We would like to announce the release of Worn Out Gorgeous by Aaron Ambrose.
Tag: Swimming with Elephants Publications LLC
Weekly Write: “What is Precious is Never to Forget” by Bill Nevins
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
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
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
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: “The Astronaut” by Rachel Glass
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: 2.0 by Sahar Fathi
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: “Predicated” by M. Eileen
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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: “Tommy Gun Boy” by Haolun Xu
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: “Memoirs of the Childless” by James Miller
Memoirs of the Childless
Hours before
pulling out of Hyde Park, it is
suggested that the oil might need
changing. Your engine spins
near-dry,
and the look
on their faces is not unlike
that judgement of parents on the weak,
who have failed to kill the lice
in their children’s
matted hair.
No room
for the dining table
this time—two months
on the lease and you’re leaving
Ikea beige behind. Taste of 1995,
chips ahoy and fuzzed milk,
not a single stain-rim
on its sainted
surface.
Pull off its legs
like a bug in extremis,
roll the flat-top sundial disk
down three flights, slide it behind
the stairs. Turn south to curl
in your mother’s
house,
stretch to touch
floor and ceiling. Another
inch and you’re ready for twenty,
thirty years of
teaching.
James Miller is a native of Houston, though he has spent time in the American Midwest, Europe, China, South America and India. Recent publications include Cold Mountain Review, The Maine Review, Lunch Ticket, Gravel, Main Street Rag, Verdad and Juked.
“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: “Elegy for My Brother-in-Law” by Robin Scofield
Elegy for My Brother-in-Law
Your baby learned to wave bye-bye at lunch today;
of course, he doesn’t know what it means as he giggles
in his yogurt the day your left ventricle seized,
and you fell as you were by the kitchen sink
where you left your lighter. You left my sister,
your 13 month-old son, and another in the womb.
Your six-year relationship ends here with her holding
your hand after they pronounce you dead before
you finished falling. Your cousin Eileen is six.
She’s had her share: little brother run over by a van,
and her mother almost died after bariatric surgery.
Your baby could learn a lot about bye-bye from her.
Greg, your mother collapsed sobbing:
Oh Gregory what have you done
Oh Gregory what have you done
and more in her liturgical Hungarian.
Your father died the same way at the same age, 48.
I’m going to be a different dad this time around,
you said, the day before when you hoisted the baby
in your arms or put him on your knee as you played
piano and wrote a letter to your teenage daughter.
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: “God and Death” by Darryl Lorenzo Wellington
God and Death
God is a long-time neighbor who you used to imagine could become a closer friend – someone that you have become accustomed to judging at a distance.
***
Death is a beautiful woman, infamous, inviolable, sans emotional attachments. She is too beautiful for human emotions. No one remains surprised anymore. No one doubts her majestic impersonality. Strange, then, because tears, cries, and hysterical lamentations accompany her arrival.
***
Death advises. Please marry, or fall in love, or make love in fantasy to shadows lacking corporeal reality. This will lessen the disappointment, the final loss, the bitterness, at the end.
***
Be wary. Stranger.
Life, the felicitous wife; Death, the less kind, less forgiving mistress.
Love yourself less openly. If you love your wife too passionately, too intensely, too proudly, Death, the cryptic, closeted mistress, becomes jealous.
***
Death strews advice like funeral flowers.
Darryl Lorenzo Wellington is poet, essayist, performance artist and journalist living in Santa Fe, NM. His poetry has appeared in Pedestal, Boston Review, Matter Monthly, Drunken Boat, N+1, Yellow Medicine Review, and other places. His collection, Life’s Prisoners, received the 2017 Turtle Island Quarterly poetry chapbook award.
Submissions for our 2020 Calendar are Closed
Thank you to everyone who submitted to our Open Call for Chapbooks and the Weekly Write this year. Our wonderful judges are busy going through the submissions and we hope to have our publishing line up established by the New Year.
If you were not able to submit this time around. Keep your eye open for our next submission period, beginning in October 2020 (unless the world ends).
In the meantime, check out our latest anthology, Trumpet Call, catalog and pick up some of our publications through Bookworks Albuquerque.
Now Accepting Submissions!
Swimming with Elephants Publications is now accepting submissions!
Whether you have a chapbook, short collection, or just a couple of amazing pieces seeking a home, Swimming with Elephants Publications might have a spot for you.
Visit our website and under the submit tab you will find our current Open Calls. The specific guidelines for each call can be viewed on our Submittable page or contact us with any questions.
We do charge a submission fee. To find out why: Click Here.
To learn more about this year’s guidelines for our Chapbook Open Call and meet our guest judges, click here. To be considered for publication during 2020 you must submit before December 15, 2019.
To learn more about the Weekly Write series for the 2020 publication year, and find out how to be our Weekly feature, click here.
We can’t wait to read your work!
Weekly Write: “Upon this Altar” by Gina Marselle
Upon this Altar
Upon this altar for healing,
I place the morning sun with prayers blessed
by my blue glass beads rosary.
Upon this altar for healing,
I place morning meditations—
breath exhales anxieties.
Upon this altar I place time.
The yellow tinged fall morning doesn’t wait,
as the hour passes my son wakes.
He begins his list of questions,
his almost five-year-old self doesn’t rest,
and his first question, “Is today a school day?”
Upon this altar I place husband’s snores,
thankful he is safe, loved, healing—a recovering alcoholic.
Upon this altar of healing,
I place my 17-year-old daughter’s ballet shoes,
her dreams to become a pediatrician or a ballerina.
Upon this altar I place newly learned guitar chords A and E,
sore fingers and encouragement. I place this dream of playing Bach
on classical guitar into reality.
Upon this altar for healing,
I place prayers that this stabbing pain I feel in my gut
will leave. Will find remission. Upon this altar I pray that
this newly diagnosed autoimmune disease will not win.
It is invisible to everyone, but my joints, eyes, intestines are attacked.
How do I fight something unpredictable like Mount Saint Helens erupting?
Upon this altar for healing I place hope
blooming with vibrant colors of teal and opal and red—
for healing breath, life and love.
Upon this altar of healing, I baptize water
from the Pacific ocean—purify it, drench this brittle desert land
into soulful breath, healing body.
Upon this altar, I leave my animal brain that wants to flee, fight, and freeze
for my human brain that reasons, plans, and processes and move from just surviving to mindfully LIVING. Before my autoimmune disease, I took for granted sips of my espresso, dark chocolate, salad drenched in blue cheese dressing, a simple pasta dinner—now food is my enemy. For three months now, a simple diet of rice, broth, bananas—
as I battle for health. All I drink is water. It sustains me. It gives me life. It is beautiful, truly. I’m here. I’m given a chance to fight, survive, live.
Upon this alter for healing,
I place my prayer, my thanksgiving, and my beating heart.
Namaste.
© Gina Marselle
Inspired by a Writing Workshop with Poet Jessica Helen Lopez
House on the Corner Worshop
Gina Marselle resides in New Mexico with her family. She’s a high school teacher, poet, and photographer. She has a full length published book titled, A Fire of Prayer: A Collection of Poetry and Photography (SwEP, 2015). Please find more information about Gina’s work at https://swimmingwithelephants.com/. Follow her on Instagram @gigirebel.
“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: “I’m holding our memories alone, and suddenly they are so heavy” by Frankie Kubena
I’m holding our memories alone, and suddenly they are so heavy
We stopped talking in the same way I quit smoking; eventually you must outgrow the toxic thing. I don’t think of cigarettes much since quitting, but sometimes when walking by someone who is smoking, I breathe deeply. In other words, I still love you, but at times when you weren’t around, I forgot you ever were. If I have to be a type of lonely, this is as good as any. And, if someone had to die, lord knows you tried hard enough. When I found out, the first thing I did was smoke, and I haven’t stopped since. What is mean is; my head is still spinning, and I am tired of breathing you in. Grief is less how I imagined it would be, more hysterical laughter. Sometimes it is smiling at apologies and saying “we weren’t that close,” and sometimes it collapsing. It is no explanation. It is picturing what your body must look like now, and wondering if it is any different than the ghost I used to know.
Frankie Kubena is an emerging performance poet based in New York City, currently a college student at Pace University. Their style of poetry could be described as nonconventional and I write in freestyle. Kubena grew up in several European cities and their work is created through a multicultural, feminist lens. View Frankie’s blog at frankiespoetry.com.
“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.
SwEP + BKWKS = BFF
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC is excited to announce our official affiliation with Bookworks Albuquerque.
Bookworks ABQ has been a long time supporter of Swimming with Elephants Publication, LLC hosting various events and supporting our local authors throughout our six years in business. But now we are taking it one step further.
We are happy to say, that Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC is now an official affiliate of Bookworks ABQ. What does this mean? It means Bookworks is our go-to for all online book orders. Although all of our books will still be available via Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, and other major distributors, we encourage our audience both local and national to purchase directly from Bookworks ABQ. Doing so will support small businesses, both Swimming with Elephants Publications and Bookworks Albuquerque.
Click on the pictures below to order some of our latest publications directly from Bookworks and keep your eyes open for our next Bookworks event on Small Business Saturday, November 30, 2019.
Observable Acts
bliss in die/unbinging the underglow
22
Prayer Flag Poems
Loved Always Tomorrow: A Chapbook
Shorn: Apologies & Vows
Verbrennen
Light as a Feather: An Anthology of Resilience: Second Edition
Wild Horses
They Are All Me
Periscope Heart
Morena
Trauma Carnival
You Must Be This Tall to Ride
Gërvalla, Jusuf
Bekimi I Nënës / A Mother’s Blessing
Quitting Smoking, Falling in and Out of Love, and Other Thoughts about Death.
Unease at Rest
Thalassophile: A Chapbook of Poetry
…But My Friends Call Me Burque
Burquenita
Elegy for a Star Girl
The Fall of a Sparrow
My Verse,
September
The Bones of This Land
Of Small Children / And Other Poor Swimmers
Hirshman, Jack and Justin Desmangles
Passion, Provocation and Prophecy
My Blood Is Beautiful
Hotlry, Mercedez & Eva Crespin
Xicana Revolt
Girls Who Fell in Love with War
Some of It Is Muscle
Kluckman, Zachary (Editor)
Trigger Warning
Lambersy, Werner
Pina Bausch
From Below/Denied the Light
Cunt.Bomb.: A Chapbook
The Language of Bleeding
Lopez, Jessica Helen & Katrina K Guarascio (Editors)
Mothers and Daughters
Storm
A Fire of Prayer: A Collection of Poetry and Photography
The Promethean Clock or Love Poems of a Wooden Boy
For Those Who Outlast Their Pain
Heartbreak Ridge
Oishi, Mary and Aja Oishi
Rock Paper Scissors
Rottschafer, S.L., Ph.D.
La Diáspora de Un Aztlán Norteño: : Michicanidad Creativity as Witnessed in Bilingual Ethno-Poetry and Photography
Gnarly
Litanies Not Adopted
Nail Gun and a Love Letter
Language of Crossing
Anthologies
Parade: Swimming with Elephants Publications Anthology 2018
Weekly Write: “Adobe Fires” by S.A. Leger
First published in Issue 8 of 2 Bridges Review, Summer 2019
Adobe Fires
Used to sing a song about him, maybe hum. Used to serve it
around Bridge Street, call him Leatherface or some such Ruthism.
Used it wrong again, didn’t I? Anyhow, he made ends meet
butchering hogs for corporate cook-outs & whittling—assisting
kids with whittling I mean. And lighting fires. ‘Dobe fires. Blest,
canonized with not one but two sickly wives & never, not once
breathe anything but pure lemon-sweet oxygen. I, the always
embers, I, the tongue that licks the clay. Hold me up, eighty-twenty
aspen shrapnel/help-wanted ads from the Sentinel, show me wretched
objects & I’ll show you the void that falls in line behind chastity
behind you. Your shadow and its void. It’s void & I’m the vacuum
that clears a room, fills it with smoke. I am feared, I am not alive
in 37 years did ole Deeprivers stay home. He lit fires. He lived
for that shit. Sometimes he walked back alleys collecting—when
pigs fly, we’d say, he’ll stop lighting ‘dobe fires—anyhow, he held
prob’ly six stems of dried tumbleweed, squeezed his fists, split
his knuckles just about. Walking alleys with stickers making love
to his leaking capillaries. See, tumbleweeds weren’t tinder. Hallowed
but empty, not really there at all. Unless you channel back, magnify
original thermodynamic laws. Then hold me. Then feel my record
sear. Lace up wounds from thorns. Cauterize the matrix of fish &
wasps forming new scar tissue as we speak. Perhaps I am never
the real enemy of white blood cells, plasma—at least, less selfish
than an infection. In my dreams they call me a fever, now disease
fuel for his fires, but again, never tinder. Maybe sagebrush feeds
his fires. I’m not even sure sagebrush will burn. He might’ve invoked
god’s favour by lighting those fires because he was carving up
a good piece of dirt with ash. No city folk ever complained. Exist
is all he did—that’s just ole Dinosaur bones—skin ratcheted certain
to the canyon walls of his sternum. Shirtless. There. Genderless
but not as shapeless as I appear. White then choked red with sex
with magnesium & minerals that colour me like water. Sustained
doubled by dry crackling splintering empty cellulose matter, not
once silent. Not once. I am all mouth & all teeth & all spit—sacred
tongue. I’ll take no credit for my discovery. You found me, ignited
my pain. I am all face, anguished with soot & you never have
mated with those sickly wives or wolves or the black starless part
of the night & of air-nursed sustenance & of exhaled dwellings.
Where is he now? Haven’t you heard a word I said? Frozen-holy
S.A. Leger is a biologist and writer from Colorado. After studying zoology and English at Colorado State University, she spent time researching the flora and fauna of Tasmania, of the islands of Puget Sound during her masters, and for the last six years, of Newfoundland. Leger currently works as a biology instructor at Memorial University.
Weekly Write: “To Keep Away Crows Feet” by Tyler Dettloff
To Keep Away Crows Feet
I watched a dozen red wing black birds
fight over a single maggot in the church parking lot
as funeral barkers repeated the priest.
The birds smeared that crawler into a grease
to bake on the blacktop. Maggot resin
waxed their beaks. Soon I will gather fiddle head ferns
and place their fuzz on my tongue.
I thought about paving my driveway,
left it dirt instead.
I won’t reseed the lawn either.
I can smell the bog’s breath.
Thickets are not fallow.
Last winter I crept to the crawlspace
slept away four moons. When I awoke
I could only stomach tubers and a few berries.
But I wanted meat in my mouth.
Mayflies hatch and we tie bait
to match. Fingertips gaunt and sharp
from feathers and thread, a tight quilt
knit to moisten trout tongues.
Fly rod flits cast spells over swamp streams.
I do not understand trout rising in the thaw
but I damn sure know the comfort
in the underbelly of a bog.
Worms and maggots ask questions
all winter long between roots and decay.
I plug my ears with mourning dove songs.
I tilt with the earth away from the sun.
Together we burrow blindly
like voles chase winter grubs.
If we traveled like birds we’d grow fat and pretty.
My hands would soften.
I’d moisturize my crows feet and fallow heart.
At every funeral I’d say the same thing.
I’d knead spruce sap against my gums
and ask the needles to have mercy on my tongue.
Tyler Dettloff is an Anishinaabe Métis, Italian, and Irish writer, professor, musician, gardener, and water protector raised on the edge of the Delirium Wilderness. He currently lives in Gnoozhekaaning (Bay Mills, Michigan) and teaches College Composition at Lake Superior State University. He has earned a B.S. in English and a dual track M.A. in Literature and Pedagogy from Northern Michigan University. His work has been featured in Voice on the Water, Crab Fat Magazine, and Heartwood Literature Magazine. Mostly, he enjoys walking along rivers with his wife Daraka and through swamps his dogs Banjo and Fiddle.
“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: “Afterlife” by Anna M. Spears
Afterlife
After he passed, I saw him
Born in a field of dormant corn
Amid papery stalks and a gentle breeze
A shadowed sunset with too heavy clouds
Faded mile markers on Old 16
Smiled at him through the window and knew
The air smelled of tears
I breathed it in anyway.
A flicker of wings and a toss of hair
Dancing with fireflies into the twilight
Lighting the way with tiny iridescent bulbs
Betraying leathery wings tinged with gold
It’s not so scary now, I think
This fragile peace permeating the ground
The darkness closing in
Betrayed by the blinking
The sorrow and fear and anger and disbelief
And you knew. Something in you knew.
How could you?
Your tear would unravel the whole fabric,
Bare us to the wind chill.
In a moment it was gone
The air, calmed and lighter, and something
Something is there, and I know it
Hiding in the field among the tall grass and hay bales
The dried out reeds swaying to the bird song
And I found myself in the back seat
We are the only car here for miles
Stopped at a traffic light.
Anna M. Spears is a poet with a bachelor’s degree in English with a specialty in Creative Writing from Denison University in Granville, Ohio.
“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: “rest here” by Zoe Canner
rest here
i always approach
the person in the
room who holds
the least power
and turn my
hands into a cup
and listen to them
& try to hear
and turn my head
at an angle and
turn my shoulders
down and my
sternum inward &
try to bow
and turn my nose
into a swamp & try
a silence
and turn my cheeks
into a great plain &
try to lift
and turn my
forehead into a
contemplative
landing pad for
hands & fingers
rest here
and turn my eyes
into still waters
and turn my mouth
into a brace
a carriage
i care
i care
Zoe Canner’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in SUSAN / The Journal, Naugatuck River Review, The Laurel Review, Arcturus of the Chicago Review of Books, Storm Cellar, Maudlin House, Occulum, Pouch, Indolent Books’ What Rough Beast, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles.
“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: “John Muir Sprains his Ankle” by Scott Ferry
John Muir sprains his ankle
I landed oblong on that fawn-shaped round of granite
by the Yosemite Creek, just down the path from my cabin.
Thank God I did not injure myself 20 miles from here
down Bridalveil Creek. But I would have made it back,
by the grace of the elderberry, service berry, wild cherry
and would have had to thump deliberately through
the sage with a numb limb. Reading Emerson
doesn’t help directly with the pain, yet being able
to float upward, distinct from my frame
to list willowy in the black oak and afternoon
scent of incense-cedar, this can be useful.
When I write about light, I don’t know if I am understood,
nor believed. People can see the swollen club
of my naked ankle, people can understand agony,
seeing many thousands slaughtered by this
country tearing at itself, not civil at all. People
can steal, can be stolen from; can hold an infant,
can weep as their mother slides away. But most
cannot comprehend joy and glory to the degree
of breaking, straining the daily thought forms apart
until the capsule cracks. Saint Teresa and I
recline on these sheepskins, listening to God’s
blood run through the cabin floor and the ferns
reach to the light and twine together.
And when the peregrine swings down and sears
its vibrating laugh across the valley the glow
from inside of the white fir stretches into the
air around it and weaves with the glow of elk
of sequoia of raccoon until it bathes the entire
flight with tears. This is too uncomfortable, the weeping.
I have been attempting to describe it in words,
as the letters open like moths and drift
into this same glory, unseen.
Scott Ferry helps our Veterans heal as a RN. In former lives he taught high school and practiced acupuncture. Recent work can be found in Chaleur, Cobalt, Bitter Oleander, and Cultural Weekly, among others. His collection “The only thing that makes sense is to grow” will be published by Moon Tide Press in early 2020. You can read more of his work at HTTPS://FERRYPOETRY.COM
Weekly Write: “Pretty in a Hard Way” by Michelle Brooks
Pretty in a Hard Way
The ground moves with snakes,
and the sky bleeds red streaks,
as if the night couldn’t leave
without a fight, and all your dreams
are tragedies where no one dies,
but everyone suffers. In your past
life when you woke up hungover, you’d
think, Anything is better than this.
You were a confection, a little
dead around the eyes, the kind
of woman people describe as
pretty in a hard way. And you
refuse to go gently into that good
night. And let’s face it. Not all
of them were good ones. You don’t
care. There is nothing you can do
about it now. Gather the pieces
as best you can even if they cut you.
Michelle Brooks has published a collection of poetry, Make Yourself Small, (Backwaters Press), and a novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy, (Storylandia Press). Her poetry collection, Flamethrower, will be published by Latte Press in 2019. A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in Detroit.
Weekly Write: “you who climbs to the top of the world and begs forgiveness; or, HERCULES” by Maxine L. Peseke
you who climbs to the top of the world and begs forgiveness; or, HERCULES
you, who are not weatherproof:
do not let the cold creep in your soul.
do not let a once-warm heart beat icy;
do not breathe in so heavy these winds of change–
do not be swayed, do not tremble, do not fall.
these pits of hell await you
you, who are not fireproof:
do not ignite.
they will say you can be a phoenix and rise
and rise, but you are not made of flame.
you who are made of flesh and bone as brittle as firewood:
these are not your ashes to rise from.
you, who are neither Maker nor Myth;
you, who are not phoenix nor flame nor wind to carry it:
you are still Holy.
your bones so brittle echo with forests full of stories
your blood carries Glory–
do not spill it before your hallelujah is sung.
you, who are not lyric, but entire song:
do not play your veins like violin strings–
you are not moonlight sonata but romantic serenade,
an ode to your own body,
a waltz to the beat of your heart
beat; don’t beat yourself up, baby.
you, who are not child nor adult:
do not be the fool to believe
you will pass like ash knowing every lesson this universe can offer;
you, who know heartbreak–
there is more than your heartbreak
and there is still so much less.
you, who are not your heartbreak:
like all things, this shall pass;
like you, who are passing
through life like a whisper–
you are a shout. you are a cry. you are a smile and a laugh.
you, who are joy.
you, who are Creation;
you, who are Creator:
it is not God alone for whom choirs sing praise.
you who are made in the image of greatness:
you are Holy.
you are hallelujah neverending.
you, who are not immortal:
your last mortal breath
will still stir butterfly wings
on the other side of the world;
and your song, oh holy holy holy is the song
will be sung again by renewed choir.
you will live,
despite your weakness,
oh, Holy.
“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.
Now Available: “Sell Me Insanity” by Marcial Delgado
Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC is excited to announce the release of “Sell Me Insanity,’ a chapbook of poetry by Marcial Delgado.
“The brujo knows that magic is not a series of complex alchemical spells or mathematical formulas, but comes from the soil, from the people around him, from the roots and connections to the earth he can draw on. This is what Marcial Delgado does with this collection of poetry. He drinks deep from the wellspring of his own history, and the ties that bind him to his community, and his people. These poems breathe with a rare magic that is at once soft spoken and fierce. This is a wonderful collection of poems from one of New Mexico’s most authentic voices.”
-Zachary Kluckman
Join Marcial this Saturday, June 22 at El Chante Casa de Cultura for the “Voices Of The Barrio: Sell Me Insanity Book Release.” This will be an open mic event so please bring a poem to share or just come and listen. There will also be a potluck. This is a free event and all are welcome.
Marcial will have copies for sale at the release, but his book is also currently available through most major distributors. Find it on Amazon.com by clicking here and it can be Primed to you by Saturday for the event.
Available on Kindle Unlimited: Nail Gun and a Love Letter
Now available on Kindle Unlimited: Nail Gun and a Love Letter by Beau Williams.
Click here to view Kindle Unlimited as well as find buying options for the paperback.
Heralding from Portland, Maine, Beau Williams describes himself as a “fairly optimistic” poet, and what better way to describe his newest collection of poetry from Swimming with Elephants Publications than as “fairly optimistic.” Bittersweet journeys to bar floors and the bottoms of bottles, Nail Gun and a Love Letter is reminiscent of beat poetry days and the pilgrimages we must take to find ourselves.
“This collection of poems alternately pierces the reader with astute and heartbreaking observations (Good Drums is a particularly devastating musing on white, male American-ness) while at the same time using evocative language to spar with and challenge the ideas of belonging and connection and love. These poems invite the reader to contemplate what it means to come from somewhere, and how it feels to long for a place that isn’t home, but could be. They invite us to see the mundane as essential, and to see and celebrate the things that connect us to our identity. The title of this collection is apt; like a nail gun, these poems violently pierce, but do so in service to building something sturdy and sheltering, and every one is a love letter to the dance that makes us who we are.”
– Sherry Frost, Educator
Click here to learn more about this collection by reading the review by Maxine Peseke.
Many of Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC titles are now available on Kindle Unlimited. Explore additional titles on Our Catalog page.
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