When you burst through the body’s confines
in the grip of joy,
think of the black hole's
birth cry:
When you burst through the body’s confines
in the grip of joy,
think of the black hole's
birth cry:
I will touch you
with my subconscious,
my mermaid,
snakes entwined
are you aware that
with you
went the sun
all light
and what few stars
there were?
A southern snowflake in blizzard descends.
The winter you’re born beach town’s snowed in.
An alabaster tourist never blends.
You’re not like your parents. You don’t pretend.
We do not colonize
We pillage and remove.
Sea anemones grow every year. She remembers. She’s not the hunter
but knows provocation. I sing to the bees and make honeycakes.
Ages ago, this town was all wood.
You had to get to know each tree as a
madrina. You knew this birch that creaks
with wind guides you west; this willow with
bark soft as hair would sing songs from
before the arrival of sky. And everyone
could hear the spirits.
The doctor wasn't supposed to
but she prescribed herself
to try new things.
"Something new once a week,
repeat, repeat."
Alda Merini put a lot of poetry and other writings into this world, but it is hard to find a lot of it translated! Below you will find both poems and aphorisms, or as Merini called them "spells of the night."
Read MoreDon’t you hate those articles with headlines like 20 Movies You Probably Never Heard of but Should Watch Now! And then you click through the exhaustive list, pop ups and all only to discover that you have seen 18 of them? I do. Now don’t get me wrong, I am always, always grateful for discovery. I have added quite a few books, records and films to my household I would have never heard of if it were not for these types of articles. I just do not like the assumption that I am completely clueless, so I am going to write about poets that I have never heard of and share them with you. And if it is someone you have heard of, you will either click elsewhere or keep reading just in case there is that one tiny factoid unknown to you. Most are poets I have come across by way of old anthologies (I have quite a few) and a few are just from me searching on my own terms via Google and research. If I continue this series it will be entitled Another Poet I’ve Never Heard Of!
Read Morewitch blood, witch body, witch woman
handing out sweet milk and revenge
To Bring the Sky Down
A scared flame of violet – burnt from a found bone,
The indigo of your first lover’s jeans,
High sky blue of a day in spring when the larks sung,
Green fired algae from the dead pond’s ditch
Yellow of the belly of the one who cowers,
Orange from the fungi that grows under the dead fox,
The red of a berry that poisons.
Plait the rainbow - red over orange, yellow over green, blue over indigo,
Tie with violet at the deepest hour of black,
Make sure you bind the rainbow’s ends tight,
When required, cast from a clifftop on a dark moon night.
F. E. Clark lives in the North East of Scotland. She writes and paints and walks the perimeter of her days looking for colour and texture to inspire her work. In 2016 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, a Best of the Net, and had a Sma Buik published by Poems For All. Her writing can be found or is upcoming at: Molotov Cocktail Literary Magazine, Planet Paragraph, Twisted Sister Lit, Moonchild Magazine, and The Occulum. website - www.feclarkart.com | twitter - @feclarkart
The Black Dahlia Dreams of Blade Runner
Last night, I dreamed of
Los Angeles.
Not as it was, when I
died. The promise and
sun of it.
I dreamed of its
now, a neon smear.
The city of
ghosts.
My voice in
its moving darkness,
saying
I’ve seen things you people
wouldn’t believe.
Sources: Ellroy, James. The Black Dahlia. New York: Mysterious Press, 1987; Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, Blade Runner screenplay, 1981.
Bloodline
My bloodline ends in
silence.
I circle back,
before my myth.
Slow now,
like conjuring a
storm.
Still in my descent,
a fury
beckoning.
I stir now,
watchful.
Someone’s out there.
Sources: Ellroy, James. The Black Dahlia. New York: Mysterious Press, 1987. Print, and James Ellroy, “My Mother and the Dahlia,” Virginia Quarterly Review, 82/3 (2006). N. pag. vqr online, Virginia Quarterly Review 19 June 2006. Web.
Dresses, Jewelry, Food
I wanted to be ready.
No one tells you what to
pack for the trip.
I met Cleopatra in
the underworld, and
she told me that
none of it
(dresses, jewelry, food)
matters down here.
Time cures everyone,
she says.
Whatever you thought
you wanted
dies or
goes away.
People worship you or
forget.
No one knows
that
until
they arrive.
Source: Ellroy, James. The Black Dahlia. New York: Mysterious Press, 1987. Print.
Sarah Nichols lives and writes in Connecticut. She is the author of four chapbooks, including Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, forthcoming, 2018) and She May Be a Saint (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2016). Her poems and essays have also appeared in Thirteen Myna Birds, The Ekphrastic Review, Calamus, and The RS 500.
The panhandler is still there
as the summer pulls to an end
and the teenaged exorcists
sleep in, in, in.
I'mnot a believer, but I can write
about the devil.
We’re an elegy, if by elegy you mean
a motherfucker ready to light this place up.