to hear of the passing of one our authors, Bob Warren. We are dedicating this week’s Weekly Write to a poem by Bill Nevins which honors him.

To learn more about Bob and his poetry, head over to: https://swimmingwithelephants.com/2019/12/18/r-b-warren/

What is Precious is Never to Forget

Eulogy or Elegy for the Living Poet, Ever Near this Poor Man’s Ear

Dear teacher Stephen Spender taught me long ago
“Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields . . .
The names of those who in their lives fought for life . . .
And left the vivid air signed with their honor.”
Soour poet of Litanies Not Adopted singed and signed the air here with his fierce honor
His love of life, of even poor Christ
Whom he saw in every parched or vibrant face he found
In this weary land, in Detroit City, and in this dry desert town.

As Donne told us the toll sounds for each however mean
SoBob preached love too would ring in us every one
If we found that buried note that stream
It might be blood of the lamb, flowing free in our deeds
It might be only buried deep in our unborn seeds
It might need be wrested forth
By words of fire, touch of light, fury, oh cold star- light.

Bob wrestled with God, he did, and surely still does,
and no holds barred.
When and where none but angels saw.
No one won. None lost. The Holy Ghost, Bob’s second, called a draw.
“Why dost thou hide thyself in clouds
From every searching Eye?”
With Blake, Bob challenged the coy deity to Be HERE Now!

I think the sky god only laughed and saw itself in the house of store among the lost,
In the mirror of Bob, son of man, and knew revelation needed no more
Knew no airy sky god need be found when Bob and such walk solid ground.

But that’s just me, agnostic mystic disrespectful American rebel son.
I would not mess with Bob nor Barbara, armed lovers ever, love in arms.
And that warning applies to the god of grief, that holy thief-
-Don’t mess. Best, just bless.
And move along, now, Daddy-O. You done your best and worst.
Bob abides. Bob never hides.
Bob may go, but Bob is here, right here. We know.

Ah won’t Detroit howl and mourn when they hear?
Ah won’t Sonny that strong hero of Motor City laugh and cry for the tall brave man called Whitey X—who knew Black Lives Matter deep in his heart and needed no one to tell him so?
And won’t this second tier rhymester raise his beer, shed a tear?
And won’t sweet Jesus smile to know that Bob is near? Always near.

Bill Nevins grew up Irish Catholic near and in New York City in the 1950’s and 60’s. He moved to northern New England and raised his three children, one of whom, Special Forces SFC Liam Nevins, died in combat in Afghanistan in 2013. Bill has lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico since 1996.

 

 

Weekly Write: “Save the Elephants” by Erin Conway

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Save the Elephants

Mamá liked travelling. Mamá liked to talk about what to bring,
Or what not to bring.
Mamá grabbed a palm sized ball
Of masa dough ground from Gloria’s trip to the molino.
It tapped and tapped around to tell the story of her hills and nestled village
Monte and cayukos.
Mamá loved to plan trips she would never take
Behind Mamá’s steps rested her shadow.
The elephant’s mother always casts
The largest, the longest
Shadow on its skin.

I was only four when Mamá packed for Mexico City.
I was only four when she did not return.
Ten years later, I study geometry. Gloria counts micro credit.
I study history. Gloria listens to stories.
I study geography. Gloria walks between rural villages.
I study physical education. Gloria brushes toddlers’ blackened teeth
Left by the fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers who headed North.
Spanish. Maya. Large, expansive names.
San Cristobal de las Casas.
All missing paint in lime green.
Yaxchilán. Chipapa de Corzo.
Jungle. Pine trees. Coffee. Chocolate.
Drunk on mist.
¿Y yo?

My skin tone is a blend,
A highland blend of coffee
That gringos drink
In large mugs that are not supposed to have bottoms
In large mugs Gringos find the energy
To step on and over the stones, the stories,
Of our past.
I close my eyes.
I hear Mamá empty frijoles parados into my dish.
I smile and add chilé.
I close my eyes.
I hear Mamá pour coffee into my mug.
I smile and add sugar.

“Where are you working today Gloria?” I ask.
“The woman’s coop.”
“Can I come?”
“Instead of school?”
“I love sitting near the weavers.
Untangling strings. Cutting knots.”

Señoras squint through donated lenses.
Elephants do not have good eyesight.
I know I don’t know the strings’ colors,
My colors, I don’t know.
In the women’s midst, I return to a herd.
But it’s not my herd.
I’m an orphan. I’m homeless.
I’m an immigrant? Migrant? Refugee?

I sit on the front step,
Leaned back against the stones,
I stretch forward. I write.
“Related elephant females stay together for life.
Related elephant families share resources,
Avoid danger,
Care for young.”

The flowers reflect days’ yellow brightness through ever present dust.
Their husbands saw the same
Scattered in corn kernels. Spread out to dry.
Free trade brought new colors in cotton string.
New demand for old traditions. Cheap corn
Unemployment.

Mamá had wrapped her faja
Like the ones strapped in these looms
Mamá had covered her guipil in her rebozo.
Inspired by Comandante Ramona
Mamá had boarded a bus to the First Indigeneous Congress.
If Mamá had reached México City, I don’t know.
I watch the women’s fingers.
The women pick up strings and drop them.
If only one string had been long enough
To help Mamá find her way home.

I think of elephant matriarchs.
Which woman will throw herself
On the electric fence?
Or learn to open the gate?
For the rest to escape.
I stare upward, beyond
Barbed wire. Chipped cement. Broken glass.
The sweep of the mountain is also the sky.
The top is not a peak.
There is more room than people would say,
Would want me to believe.
We can all fit on the mountain though I started farther down.

Blue, the green of grass.
White, the water spray of clouds.
Gloria’s heavy feet climb.
Others feel her trail in their soles.
Like elephants, I lean forward on my toes.
We refuse to be on our heels.
When I stand on tiptoes, I know
The mountain is not so high.

In the evening,
We turn beans from parados to colados to volteados.
“The thicker the better,” I say.
“But less to go around,” Gloria reminds.
I was only four when Gloria kept me.
I was only four when Gloria became the leader of our orphan band.

Gloria shows me nothing directly.
Instead she shows me
Hooded sweatshirts, holy cards and birth control.
I eat my supper alone. Flip cable channels.
I trace my finger along the tortilla
Wrinkled, elephant, skin.
I dig through the garbage
Between two fingers gently, I hold buried papers
With my elephant’s trunk

$2,000. $8,000. Mexico.
Petitions. Protests. El Salvador.
Felony. Theft. Guatemala.
Muertes. En camino. Honduras.
Sanctuary.

Night steps forward.
I fall asleep and dream.
Baby elephant. Orphan elephant.
Surrounded by lions. Far from home.
Baby elephant. Orphan elephant.
She screamed to keep the jaguars away, for the family to accept her.
Baby elephant. Orphan elephant.
She wrecked her vocal chords.
It was her voice,
Or, her life.

I completed my undergraduate and graduate degrees at UW-Madison. I began my professional career as a bilingual teacher in the Madison Metropolitan School District, but this work stems from my desire to seek a deeper understanding of my students and foster intercultural connections in the field of education. I accepted a Peace Corps assignment in Guatemala. For the past ten years, I worked both teaching and training teachers in Guatemala, including Atitlan Multicultural Academy, and most recently I worked as the Director of Literacy Staff Training and Curriculum Development with Child Aid. Previously, working in education in Guatemala, I currently work for UW-Madison, Division of Extension. My literary efforts focus on diverse books initiatives. Publishing credits include Midwest Review, Sonder Review, Vine Leaves Press, The Hopper, Cleaning up Glitter, Kind Writers and Adelaide Literary Magazine. I manage a blog and website, http://www.erinconway.com.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “The Sunflower Song” by KilhaPoetry

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The Sunflower Song

I dreamed that I stumbled upon a field full of giant sunflowers
And lay my head there down to die.
While the heavens gathered up all their stormiest rain clouds
That fell from the tubular sky’s.
Too great was my sadness to fight.
Too lost to the tragedy now begun.
Alone in my field full of sunflowers
With no life to wish to carry on.

I dreamed that the earth consumed me.
My wretched body decaying outwardly in.
Until there was no memory of my presence or being
And no one could remember even who I had been.

I dreamed that sunflowers grew wilder and strong,
Their mighty stalks growing thicker with height.
They grew into the horizon and up into the sky’s,
There petals looming with grandiose might.

Cocooned in my deathly slumber,
From the peace in which I now lay.
A curiosity stirred awaking a part of me,
A part no earthly death could just wash away.
And deep in that place of unexistance,
deep in my transient state,
I felt such heavenly beauty
Breath new life into the loneliness place.

Adrift on the wings of salvation,
With courage retuning and restored.
I marvelled at the world so vivid and true
With enough beauty and love for us all.
Now in my field full of sunflowers
that mourned for the life I couldn’t save,
I dreamed of a love to unfold without tragedy.
Without fearing loss or fear itself to be the reason for blame.

I dreamed that I died in a field full of sunflowers,
With such beauty that I had never seen.
And deep in my field full of awesome giant sunflowers,
I’m rebirthed each night in my dreams.

 

MMKilha is a London born poet with Egyptian and English/Irish heritage. She started writing when she was very young as a way of processing and surviving an abusive environment. She says, “I started writing because I couldn’t talk about what was going on. I wasn’t trying to be creative, I just needed a way to communicate”.

She has continued to use it as a method of reflection ever since. 

With a back catalogue of work big enough to fill her garage, she only became public in 2017 after a friend encouraged her to overcome her insecurities being dyslexic and having ADHD.

She says the impact of writing means she no longer feels the need to apologise for herself; “If people like the work that’s great. I’m over the moon when my words speak to another person but if they don’t, that’s fine too. Since being open about these issues I have received so much support from other dyslexic writers who tell me how much my honesty has meant to them.”

MMKilha is currently in her final year of her Masters in Childhood and Adolescent

Psychotherapy working with children from abusive backgrounds to help them make sense of their own stories though creative interventions. 

MMKilha performs independently on the London spoken word scene as well as with the @Poetical_Word collective  poeticalword.org providing them with a vital Therapist in Residence service for their outreach programmes.

For a selection of her work or to get in contact she can be found on Instagram @kilhapoetry. 

Please feel free to get in touch.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Treehouse on Mars” by Karen Poppy

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Treehouse on Mars

When we’re born, and old enough,
We’ll build a treehouse
On Mars, just
Like one we heard
Our parents’ parents built
To play in as children on Earth.

Our Martian colony
Will have no trees.
Only small plants
For consumption.
No birds singing in branches.
No sun shining through leaves.

We’ll build our treehouse,
Not in a tree, but on
An artificial resin trunk.
Ancient song of birds
Will filter in from speakers.
Pink glow will light our days.

When we’re born, and old enough,
We will learn of trees.
How they lived and
Burned with finality in
Forests and jungles
Of memory and loss.

New trees never could
Meaningfully replace
Old-growth in locations
Strange on our tongues:
Africa, Brazil, Colorado,
Tongass, Siberia, Indonesia.

When we’re born, and old enough,
We’ll live on a planet
Far from scent of real resin, pine.
Far from sound of wind through woods.
Far from shade of towering canopies.
Far from trees’ majestic heights.

Never will we have memory
Of vast Amazonian wonders,
Jungle animals, forest animals.
Just pictures, holograms, stored DNA.
Koala, Orangutan,Giraffe,
Lion, Antelope, Gazelle.

When we’re born, and old enough,
We’ll live here, born here
Like our parents.
Tell stories in secret
Of how we want to
Rebuild Earth.

Although we’ll know, like
Our treehouse, our dream
Is not real, and never can be.
The trees and animals, gone.
No matter what we’ve kept,
What we’ve stored.

At this point, even our own
Existence is hypothetical,
Since life on Mars cannot
Likely occur, be sustained.
Right now, humans have to start
By trying to save Earth.

As we say what we fear,
Our voices stay stuck, unheard
In a distant, probably
Impossible future,
Like roots dead or never born:
It is too late. Too much is lost.

 

Karen Poppy has work published in Blue Unicorn, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, ArLiJo, Wallace Stevens Journal, and The Cortland Review (Best of the Net nomination). She has a chapbook forthcoming with Finishing Line Press, and another chapbook forthcoming with Homestead Lighthouse Press. An attorney licensed in California and Texas, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “I Wear My Grandmother’s Necklace Two Days After I Call the Suicide Crisis Line” by Auden Eagerton

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I Wear My Grandmother’s Necklace Two Days After I Call the Suicide Crisis Line

I’ve never liked my neck much in it, but it doesn’t matter.
I’d rather feel you beating against my throat when I walk
than my hands against the soundproof glass,
miming an SOS to the praying mantis on the other side.
The night I called from an empty classroom,
I dreamt my throat was stuffed with long yellow feathers.
I split my arms till they became wings,
did a danse macabre off the tallest building I could find.
Anything, anything to stop my headless shadow.
The next day the sun shone as if I wasn’t
a crater with a body, hollowed out
by foreign palms searching my wounds.
They left the pulp on a conference room table
for me to scoop into a mason jar.
It’s sat on my nightstand ever since,
muted buzzes coming from under the lid.
Today I revel in our shared names,
try to handle myself the way you held
the fledgling in the front yard,
make myself believe I deserve cupped hands, soft edges.
Above all, that even betrayed by my own scent,
you would have loved me anyway.

Auden Eagerton is a non-binary poet located in Kennesaw, Georgia. They received a Bachelor of Arts in English, as well as a minor in Film Studies, at Kennesaw State University. Their interests lie heavily in studying American literature and poetry. In addition to publishing their own poetry, Eagerton aims to one day become an editor for a literary magazine and be involved in both sides of the publishing process. Their work has been featured in Exhume Literary Journal, Cathexis Northwest Press, LandLocked Magazine, Across the Margin, DASH Literary Journal, The Bookends Review, The Orchards Poetry Journal, Digging Through the Fat/Digging Press, and is upcoming in peculiar, The Meadow, and Kudzu.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “The Astronaut” by Rachel Glass

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The Astronaut

One day, I’ll look out of my bedroom window
and smile, even if the world is ending.

The world is ending,
I tell my doctor.

My doctor tells me I shouldn’t fantasize
about smiling out of my bedroom window.
Smiling out of my bedroom window
is the opening scene, of a sitcom based on my life.

The sitcom based on my life makes others laugh.
Others laugh, and I am jealous because I cannot laugh.
I cannot laugh because I am too tired.

I am too tired,
is something else I tell my doctor.

I tell my doctor,

I am an astronaut,
readjusting to a normal life.

This normal life is making me homesick:
I miss the emptiness of space, and being wrapped in stars.
Being wrapped in stars is a distant memory,
and now, I am wrapped in blankets.

I am wrapped in blankets because a normal life
has too many people, too much noise,
and too much gravity, holding me in my bed.
In my bed is where I am happy.

I am happy when I’m alone,
I tell my doctor.

I tell my doctor,

I am happy,
even though my world is ending.

 

Rachel Glass currently lives in Scarborough, England and has been writing poetry since she was was sixteen. She has had a number of poems published on the Poetry Society’s website and a poem was featured in a Valley Press anthology. She is usually found writing, drinking hot chocolate and wearing glittery shoes.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “To women who have never known Amazonia” by Liza Wolff-Francis

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To women who have never known Amazonia

Dear endangered curves,
Dear blossoming then sagging breasts,
Dear shoulders in wait,
Dear curious vulva,
Dear fairy tale princesses and your witches,

There is a landscape not impossible
for freedom of women.

Trees of proud limbs,
where leaves whisper poems to sky.
Earth savory, fingers to lips.
Its scent in rain
like the imagination of clouds,
fog over trails of fern and animal,
brisk air in nostrils, inside cheeks
like the creation of taste buds,
in lungs, stomach, and toes.

An interpretation of paradise,
this place holds always
the possibility of disappearing,

Weeks, months, lifetimes
of us working beside each other,
sharing space under day and moon.

It took time for us to get here,
and it first meant leaving
those places where we start out
at the bottom, to create a world
where women are the hive
and also the bees.

Where, you might ask, is a place like that?
Where women are valued for who they are,
not for what they can give?

Not for babies we can birth,
or how we can serve you,
or for the stars between our thighs,
and not for our lullabies.

There is only one place I know.
I would tell you to come
if I thought it was safe. If I thought
I could spell out clear instructions
on how to arrive, if I thought you
would easily arrive alive, I would tell you.

Dear doubter,
Dear captive woman,
Dear woman lost to patriarchy,
Dear body in danger,
Dear self, seeking safety,
Dear traveler,
Dear imagination,
Dear world changer,

If you want to come and can make it here,
this is your invitation.

With love,

Liza Wolff-Francis is a literary artist with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. Her writing has appeared in Steam Ticket, eMerge, Minute Magazine, Poetry Pacific, Edge, and on various blogs. She has a poetry chapbook out called ‘Language of Crossing’ (2015, Swimming With Elephants Press).

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Habitual Healing” by Timothy Kelly

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Habitual Healing

The body has a way of remembering
the habits that we create.

Some call it muscle memory,
While others say they are instinctual,

Like the way I hold her hand:
With mine covering her thumb and index finger

Because my hand is so much larger.
We can’t hold them any other way,

It doesn’t feel right otherwise.
One day, I drove the streets I knew

Remembering the charred house
That has been replaced.

I can still feel the dresser, the carpet,
And the heat on my back

As I searched the way since I was taught:
Crawl, Reach, Sweep. Crawl, Reach, Sweep.

Habits are created because they’re obvious
And they are easy.

The dishes are easier to place in the sink
Rather than wash them right away

And laundry is best left in the basket
Because who actually has time to fold it?

Flaws are simple to infuse into my thoughts
because they stare me in the face

Who wants to have a scavenger hunt
For the things they like about themselves?

Habits are a thought process
Built over time, cues and triggers

A call for help, is a call for help,
No matter where you are.

Which is why “off duty” does not exist
And work does not stay at the office.

The back of a plane simply
becomes a much smaller ambulance

The whining engines now sirens
Descending upon our destination

This does not mean that you cannot change
But that it needs to become more obvious.

Gradual steps create new patterns
on a journey to a reward:

Acceptance, that overflowing dishes are okay
Laundry will be folded in time

That you are okay the way you are
And you will become who you need to be

 

Tim is a Healing Artist, social worker and volunteer Firefighter/EMT. As an Introvert trained to appear extroverted, he creates to share in the human experience with you and is always interested in hearing your story.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Skin Deep, a love poem” by Rivka Nomberg

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Skin Deep, a love poem

Knit and purl.
It’s a herringbone world.
We’re sewn together
and together, we sow
one cell at a time,
integumentary rhyme,
a molecular snare.
We’re a pair!
Like socks,
adorned and adored
one by the other,
stitched over hoop
and overstitched raw;
the zigzag law of
love knots:
tight, loose,
parallel, cross.
All into rising
ribbons of flesh
over branches of bone,
a wreath of wrinkles.
Baby’s breath
tucked into continents of coral.
Wrapped,
we’re open.
Dermatoglyphs, whorled,
bind at the tips
of loving and tying
until all is counted;
but not unraveled,
not dying.

 

Rivka Nomberg comes from a family of Talmudic scholars, doctors, and woodworkers. Her interests include gardening, cooking, medicine, and raising teenage boys. She lives in Arizona.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Body Talk” by Sara Brown

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Body Talk

Days stretch like unruly vinca vine spilling out of upright, Bernardo red geranium baskets; we snip them with tough-handed scissors and Katie weaves them into crowns to place upon our heads, tiny limelight leaves cascading over our faces.

Nights are short as flats of youthful monoecious begonias sprouting, thick with moisture, heavy. I dream of unloading dust-bottomed trucks and wake myself in sleep as my arms support imaginary trays and pass empty air onto my spare pillow, rolling beads of sweat tucked behind my ears for the demand of a defeated body even sleep cannot stop.

The heat scoops out the mind, replaces it with rhizomes and rootstalks grasping at water. I see petals pressed to my eyelids. It is more than just labor I exchange for paper, it is the way I learn to breathe, reaching for water like flora, beginning to crave the burn of sunlight in any enclosed space.

I trade in smooth skin for dirt ingrained into each lined path of my fingerprint, collections of bruises I hold on my legs; the slopes of kneecaps, deep blue like that of fertilizer droplets onto sundried concrete.

Pushing hot metal loading carts of hanging Boston ferns, I rely on brass guitar hamstrings, twisted tight, and round back corners of greenhouse plastic to spill out with the backfield breeze tucking more water behind my ears. The peppers grow in the adjacent field, sun hats and beaten flannels hunch to pick lines. I count my steps and check at lunch, rubbing ice in paths across my calves.

My stomach dives a flip when I see the tapeners, a vine and plant tying tool, under the counter next to the sandwich bag of stale cigarettes. August, burning, I spent days propping up hungover shoots of blackberry plants, plump black fruit at the tips, clinging to stems. Hot blackberries melted on our tongues as we tried to keep count of the early crop, tried to coerce photosynthesis into biting its own tongue as we snipped off the white flower buds.

No one grabs my weight, assists my kneecaps when I collapse in iron-efficient orange dirt, my body pushing up dust into nostrils. Buckets for catching weeds thrown in the air sit at the wood line, good containers for vomiting out heat stroke. I heave the remnants into the flower graveyard back towards the edge of the property, where my DNA and failed, moldy bulbs of lilies meld together, hold a plot in the fertile soil where pansies sprout up each spring. The life always returns.

I walk at the end of October, retire my bones until the next planting season. In our language of the flower, the root, the bee, what can you say about a woman and her body that mine has not already said?

Sara Brown received her BA in literature with a concentration in creative writing from Stockton University in December 2018. I have had my photography published in Into the Void, Midwestern Gothic, Camas, and my poetry and creative nonfiction in Tiny Leaf, the Raw Art Review, Permafrost, and Toho Journal.

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Memory By Scent” by Betsy Littrell

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Memory By Scent

Betsy Littrell

Sitting under a pine tree
in the grass, my son plays
with a plastic sphere, trying to move
a tiny steel ball through
a maze, his tongue out
as he concentrates. A daughter
pushes her mother
in a wheelchair next to
the park, and they both
smile at us, the same
smile, from the same
face, one with deeper
wrinkles and wiser
eyes. I wonder if the mother
is from the memory care center
across the street and if a twilight
walk is their evening routine.
Their smiles tell me the story
of why the nursing home
was built next to a place
filled with the cracks
of baseball bats and children’s
shrieks. I start
to count my son’s
eyelashes, and I name
all five freckles on the right
side of his face. And the lone pine
suddenly smells like an entire forest.

 

Betsy Littrell is a whimsical soccer mom to four boys, working on her MFA in creative writing at San Diego State University. Her recent or forthcoming publications include Little Patuxent Review, Adanna, San Diego Poetry Annual, The Road Not Taken, Prometheus Dreaming and Literary Mama among others. In addition, she volunteers with Poetic Youth, teaching poetry to underserved elementary students.

 

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: 2.0 by Sahar Fathi

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2.0

Today, midday
While walking down the street
I inhaled and smelled Iran
And for a moment
I forgot my people were
Banned 2.0
Travel restricted
With bills pending for
Sanctions
And preemptive force
To rain bombs
On my cousins
For a moment
I forgot the hate and
Instead
I smelled the honeysuckle
In my grandmother’s front yard
And I was
Transported to the bazaars
Filled with people
Who look like me
Who tweeze one eyebrow
Into two
Like me
Who can pronounce my name
Properly
People descended
From poets like Rumi
And super hero attorneys
Like Shirin Ebadi
For a moment I forgot
My blood shot eyes
And my pounding headache
From restless nights
And aggressive headlines
Spewing lies
For a moment
I was just me
Unapologetically
Bound between two countries
Me

Previously published in ‘ARTS by the People’ on March 21.

Sahar graduated from the University of Washington Law School and is a member of the New York bar. She also earned a Masters in International Studies from the University of Washington, and graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California with a dual Bachelor of Arts in French and International Relations. Additionally, Sahar attended the Sorbonne Université in Paris, France from 2003-2004 and received a diploma in International and European Law from the Université Jean-Moulin in Lyon, France in 2008. She has served as adjunct faculty at both Seattle University and the University of Washington School of Law. Sahar is a past president and co-founder of the Middle Eastern Legal Association of Washington, as well as the founder of its Legal Clinic – the first Middle Eastern Legal Clinic in the country. She is a past board member for the ACLU, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and the UNA – USA. She is a current board member for One America Votes. She has been published in the Seattle Journal for Social Justice, the Seattle Journal of Environmental Law, and the Gonzaga Law Review. Her poetry has been printed in ‘Writers Resist’ and the ‘Writers Resist: Anthology (2018).’ It has also been featured in the Feelings journal and Not Your Mother’s Breastmilk. Her favorite Persian dish is Fesenjoon, and in 2016 she finally mastered her Tadiq technique.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Carrion Are We” by James Redfern

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Carrion Are We

a hostile takeover broke
egg all upon the faces
of the fucks
standing with their limp handles
bent down over their useless hands

a harsh wind blew rain
up underneath the flashing,
and all the fiery steeds
went unfed for yet another night

foreign soldiers ran the borders,
all the senators were set awash
in blood and excrement,
and then the hammer came down
as spotlights were drawn
upon the intersections of the Interstates
all across this mighty and curséd continent

a thousand heads must fall
and then a thousand more
again and again
until the end of the day
on into the darkness of night
and on into the bleeding
of a new morning
and around and back again
and again
until the long count is filled up
one more time with emptiness

when rabid dogs run the monkeys
even the most noble lion
must stand alone
against the frothing jaws
in order to survive
the geared teeth of the meated machine

clinical sociopaths
back-alley thugs
and broken malcontents
enlisted and elevated by corporations
to worship profit above all else
to run the world
to plant false flags
to make immoral boasts
and spread the truth so thin
it slices through synapses
and breaks the yoked backs
of all the rest
somehow still remaining halfway sane

angry belief and lustful faith
turn preachers and pimps
into pry bars straining
to tear freedom down
and topple all the best of us
into the pool of shit they call the status quo

crucified butchers run the highway lines,
evangelists keep raping children,
heads is tails, tails is heads,
and peace officers keep squeezing
the life out of the lungs
of citizens without power
or caught alone in the dead of night
or in the light of day

nailed to both my hands
are wounds of justice
left to kill
until this here body dies
in the shadows of greater
men and women
who came and went before
and hereafter

hands for nails
nails for hands
the rabid jaws always
tear the wings
from the ribs
and the first meat had
is always the heart
thereby lost
forever in the feast
of carrion

James Redfern was born and raised in Long Beach, California. Redfern is a graduate of Grinnell College. His work has been published by Whizdome Press, Great Lakes Poetry Press, Transcend, Fear and Loathing in Long Beach, and elsewhere. He is the author of several novels (most recently HECATOMB) and several volumes of poetry (most recently Catfish in a Bowl Redux).

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Predicated” by M. Eileen

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Predicated

now I sit
with eyes on my wrists
thinking they’re real
thinking they’ll heal
protect and deflect all
ill will, thinking
they’re true, swallowing
pieces of light, staining my smile
and I have to fight battles
that are not easily won.
I fight. and I win.
repeat. repeat. repeat again.
and I do not rest.

so the words bursting from my mouth
volcanic with syllables
and traceable soundwaves
heavy vowels and consonants
slipped and hissed are
suitable signs of a life that’s alive
slightly displeased with boundaries.
blanched like a cloud,
stained with scars of blood vessels, ruptured,
raw my voice creases like
fistfuls of paper
I am swallowing sobs and
choking in the process
my timing precise
I don’t desire condolences while
wishing the guilty the worst

nothing protects against villainy
stomach revolts from hypocrisy

 

“Predicated” was previously published in S/tick.

M. Eileen writes near water. Her work has been featured in Hanging Loose, Monkeybicycle, and others. She can be found @m_e_g_writes.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “From the Book of Tobin” by Maggie Hess

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From the Book of Tobin

Not many know the comfort of a yellow lab,
though your soft ears are dust
passing over a waterfall,
I hold on.

Inspired by her transformational battle with schizoaffective disorder, Maggie Hess’s poetry has been widely read. Maggie won the Leidig Poetry Award judged by Linda Pastan and the May B Smith writing award.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Brown’s Legacy” by Amoja Sumler

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Brown’s Legacy

“Fouding Fathers” are the school lunch
today. The patriotism was a bit salty
but the homies were bred on fatback
so we just added hot sauce
and slurped it down anyway.
John took eight years of spoonfuls and walked away hungry
for the flash of the D-boys,
’cause they were ’bout dat ‘rithmetic,
and a little homie had to get paid. He lurks late.

The rest of us stayed
juxtaposed between firm expectations and indoctrination,
Between “I can not tell a lie”, and “I have a dream”
between uniform day and my brother’s passed down shoes.
High I.Q.’s mean little to attention starved kids on test day.
The homie Rob is an alarm startled eye. I am an empty belly.
Mike is field tripping acid,
We are a collective: failing.

Teacher does what she can
a mumble of breath & disappointment.
We bring her apples anyway,
(by way of confiscated smart phones).
The science lesson today was “matter”.

We learned.
We don’t.

A current resident of Washington, DC. Amoja Sumler is a nationally celebrated poet and social activist known for fusing the art of the intellectual into the familiar. As “The Mo-Man,” he has headlined spoken word festivals such as the Austin International Poetry Festival, the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Write NOLA in New Orleans and Rock the Republic in Texas. A member of Arts in Education rosters all over the South for over a decade has seen Amoja serve as a 5 time Poetry Out Loud final judge and an artist in residence to universities and literacy nonprofits across the country. Amoja has also presented at social advocacy conferences like Long Beach Indie Film Pedagogy Conference and Furious Flower as a panelist with The Watering Hole.

Currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Baltimore, he graduated from the University of Arkansas in Little Rock with a Bachelor of Arts in English/Creative Writing a William G. Coopers English Scholar and a Ronald McNair Fellow. H has dedicated himself to the concepts of knowledge, action, and voice.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “The Cuff of That One Sweater” by Mycah Miller

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The Cuff of That One Sweater

one day in our future I’ll paint for you in a room filled with more color than I can see right now and you’ll come in to greet me and after we’ve kissed hello we’ll realize I left paint on the collar of your favorite shirt and I’ll laugh and you’ll sigh and I’ll tell you not to worry because in all these long years I know now to paint only with that that can be washed away, I’ve learned now the importance of solubility because what good is love if it doesn’t teach you how some things need to be dissolved sometimes in order to savor the self-professed blessed and you’ll remind me of that one sweater that I have with paint on its wrist in an entirely different color than your new additions but you’ll call it the same anyway and remind me how you’ve learned that while you’ve loved this holy thing you’ve always seen how my ink bleeds seem to leave behind more than I think they will and this too, is a type of compromise.

 

Mycah Miller is a Santa Cruz, CA-based poet, artist, and student, and most recently was a member of the 2018 Legendary Collective Slam Team, the winners of the 2018 Southwest Shootout held in Albuquerque. She currently attends SJSU as an English major. She creates art as an escape from and commentary on the outside world in a continuous attempt to both understand and connect with others. Her poetry is done on whatever paper, napkin, or phone is closest, and her art is done with various materials in various places in various bursts of sudden inspiration. In her free time, she can be found not writing enough, drinking tea, and riding her motorcycle(s). Her work is a protest, a love letter, and a canvas she has weaved herself thoroughly into. She can be contacted through her facebook page “Mycah Miller Art,” Instagram @MycahMillerArt, or emailed at mycahmillerart@gmail.com.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “A Missing Love Letter” by Liza Wolff-Francis

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A missing love letter

lost, hidden under a flower
when the moon was a mouthy
revolutionary, its paper unfolding

from yellow petals, its words,
a design meant only for you.
All of the cyclones of this life,

sharp curve hip of color and line.
The words we hear and don’t,
the sound, the noise, all of it

is the outbreath of the deflection
of the moon when it is full.
Its waves are the ways we call

each other, the footprints of stories,
drip paint scrawl, as if we try
to understand each other through love.

I loved you once
and as my letters to you were lost,
so were our moments.

 

 

Liza Wolff-Francis is a literary artist with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She was co-director for the 2014 Austin International Poetry Festival and on the 2008 Albuquerque Poetry Slam Team. She has a poetry chapbook called Language of Crossing (SWEPublications).

 

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Bloodletting” by Rene Mullen

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Bloodletting

When someone bleeds
the brakes of a car, nobody asks
“What’d you do to your arm?”

When a levy is drained
to keep the floods from destroying
that which it protects, nobody
says, “Hey, you know that ain’t healthy.
That ain’t natural.”

Painting on your body is both beautiful
and telling.

When I see a new tattoo
I praise the artist savior
keeping dams from giving in.
I thank the still breathing canvas
for allowing the pressure
to be bled out.

I thank my lucky stars
at least one more canvas
knows there’s a difference
between drawing out dark pigments
and tearing the canvas apart.

Rene Mullen is managing editor for a public relations company in Albuquerque, a performance and traditional poet, and a mental health advocate. Mullen is also one of two 2018 Albuquerque Slam Champions and member of three slam teams that have been on multiple regional and national stages. Their poetry and fiction has been featured in Peachfish Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, 50 Haikus, and Stronger Than Stigma: Poetry from the 2019 Mindwell Poetry Slam Team. Their poetry focuses primarily on mental health and family.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Stroke” by Robin Scofield

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Stroke

The last night he was marked
as a whole self, Jackie spent drinking,
smoking, and looking splendid.

But within the body, an occult signifier—
a bolt of electricity—arced across his brain,
and no one could sense the cerebral infarction.

They were out drinking as usual. He slurred
his words as usual, releasing the usual
university 101 liberal arts professor repartée

while mute blood vessels in his right
brain hollowed. The empty spaces struck
him down as though a lion

had stroked his cheek. One half of his face
stricken. His sleep was stuporous.
Neither thrombosis in the Circle of Willis

nor vascular constriction was visible,
but the lack of signal stood out the next morning
when he tried to stand up and hit the floor instead.

The half-self left to him he could not bear.
Stage left lost in his tangled neurons.
What signs he painted on his body

that last day, I have no right to know.
He died on Yom Kippur, his final atonement.
With his good right hand, he wanted to unseal

all vessels and veins to picture his defeat
on the wall that must be painted over
one too many times.

Robin Scofield, author of Flow (Street of Trees Projects), winner of the Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association, has poems appearing in Ponder Review, The Main Street Rag, and Mocking Heart Review. She writes with the Tumblewords Project in El Paso and attends the San Miguel Poetry Week.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Red Mist” by Scott Wiggerman

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Red Mist

Home is but a footprint
hardened deep in his heart.
Not a word from family
since he left Georgia for Texas
two decades ago as a teen,
not a chance he’ll seek them out—
pride tenacious as nutmeat to a shell;
his disease, the stain on the fingers.

Some nights his ache for love
is so labored, he wakes
with blood on his tongue,
a sour excretion on the sheets.
He lies for hours in moonlight,
a barren stretch of rock,
watching clouds murk away the glow.

Mornings, with arms
that can barely lift his torso,
with legs unsteady without a cane,
he stumbles to the bathroom
and slouches naked before a mirror.
Though the flesh is sexless,
a patchwork of sags and sores,
he puckers his lips
like a grand Southern belle,
stares disaster in the face,
and reaches for his favorite lipstick.

 

Scott Wiggerman is author of three books of poetry, Leaf and Beak: Sonnets (finalist for the Texas Institute of Letters’ Helen C. Smith Memorial Award), Presence, and Vegetables and Other Relationships; and editor of several volumes, including the best-selling Wingbeats: Exercises & Practice in Poetry (I & II) and three anthologies of Southwestern poetry, most recently, Weaving the Terrain.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “49 years of bargaining” by Scott Ferry

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Featured Writers, Sunday Poem, Weekly Write

49 years of bargaining

8: I don’t believe in Santa Claus anymore, so why
should I believe in you? Old man with a white beard
holding a stick. One has a red coat, one has a golden coat.
I know my dad doesn’t think you are real.
Are you also the God of aliens? Of dolphins?

12: I will have better luck in a swim race if I do good things,
like pick up gum wrappers, discarded A & W cans
on the pool deck before the race. I don’t care
if people think I am weird if it makes me go faster.
God, that race did not feel different, it felt terrible.
I did those things and I didn’t better my time. Where did I get
the idea that God rewards good deeds? I’m never doing that again.

17: There has to be something more
than just praying to get things. Everyone
is so focused on their chicken sandwiches, or their car’s new rims,
or their Ivy Leagues. I am rarely lucky and I have to grind
my ass off in the pool to get a scholarship and maintain a 4.0
and try to ask out Katy but I know she doesn’t like me
because I look like I am 14. I roll the rock up…

18: The sky is clicking and the incense tastes
like lemon lavender and the asphalt ripples under my legs.
How do I speak with this LSD silvering my sinuses?
When do the doors open to see the Grateful Dead?
The sky blooms inside veins and cherry stems pulse.
Someone looks at me and she looks like God with echo pupils.
I was wrong. Every molecule springs with words.

21: I can’t have a baby now. Please, whatever Old Man
with whatever robe. Forgive me. I am going to ask her to end it.
I will have to find money. She cries, I harden and dry in the parking lot
next to her car. I know people do this. I never thought I would be one.
Now I have something to cut off my body to repay.
I bury my reasons for praying. I promise nothing.
I blame and remember, even though I leave myself for a while.

24: Father, you are going. Where? I saw you deflate
as I gripped your shoulder. Your presence around me
deafens the blinking machines and crow-call alarms.
Let him go, nurses. Let him go to wherever he is going.
He rejoins where nothing can be broken.

28: I have tried to open every image for my students
by reading novels out loud, by using all of my light
to shine out until, Lord, my liver and lungs and kidneys
lie empty as damp shells and my hands shake.
This is not why I came here, is it?

35: My wife cheated on me
and I have been a good husband and she loves someone else.
God damn you! Why did I love and waste years?
We did laugh but she never wanted to have sex.
Why didn’t I realize? Why, God, did I have to witness
every vow starve on the ends of wires?

36: This glowing girl? She is interested in me?
The starlings bring each crushed bit of wing into
a bright body, three hundred birds turn in unison
over the rocks of the jetty at Westport,
our feet red and brown in the evening sun.

41: Nausea and waking to a well
that bounds with heartbeats. If this anxiety persists,
I don’t know if it is feasible to continue.
Why did you place me in this terrible workplace?
Do I believe in you enough to blame you?
I cannot reason with the howling and thrashing. I cannot eat.
This is the only time I don’t want to live.
And every morning I wake again.

42: My daughter, pink twisted scream of glass
coming out of her uterus and into our hands.
Thank you, God. I can’t swallow all the passion.
Our boat tips in the swell, tears and milk pour off the deck.
I forgive by virtue of drowning.

45: The screen cracks because of my addiction.
All lies open and darken our new house,
the windows full of flies, the basement and attic
full of rats chewing on our bonds like spies.

46: I will clean and promise again.
Salt into gums, rat feces under nails.
Years of telling the real truth
and tearing the groin from its fixations.
My love, my God, all the soiled covers come off the words.
I did this myself, God. Don’t take credit.

49: Pregnant again?
I don’t know whether to curse you or praise you
for delivering on our wishes so quickly.
Please God, let the child be healthy and whole.
I won’t tell you what I am willing to sacrifice to make that so.
You might just demand it.

 

Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as an RN. He has recent work in Cultural Weekly, KYSO Flash, Slippery Elm, Prometheus Dreaming, and many others. He was a finalist in the Write Bloody Chapbook Contest in 2019. His first collection The only thing that makes sense is to grow comes out in January 2020 from Moon Tide Press.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “The Dimensions of Your Soul” by Gary Beaumier

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

The Dimensions of Your Soul

Your body ate itself in your final days
temples hollowed as
food diverted to your lungs
the doctor said it’s like drowning
–shallow panicked breaths–
morphine pumps to soothe your passage
administered by your children
I kissed your forehead
and told you I loved you
hoping it would get past the drug haze
so you’d take my feeble expression
with you

Then I drove to open spaces
and followed a braiding of clouds
at the far edge of the lake
that made me think of your spine
when I washed your back a week before
each knot of clouds
your vertebrae
I watched you join the sweep of sky
as it made its procession North
to a dark unpeopled land
elk herds migrating across starlit tundra
and you there in all of it
I spoke to the moon that took your face
and the constellations that outlined you
and this time I felt like you could hear me…

 

Gary Beaumier has a degree in English Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has been a finalist for the Luminaire Award for his poem titled “Ten Cents” as well as the Joy Bale Boone Award for his poem “The Migratory Habits of Dreams in Late Autumn”. His chapbook “From My Family to Yours” has been published by Finishing Line Press. His poem “The Rio Grande” was nominated for the “Best of the Net” award and he won first prize for Streetlight Magazine for his poem “Night Train to Paris.” He was a finalist for the New Millenium Writings for his poem “From Certain Distances in Space I Still See My Brother”. He was recently shortlisted for the Charles Bukowski contest from Raw Arts Review for his poem “Ghosting”. He has been a teacher, a bookstore manager and a gandydancer for one summer a long time ago. He used to build wooden sailboats.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Adrift” by Gina Marselle

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Adrift

I lost a world the other day.
Has anybody found?
You’ll know it by the row of stars
Around its forehead bound.
—Emily Dickonson

an entire moon cycle of loneliness
colliding in quiet array.
Standing here, inside an art gallery—
in a room, full of people—
she’s holding a cup of ginger tea,
a page of poetry.

She looks brave.

She’s in a box
trapped
inside a midnight sky without stars.

Over there—
a lone cottonwood stands
on the banks of the Rio Grande.
It looks strong, capable of holding common ravens
or shading a weary runner.
But if you touched it, it is hollow inside.

How can one explain
loneliness
to someone who has never felt alone?

You can’t, it’s one of those things that
can’t be explained.
When wrapped in anxiety
or depression
or anything, categorically.

There isn’t anything more sad
than in bed with a pristine white,
goose down comforter over her head
imaging her coffin nailed shut.

NPR’s headlines don’t help.
The divide of the country doesn’t help.
The lost souls of immigration don’t help.
Her husband fighting alcoholism doesn’t help.
You’d never know the sadness
felt inside her battle.
Unless she wrote about it
and read it out loud.
Allowed the words
to blast the page.

But only if she does that.
She’s vulnerable, alone on a stage.

an entire moon cycle of loneliness
colliding in quiet array.
Standing here, inside an art gallery—
in a room, full of people.
She’s holding a cup of ginger tea,
a page of poetry.

She is brave.

Gina Marselle resides in New Mexico with her husband and children. She is a teacher, poet, and photographer who happily owns a rescue horse and dog. She has published a number of poems and photographs in many local anthologies and has a full length published book titled, A Fire of Prayer: A Collection of Poetry and Photography (Swimming with Elephants Publications, 2015). Please find more information about Gina’s work from her publisher at https://swimmingwithelephants.com/ and/or follow her on Instagram @gigirebel.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “this bird” by Katrina K Guarascio

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

this bird

never learned to nest
allowed feathers to fall
without a thought to
where they may land

I too
am on the wing
telling stories of lives
I could never take apart

this bird breaks to pieces
part of the puzzle that
wedged creation together

this birdsong
sweet as time
reaches never touches

where should I muck to
if not back into myself

too many nests
not enough places
to sit and stir

a myth is true only when
it is sung on morning’s breath

let the ink be ink
the guitar be guitar

let song be song

 

Katrina K Guarascio is an educator, writer, publisher, and community organizer. 

A lifelong writer, she has been published in various ezines, magazines, and anthologies. She also spent time on the performance stage, touring across the country in 2011 and participating in NPS in 2015, before hanging up her microphone. She is the author of two chapbook collections, two out of print collections, and three current books through Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC.

Katrina K Guarascio lives gratefully and happily in New Mexico with the love of her life. She continues to write, perform, and publish her own writing on the website Flower and Sun.

    “Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology. Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Seed Memory” by Liza Wolff-Francis

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Seed Memory

“The future of food must be reclaimed by women.”
Vandana Shiva

Most farmers in India are women,
wrapped in wheat-soaked
pink and yellow under
the dome of cerulean sky.
Spiced recipe, a moonlit field
growing thousands
of women who will harvest
cycles of hunger.

Stale breadcrumbs scattered,
high-priced seeds pressed
into palms, the scratch
of their patent like an allergy.
The threat of death in the dirt
under fingernails at sunset,
labor’s brief hiatus.

When the memory of a seed
no longer recognizes itself
in the till of the crop, in bent
backs, calloused hands,
the dance of sun and rain
and careful tender of land,
a woman’s freedom
has already been
bought and sold.
This, they say, is all
in the cost
of going forward.

Mornings await,
heat heavy in the soil,
in the thunderous
voices waiting to hatch.
Hold on to the seeds.

 

Liza Wolff-Francis is a literary artist with an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. She was co-director for the 2014 Austin International Poetry Festival and on the 2008 Albuquerque Poetry Slam Team. She has a poetry chapbook called Language of Crossing (SWEPublications).

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “say when” by corey ruzicano

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

say when

when the moon was a thumbnail
and the sky was still paint
i loved you
still and blue and dark against my own palms
heavy in the safe house of my throat
i choked on all the unuttered letters.
i learned.

when the moon was a coin
and the land was still page
i loved you
static over song
lighting pop of sunshine soda
a rumble overhead
a sky cracked open
a sudden happening—
i held
everything
and then nothing.
i learned.

when the moon was a bone
and the night was still kind
i loved you
sharp edged and secret
in the smooth stone stream
jagged and graceless
eyes adjusting
not-quick-enough
to the dusk everywhere descending.
i ran before the dust could settle
i learned.

when the moon was a pearl
and the sun was
the sun
i loved you.
and love you
and stumble
and stew
and struggle
and stay
and continue to
love you.
and learn.

remember
the moon
is only a mirror
she shines
because you do.

 

corey ruzicano is a producer/writer/educator from the san francisco bay area. while pursuing her bfa at emerson college she went through the creative producing program under p. carl and david dower, and continues to write for howlwound. she has completed apprenticeships at the lark, the orchard project and the 52nd street project. she has been the creative projects manager of jeanine tesori’s studio, siena music and a broaderway, where she also teaches writing and leadership to young women. she has managed the intern program at second stage theater and fellowships and awards for new dramatists and aids in making space for writers of all kinds and created community engagement programs for rattlestick playwrights theater. she is the executive producer of words on white, an art and conversation initiative. with all her work, she seeks to empower voices and stories that encourage more empathic communities and a better understanding of one another.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.

Weekly Write: “Tommy Gun Boy” by Haolun Xu

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Tommy Gun Boy

Haolun Xu

it’s a remarkable thing, to see a town that trusts.
i come in to thame street with all the shining people
wearing my dirty yakuza-suit and my face looking like a tommy-gun.
i’m the only foreign man, walking through this area and i pass by white families
that all collectively wear the same khaki flag. and yet,
they don’t see me in their happiness.

now within the town is a small building by the sea, and to my horror i can walk right in.
i don’t need an invitation, so i waltz in,
where the small staircases lead to a beautifully empty library.
it’s a demonstration by the whole town,
because who would steal or ruin such dusty and venerable naval books,
and alongside the library is a small room with no people in it.

when i walked in i notice pillows on the floor and gasped,

gasped because it’s a room for praying and it’s open to everyone.
who owns this room, i say out loud, a ghoul lost within a safe-house –
who takes it upon themselves to make such a small study,
an altar within a library
within a town
within a person’s heart
within a person to violate in privacy

 

Haolun Xu is 24 years old and was born in Nanning, China. He immigrated to the United States in 1999. He was raised in central New Jersey and is currently studying Political Science and English at Rutgers University. Transitioning from a background in journalism and activism, he spends his time between writing poetry and the local seashore.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2020 Anthology.

Click here check out the 2019 Anthology:  Trumpet Call; a Swimming with Elephants Anthology available for only $12.95.