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NEW RELEASES!!!

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Our first official releases since our relaunch are now available for direct purchase with the authors and editors, and at select bookstores across California! IN ADDITION, You can get Honeysuckle and Nightshade by Brennan Defrisco here, and you can get Reflections: Mirrors to the Queer Experience by email order ONLY redwoodreflections@gmail.com, as they are a limited edition with less than 200 available copies. There will be a ton of more information coming soon, THANK Y’ALL FOR YOUR PATIENCE!!!!!

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: “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: “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: “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: “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: “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: “Memory By Scent” by Betsy Littrell

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Featured Writers, Weekly Write

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: “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: “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: “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: “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.

Weekly Write: “An Open Letter to 5 AM” by Jessica Parascandola

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Featured Writers, Weekly Write1 Comment

An Open Letter To 5 AM

An open letter to 5 am
Dear you
You are the hour of early commuters and hungry college students
The hour of sleepy sex and
Am I still…. Drunk?
People rarely roll over and smile into the stars in your eyes
You are more regularly met with raspy groans and a marathon of snooze buttons
Dear you
You are the hour of book worms
And the last 100 pages of a six book series
You hold the lonely people of the world against your chest and offer as much comfort as you
can
Brush tears from cheeks with whispers of a few more minutes of sleep
Dear you
You are nervous
Wrapped around the comfort of the night like a child clinging to a mother’s leg
You are restless
Arms outstretched eyes wide
Fumbling in the dark
Tripping over dreams that rolled out of heads some time around three
You are sweaty palms
Swiped briskly across tangled sheets
And gasping into consciousness
Dear you
You are the hour of sitting cross crossed on the couch and rolling eyes at the news
You smell like coffee and exhaust pipes
You are full of angry crimson tail lights and bleary eyed confusion
Dear you
Thank you
For being the hour that I most easily remember the way my grandfather used to greet you
noisily
For keeping him tucked gently between his palms
And allowing me to cry for all the times he will never wake me for you
You are the hour of bittersweet memories
Of salt trails on cheeks
Of rough hands
And callused feet
The hour of sitting on window seats and wishing on stars
And hoping to God that today does not break us
You are the hour of quiet contemplation
And questioning of judgment
Of emotional breakdowns and putting ourselves back together again
Dear you
Thank you
Sincerely
Me

 

I wrote this poem after I lost people that I thought I couldn’t live without, and I had to learn how to rebuild myself without them. It was early in the morning and I was angry. Angry that I was awake and angry that I felt as weak as I did. I wrote it to remind myself to focus on the moment, to take things one step at a time and that every day has the potential to better than yesterday.

 

 

 

“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 Moth is Lying Dead” by James Redfern

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write1 Comment

A Moth is Lying Dead (Reflections on Saint Teresa)

a moth is lying dead
on the windowsill
of a rented room.

her wings are singed
and blackened
with the same sickness
ailing me.

a moth is lying dead
on the windowsill
of a rented room.

fuzzy thorax and little legs
no longer serving
a purpose
save collecting dust
blown in
through the window screen.

a moth is lying dead
on the windowsill
of a rented room.

still trying for a little more light
even as her mind
has moved on to another place,
still trying for one last fix
her wings burnt
and blackened already.

a moth is lying dead
on the windowsill
of a rented room.

the elegant patterns
of black and brown
on the backs of her wings
still visible
within the stinging chorus
of sirens’ seductive singing
telling tales of Icarian glory.

a moth is lying dead
on the windowsill
of a rented room.

lifeless and still,
no more flying and flittering
around blinding light
burning through sockets,
no more prison
inside the screen
feeling the sun from so very far away,
no more thoughts divine,
no more musing
on the way
the planets go round,
no more love
in her tiny, broken,
dusty little heart,
no more singing
in chorus with other wingéd
creatures crazy and running the skies,
no more nothing
save the final slow decay.

no more black-eyed friendships,
no more trying to score,
no more understanding
the loss of god on earth,
no more leaning into fire
until the fuzz and flesh burn off,
no more chains,
no more gravity,
no more waiting on death,
no more contemplation
of the longing
for an elsewhere messiah,
no more flying in circles
betraying subtle imperfections
as they grow ever smaller and tighter,
unflinching and closing in upon destiny
approaching the killing fire
to test the mettle of her soul incarnate
to test the truth of her spiritual love
to see how much she can take
before the burning really takes hold,
no more miscalculation,
no more blues suspended
in aching arching agony flight
somewhere between land and salvation,
no more of this,
no more moth obligations
and no more moth dues to pay,
no more got-no-place-to-land worries,
no more friends
no more expectations
no more ego
no more eyes feeding consciousness
no more living heart pumping blood
no more life
no more nothing.

the fire’s all gone.

a moth lies dead
on the windowsill
of a rented room.

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: “neither are the sunflowers” by Kat Heatherington

On By awhitetrashpoetIn News, Weekly Write

neither are the sunflowers

under the bluegreen door
a girl is dancing
barefoot on the sidewalk,
her long white legs
in the sunlight,
surefooted,
ignoring the passersby
while her friend
plays accordion.
her brown hair & dress cry out,
it is autumn,
and i can’t believe
it’s already autumn
the maximillians
have only begun to bloom but
it’s autumn
even in the green grass
i’m not ready yet
and neither are the sunflowers
or the barefoot girl i wish i could be,
dancing
between the sycamores.

 

Kat Heatherington is a queer ecofeminist poet, sometime artist, pagan, and organic gardener. She lives south of Albuquerque, NM in Sunflower River intentional community, sunflowerriver.org. Kat’s work primarily addresses the interstices of human relationships and the natural world. Her work can be read at https://sometimesaparticle.org.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Weekly Write: “My Body Hasn’t Been Mine” by Michelle Dodd

On By awhitetrashpoetIn News, Weekly Write

My Body Hasn’t Been Mine

My body hasn’t been mine
since the pregnancy test.
I can’t stop apologizing for it.
I didn’t learn what warmth feels like,
the sun doesn’t shine underneath my skin.
My body wants to apologize
for not shining from the inside out
Yet, my body is not sorry for resembling yours,
destructive and breathing,

keeping this life line alive.

 

Michelle Dodd is a spoken word artist based out of Richmond, Virginia. She has performed for TedxWomenRVA in 2016. She is a fellow of The Watering Hole Writing Retreat. She was a member of The Writer’s Den Slam Team in 2016 and 2017; a team placing among the top teams in the USA. Dodd has been published in Whurk Magazine, K’in Literary Journal, The Scene and Heard Journal, SWWIM, and Wusgood online magazine. She has self published two chapbooks of poetry in 2017. She is one of the coaches, for the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) CUPSI slam team for 2018, that placed 3rd internationally.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Weekly Write: “Memories Elude Him” by Hollie Ziskind

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Memories Elude Him

Preacher speaking in tongues inside his brain
I haven’t decided whether it’s a disability,
or survival skill, but he can’t remember the name

of the blue tick hound, or where to turn,
what they did for his last birthday,
in the tequila bottle with a worm

folds of cortex hold his days,
still there, waiting for him to return,
to ease them along, onto the page

 

 

Hollie Ziskind is an AWA-certified writing instructor living in Memphis, Tennessee. She’s the founder of Pen & Portal, an online outlet where people can celebrate shared experiences through the exploration of creative writing prompts. Hollie is a mother, a wife, a celebrator of life and a promoter of kindness.

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Weekly Write: “Growth” by Daniel Perez

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Growth

The sun doesn’t kiss my lips anymore
The breeze does not say hello
when it walks by on its way
to wherever it goes when it’s missed

The things I felt would never leave,
a stroke of the hand
on the small of my back,
a head of hair
splayed across my stomach,
have roots in the earth
Their stems have grown past me
into the sky and toward every star

And as those stems burn,
turning to white ash,
I dig microscopic graves
for every piece that falls back down

Stay with me in the black dirt
Stay with me and dig holes
Don’t grow,
so I can feel beautiful again.

Daniel Perez writes poetry, short stories, and plays. He currently lives and writes in Boston, where he enjoys hearing the shrill scream of the Green Line from his bedroom.

Weekly Write: “through the cracks” by Kat Heatherington

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

through the cracks

once on impulse, i planted a hollyhock seed
in a crack between flagstones
near the spigot, where the swamp cooler
dripped erratically in the summer.
the first spring, it put up
four small sturdy leaves,
and i watered it whenever i remembered.
that winter came new love and large changes,
and what with it all, i moved away
leaving the hollyhock to live or die in that crack.
most of the rest of the garden
died of inattention.
two years later, i drive down that street
and glance by reflex toward my old front door,
and i can’t even see it
for the height of that deep green hollyhock,
big leaves bushing up from the flagstones,
not just alive,
but thriving.

 

Kat Heatherington is a queer ecofeminist poet, sometime artist, pagan, and organic gardener. She lives south of Albuquerque, NM in Sunflower River intentional community, sunflowerriver.org. Kat’s work primarily addresses the interstices of human relationships and the natural world. Her work can be read at https://sometimesaparticle.org.

Weekly Write: “Birth Mother” by Michelle Dobbs

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write1 Comment

Birth, Mother

“I drew my first breath,
went back to work the next day,
walked through the threshold,
and never came back.”

– A Figment Of My Imagination
 

Wednesday
September 19th, 1990
2am,
I drew my first breath,
in a room full of strangers.
No one there wanted me.

I was purged,
as if my mother was absolved from me,
as if one night stand was rewritten to just one night,
as if she was pure again,
after the umbilical was severed.

My mother,
went back to work the next day,
I was hours old.
She left,
and never came back,
for me.
I rendered her breathless.
I knew nothing,
of breathing,
just that it had to be done.

I dreamt of it as if I remember
seeing her
get out of the hospital bed,
put clothes on,
tie shoes,
kiss my forehead goodbye,
she                  walked through the threshold
not my mother,
just a passerby.

That day,
I breathed in all the goodbyes I could ever need.

 

Michelle Dodd is a spoken word artist based out of Richmond, Virginia. She has performed for TedxWomenRVA in 2016. She is a fellow of The Watering Hole Writing Retreat. She was a member of The Writer’s Den Slam Team in 2016 and 2017; a team placing among the top teams in the USA. Dodd has been published in Whurk Magazine, K’in Literary Journal, The Scene and Heard Journal, SWWIM, and Wusgood online magazine. She has self published two chapbooks of poetry in 2017. She is one of the coaches, for the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) CUPSI slam team for 2018, that placed 3rd internationally.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Weekly Write: “From Certain Distances In Space I Still See My Brother” by Gary Beaumier

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Sunday Poem, Weekly Write

From Certain Distances In Space I Still See My Brother

Somewhere mother holds you against her breasts in a Chicago flat
— the war winding down —
while she warms a bottle and tests the milk on the tender of her wrist;
“you are my sunshine,” she sings.

Somewhere you sit in a quilted coat
upon a tricycle in front of a red house,
and later still your fastball hisses over
home plate into the strike zone.

Somewhere a man says we all derive from stars,
while a holy person declares we will live forever.

You still succor your fractious babies as you pace a midnight floor.

Only just now a distant planet watches you bend to help a student
or soften your embrace to your wife in the utter dark.

Somehow you glide out of a fifth floor hospital room into a painted twilight,
into streams of cars and trucks and exhaust
as your family holds your emancipated body and rides with you to the edge of life

and somewhere a medical student
peels back what remains of you
to learn the human clockwork.

 

Previously published in Third Wednesday and also The Esthetic Apostle.

In his later years Gary Beaumier has become something of a beachcomber and has self diagnosed with “compulsive walking disorder.” On a number of occasions he has cobbled together wooden sailboats. He is a finalist and semi finalist for the Luminaire Award for several of his poems. He has had three poems published in Flumes Winter 2017 and one poem in Third Wednesday as well as one poem in Chaleur Magazine, The Piltdown Review, The Esthetic Apostle, The Internet Void, an upcoming issue of Raw Arts Review and a recording in Lit_Tapes. He taught poetry in a women’s prison.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Weekly Write: “Leavened Bread” by Katie Barnes

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Leavened Bread

Under the fog of mountains high and cold
My mom decided we would go to mass.
We drove far up the well beaten path of old
To the stone church above the rocky pass.
The congregation stared as we walked in
And lit our melting candles for the dead
Just in time for the service to begin.
The priest screamed out that we were beloved;
Men in the chorus wailed to God their prayer
While folk in the pews tried to reach His ear.
White smoke from the incense strangled the air;
All of us were struck dumb with holy fear.
The priest brought out the icon and I bent
But did not want to take the sacrament.

 

Katie Barnes is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree at Boston University. She splits her time between Boston and New York, but her family is from Greece.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Weekly Write: “Family Planning in the Twenty-Second Century” by Keith Mark Gaboury

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

Family Planning in the Twenty-Second Century

Scrub out mutated genes
giving rise to mutated bodies,
bodies we don’t want
circulating in our better society.

Lewy minds and cancered lungs
float in history, twenty-first century
deaths we’ve vaulted beyond.

Are we ready? Start
with the perfect embryo.
Cells divide
into an engineered self

offering cognitive muscle
and equidistant attractiveness.
This will be our son.
We’re no chickens.

Do you want college achievement
or adaptable intelligence? A love
for ghost peppers and ghost stories?
Wisdom in alleyways?
Fluid improv on the jazz floor?

In the reflection of a customer
picking a rooster to consume,
we pick the pure blueprint
promising sidewalk punch.

 

Keith Mark Gaboury earned a M.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College. His poems have appeared in such publications as Poetry Quarterly, New Millennium Writings, and on the podcast Who Do You Think You Are? Keith is a poet and preschool teacher in Oakland, California.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Weekly Write: “To the Mountain” by Ann Huang

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write

To the Mountain

To the mountain you run from disquiet, listen to the plane overhead,
like road dust on a runway of fallen umbrella-masked men,
all earth’s riddles unite and foreshadow what it contains,
unlike bare maidens with pearl chains on their necks.
The mountains await the animal spoor that might come,
you know a body can expose age and timeless aging,
your mind can dissipate without meeting dark and mundane,
When it hinders a waking soul with whose life it echoes.

Ann Huang is an author, poet, and filmmaker based in Newport Beach, Southern California. She was born in Mainland, China and raised in Mexico and the U.S. World literature and theatrical performances became dominating forces during her linguistic training at various educational institutions. Huang possesses a unique global perspective of the past, present, and future of Latin America, the United States, and China. She is an MFA candidate from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and has authored one chapbook and two poetry collections. Her surrealist poem “Night Lullaby,” was a Ruth Stone Poetry Prize finalist. In addition, Huang’s book-length poetry collection, Saffron Splash, was a finalist in the CSU Poetry Center’s Open Book Poetry Competition. Her newest poetry collection, A Shaft of Light, is set to come out in 2019. Huang’s poems follow the surrealistic gestures that weave between reality and divergent realms of perspective and perception. Her debut experimental short film Palpitations of Dust won Best Experimental Film at the 2017 POPAA (Prince of Prestige Academy Award), Best Film Award at the Los Angeles Film & Script Festival, and Best Experimental Film at the LA Cinema Festival of Hollywood. For more information about the experimental shorts by Ann Huang, visit SaffronSplash.com.

Weekly Write: “Trauma Wagon” by Jason Youngclaus

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Weekly Write1 Comment

Trauma Wagon

The city council is voting on funding
To renovate the park off Visitation Pl. soon
A father will teach his son the crossover step back
Whether or not that cash comes in
A mother will walk with her daughter on the grass path
And remark on the beauty of a tree that’s been there
Since Before Joey Gallo was born
Regardless as well.
The equipment at the newly built batting cages
Will need to be intermittently fixed by a mechanic
Many, many times to ensure
That the sluggers of tomorrow get their swings in.
The mayor won’t have a say in that.
People will move in and out of rent stabilized apartments
No matter what is decided at that table.
An ever increasing number won’t need to bother
With how “rent stabilized” is defined;
Others livelihoods will depend on a few words in a statute.
The local community board will propose improvements, amendments
Respond to noise complaints
And attempt to litigate just about anything else you can imagine
For a long, long time to come.

But here today a rusty scratched cornea on 4 wheels
The deformed, inbred cousin of the prison wagon
Pulls up curbside in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
Out steps a skinny-fat white guy in a stained shirt
He stumbles off the top step
Lights a cigarette and nods at his partner
Who is about to cast another net into a broken home
The familiar Kafkaesque deed that pays his bills, he justifies inwardly.
“Lets do lunch at the Lobster Pound,”
He suggests to the other.
“I should have been a fisherman,”
The other replies.

The innocent are strapped in with an iron padlock
Which forms an incredulous X across their chests
Crossing them out of normality
Crossing them out of whatever stability they had left
Crossing them off the daily list of deliverables for
Of these two roadside bureaucrats
The trauma wagon only goes one of two places:
Group home or foster home.
Many benefactors in the latter category have entered the arena
For the tax write off
And they’re looking for their prize catch.
Sure there are some decent folk out there too but
Would you want your future coming down to
Such a subhuman, crass roll of the dice?

This was all necessary because a yuppie invader,
Organizing with her friends
On numerous occasions picked up a smartphone
Thinking she was doing the right thing —
Because their parents liked to do cocaine and frankly
Had gotten tired of doing it in the bathroom out of sight.
But really because they were noisy
And brought around unseemly characters.
A yuppie who could not tell you the first thing
About rent-stabilization laws.

There are no winners here
Except the yuppies, of course,
Who are now off to brunch to bemoan trivialities
In the company of nobodies.
“I’m proud of myself,” she boasts
As she sips from her third mimosa at 11:00 on a Sunday morning
Imagining those kids frolicking around a lily field at a picnic
And taking pictures with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.

 

Jason Youngclaus graduated from College of the Holy Cross in 2005 with degrees in English and Philosophy. In 2006, he moved to Washington Heights, Manhattan to work as a political operative. He has stayed in NYC ever since, continuing work in this field — and forming the Brooklyn based indie rock outfit, Cuba in 2008. Follow him on Instagram @Jyc_music.

Weekly Write: “Colic Weather” by Gary Beaumier

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Sunday Poem, Weekly Write

Colic Weather

The wind was a bombardment
of ice and snow
that morning when
you returned from the barn
to say your old gelding
had died of colic.

Later I winched him
out of his stall
and carefully dragged him
behind the tractor
to a clearing beyond the pasture.

His plush winters coat
could not conceal
the articulated bone over
his once muscled flank
We knew his last days
we’re nearing.

As you cut off a portion
of his tail with
your pocket knife
for a remembrance
you say to me
“ I never partnered better
on any horse then him.
Too bad humans aren’t
that easy.”
You gave me a hard look
as you snapped the knife shut
and walked toward the house.

The ground
yet unfrozen
yields to the back hoe
and I pack
the earth down over him
so coyotes won’t
dig him up.

When I return to the house
you make me tea
as a peace offering
but that night I hear
the yip and cry
of a pack
over your restless sleep
and I worry things
won’t stay buried
…but then I worry
things will.

 

In his later years Gary Beaumier has become something of a beachcomber and has self diagnosed with “compulsive walking disorder.” On a number of occasions he has cobbled together wooden sailboats.

He is a finalist and semi finalist for the Luminaire Award for several of his poems.
He has had three poems published in Flumes Winter 2017 and one poem in Third Wednesday as well as one poem in Chaleur Magazine, The Piltdown Review, The Esthetic Apostle, The Internet Void, an upcoming issue of Raw Arts Review and a recording in Lit_Tapes. He taught poetry in a women’s prison.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Weekly Write: “Perfection” by Andy Posner

On By awhitetrashpoetIn Sunday Poem, Weekly Write

Perfection

I had thought I lacked for time
And spent my days frantic,
As though life were a web
And death a looming spider, his
Approach inexorable, his mouth
Large enough to swallow whole
My ambitions.

I had thought I lacked for time
And arose each dawn to make up
For yesterday’s failure,
To promise that today I would be perfect;
I bribed the gatekeepers of perfection
With my promises—
“O, let me through!” I begged.
And at night I’d rub my forehead
Where the iron had held me back,
The currency of my promises
Still glistening like anxious sweat in my hand.

For years I pressed my nose to glass
And watched sun, wind, rain, snow
As they whirled past my stationary self
Like a riderless bicycle balanced
By something, someone, I couldn’t see.

I had thought I lacked for time
And raced to outrun the bell
Whose ring might rouse me from my dream,
Only to at last find I was awake and tired
And still holding coins no deity, no therapist, no poet
Would accept—a pauper with a home, a job, a six-figure net worth,
Wanting for nothing, suddenly with time to spare,
Unable to afford even a moment of calm self-reflection.

 

Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. He has had poems published in the Noble / Gas Qtrly, The Esthetic Apostle, and Burningword Literary Journal.

 

 

 

“Like”, “Share”, and comment on this poem to nominate it for the Annual Swimming with Elephants Publications 2019 Anthology.

Click here check out Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018 available for only $10.95.

Get our 2018 Anthology for only $7.95

On By awhitetrashpoetIn News

Due to a successful fundraising event during the month of December, we are able to pass on our good fortune to our amazing readers.

For the month of January 2019, you can purchase our 2018 Anthology: Parade for only $7.95 plus free shipping through Amazon Prime. Click here to order today!

Our goal as a publisher of predominately poetry collections is to get the words of our writers into the hands of our readers, and what better way than to lower the price!

We have many new publications released during 2018, including chapbooks by Paulie Lipman, Bassam, and Manual Montoya,  and full length poetry collections by Wil Gibson, Mary & Aja Oishi, and Beau Williams. But this particular anthology contains work by all of them and many more. Get a wonderful sampling of what Swimming with Elephants Publications does and the work we produce and then find more books by these authors from us or other small presses.