Stuck

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Stuck

If I am impaled on the side,
Will the crows come and pluck out my eyes?
I am frozen and stuck in place,
Bites were taken out of my unmoving face.
My blood boils,
The thick putrid liquid in my chest,
It roils.
People are passing,
My eyes follow them, unblinking.
Time is flashing,
I keep sinking.

How long must I remain this way?
Will the passers-by stop?
They will not stay.
Gawking maybe, asking a question or two,
They lose interest quickly,
It is not enough that it is just you.

“Where is the tribe?”
“They are about.”
“Have you even tried?”
“A lot,” I try to shout.
They only smile in pity, and glee maybe?
Floating away, content, lazy.

Watching the blood pool beside my pole,
It freezes quickly, out of control.
Still looking on, my unmoving face,
Tight, stiff, and stuck in bitter space.

I look to my left, there is another.
Her eyes are astray.
With speaking I do not bother,
she cannot hear me anyway.
The blood has dried.
Given up, she has died.

My eyes begin to bulge,
In panic, I try to shift.
Sorrow too long indulged,
Where is the will needed to persist?
Remove the spike long sat in my chest,
Cannot get upright,
Only pain left to ingest.
Tired, more tired every day,
Waiting to be discovered and taken away.

Strikes like a storm,
The crooked lines of my shoulders,
When fresh dripping blood is keeping you warm.
The small stones feel like bullets,
A raindrop like hail,
A pinch like a punch,
On life's path impaled.

Iram Nisa Hussain is of British-Pakistani descent. Hussain is a passionate newcomer, who has always indulged in poetry. Born and raised in the Northwest of England, Hussain has always used words to capture the essence of life's moments.

‘These Late June Evenings’, ‘Nyctinasty’, ‘Drift’, ‘February 19’, & ‘Am I The Only One’.

Photographer - Christine Trujillo

These Late June Evenings

This coastal mirage slips its moorings
in the silver late evening light, the diamonds
on the sea dulling as gently as controlled light-emitting
diodes in a newly formed seaside room.
Driving around, parking, watching, I look at the
houses sketched into the hillside, hidden in
overhangs of western Irish rock and root, holding
their contents with gloved hands, curving around
familial ritual. Thriving, occasionally flailing.
How long do we have I wonder aimlessly, noting the
houses emptied out of generations, supplanted naturally
by the next and the next. I strangle a breath and there, just there,
above the white line of the shore, below the hushed bog cotton,
in front of the limpid sun slipping way down, beneath the gulls
screeching retreat,
I see my absence.

Nyctinasty

Yesterday the dawn chorus seemed heightened,
taut, strung out on its own anxiety. Quivered and
strewn it catapulted me from my bed pulsing with
an unknown fear, a shadow partner moving swiftly
alongside me.
Outside in the half light, waiting for my four-month
puppy to show some affinity for toileting, I studied
the ocean to try and fathom the invasion of a near country.
How the people are being corralled, displaced, murdered
at will, how evil achieves a mundaneness, how shock
turns to fusion, becoming part of our DNA.
When I cannot look up or out for fear of blinding guilt, I
look to the ground and am stilled by an armada of daisies
hunched into their own being, closed to all interrogation.
How had I forgotten that daisies close at night.

Drift

When it dawned on me, after all, that life is finite
I shed my carcass body, my soul armour, and went
down to the shore to purify soul in brackish cutting water,
to see where soul would go.
Resting back from awareness further into the shadows
I watch soul break free of me, frolic and swoop in the surf,
Defying and goading the deadly backwash, preening in the glint of the
salt on the sea and screeching along with the careening seagulls.
While soul revelled, I wept. For every time I did not disrupt more, go to
the edge of every bluff and soar. Wept to see what soul was and
how I had not seen the chaotic beauty within. Jackal shrieks came from all
around me, a chorus of fury and lament so deep the sky blackened and roiled,
turning in on itself.
Petrified I ran, calling to soul to come back and unite with me, to write a
chapter that spat courage and would turn the world upside down. Soul was
basking now, moving further away, out to sea in a clamour of foam and hubris
forgetting in its anarchic swing – the fantastical.

February 19

In grief and sinister joy I leaned
Out the window over the river Corrib
Searching for lack of malice as I had become
Used to.
Jealousy & hate darts thrown for so long, sick
Twisted plaits – your ladder to the stars.
Down from the docks, five swans purled their
Haughty way towards the Claddagh.
So blue-white in the dark. Why five? Why not.
Nothing about them begged me, but oh, how
I needed them on that night.

Am I The Only One

who upon waking September mornings inhales the
smell of yesterday fading faster than a meteor or climbs
the air stairs to find a fretty cloud to rest on whilst plotting
the flawless coup
The only one to grieve the imminent departure of burnt
orange Montbretia who nodded and danced for me daily
and asked for nothing in return save admiration which
I gave & gave
The only one to add a suspicion of autumn to my morning coffee
and drink from the poisoned chalice anyway
self-administered not imposed
The only one to know there is a September day that stops the straggly
rivers running through my head and for that one day of your birth
I celebrate wildly.

Marian Kilcoyne is an Irish writer. She has been widely published in Ireland, UK, USA and Europe. She has read her work on National Radio, RTE Lyric FM. Her poetry collection, The Heart Uncut, was published in 2020 by Wordsonthestreet publishers Galway. She lives in Belfast and Co. Mayo. Website www.mariankilcoyne.com

‘An American Fairy Tale’, ‘Whether Patterns’, ‘How to Diagnose Peripheral Neuropathy When You’ve Run Out of Backyards’, ‘Lorraine’, & ‘I Think We Can All Agree That Puppy Mills Are a Bad Idea’.

Photographer - Tobi Brun

An American Fairy Tale

Gone Girl has come undone in a true-life abduction &
rape scheme gone awry that was commandeered by
an otherwise noble Silverware Salesman in dark jeans &
a ski mask who, it was determined by the authorities (only
after all was said & done), acted alone & with reckless
haste, leaving behind evidence pretty much everywhere,
ultimately leading to understandable speculation that,
perhaps, he was hoping to be caught which, in fact,
he was, but only eventually and, believe it or not,
accidentally via an interview at Costco with
The Clueless Stepmother, following a long period of time –
indeed ten months – in which Gone Girl & The Boyfriend
were unjustifiably bludgeoned in the loop-de-loop media
by law enforcement & The Public because, of course,
The Public always seems to jump to conclusions on
the bandwagon of group-think righteous indignation &
moral superiority all over social media, a self-reinforcing
death spiral of truth destruction if there ever was one which,
in this particular case, resulted, through reliable &
predictable polling, in the unfortunate couple being
unceremoniously deposited into The Enshittocene –
through no fault of, or effort on, their own, everything
in existence having been gobbled up by it – where they
got married & are raising two kids on the beach, a boy &
a girl, & where, like all the rest of us in America, they
are just trying to live happily ever after, good luck with that.

Whether Patterns

I can’t help but wonder
whether what is left of me
will be enough for you

as the days pile up one
on top of the other, like an
unbound manuscript consisting

of blank leaves of unread
poetry left carelessly near
an open window in summer,

caught by a sudden breeze &
scattered throughout the rooms
of the house, floating down

the bottomless stairwell
of our lives out onto the
main thoroughfare that runs

east to west &
back again in the ancient
City of the Cloud Queen.

How to Diagnose Peripheral Neuropathy When You’ve Run Out of Backyards

Two years ago today I forgot to remember how to
walk. That’s a First World problem said my friend.
But I live in the Global South! No First World
problems here. Well he said it’s ... complicated.

The llamas near the ruins stomped on the ground.
I will never be able to do that again I thought.
Feeling sorry for myself, I shed a tear or two
because I knew no one else would. The tests and

biopsies proved inconclusive. I blamed it on an
interference of clouds and my failure to file taxes
while living abroad. My friend readily agreed,
equating it all to a sort of cosmic shadow band

phenomenon that is often created during a total
solar eclipse, except in your case the IRS is solely
responsible he said. With him, I felt like I had at
least one person on my side. That I wasn’t crazy.

I know what happened to the third tower. I did
the research, back when I could remember how
to walk. When the silent fireflies in September
filled our backyards with the faint glow of hope.

Lorraine

One fine spring morning
clean-shaven hard-working
Dudley tentatively
approaches me
beneath the sign for
the Lorraine Motel
with a familiar tale
of family hardship
looking for a hand-out
in our 21st-century
cashless society
when there arises
a ripe teachable moment
in which I ask him
where should I Venmo
my assistance mi buen amigo?

I Think We Can All Agree That Puppy Mills Are a Bad Idea

& I don’t even know that much about them.
I’m not a dog person either (or at least I don’t
think of myself as a dog person since I only
officially had a dog as a pet for less than a week

in my entire life), nor really a cat person or even
a pet person if such a thing actually exists (which
I’m sure it does in some odd Facebook group kind
of way I don’t know about & never will). Although I

did keep a fish named Brad in a glass bowl for about
18 months, once. I fed him the flakes every day &
cleaned his tiny home every other week & he
seemed as happy a creature as could be expected

for one who hangs out 24/7 in a small transparent
container for the whole world to see. No privacy
(that’s why they call it a fishbowl, I guess), nowhere
to go except in a circular infinity of what I often

thought of as some kind of aquatic purgatory, &
then of course he was, in the end, flushed down
the commode, replaced in his bowl by a plant that
promptly died as well. So, when the nice young man

with the trim beard from the humane society gently
accosted me outside Walgreen’s this afternoon, I
signed that petition to ban puppy mills as quickly
as I could without ever once making eye contact.

M. F. Drummy holds a PhD in historical theology from Fordham University. The author of numerous articles, essays, poems, reviews, and a monograph on religion and ecology, his work has appeared, or will appear, in Allium, [Alternate Route], Anti-Heroin Chic, Ars Sententia, Deal Jam, Emerge, FERAL, Green Silk, Main Street Rag, Marbled Sigh, Meetinghouse, Poemeleon, Rituals, Scarlet Dragonfly, Winged Penny Review, and many others. He and his way cool life partner of over 20 years enjoy splitting their time between the Colorado Rockies and the rest of the planet. He can be found at: Instagram @miguelito.drummalino Website https://bespoke-poet.com

Poker with Nanny

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Poker with Nanny

Nanny dealt the cards with a twinkle in her eye,
Five years old, I sat across, a sucker for a lie.
Two unmatched socks, a fistful of coins, my whole fortune there
She raised an eyebrow, muttered a crooked prayer.

Dice rattled loud, a plastic cup on the floor
Nanny with her ciggy, muttering hexes by the door
Snake eyes rolled, my hand shook, a tear welled in my eye
“Bad karma, child” she’d wink with a loving smile in her eye.

And Merle sang in the background
And Waylon played along.

Five years old, knees scraped from climbing too high
Nanny dealt the cards with a twinkle in her eye.
Five card-draw, a lesson with a playful disguise.
Pennies and dimes, a world turned upside down
But poker with Nanny, that’s where love was found.

And Merle sang in the background
And Waylon played along.

And Nanny would yell “Sing it, Merle”
Even when it wasn’t his song.

Pennies and dimes, a world turned upside down
But poker with Nanny, that’s where love was found.

Leigh Ann Raab a Virginia-based photographer and poet. Leigh Ann's creative journey spans over two decades. Her poems delve into themes of healing from an abusive childhood to navigating her own mental health. Known for her constant companions-a pen and a camera- she captures the world through both words and visuals. This poem honors her grandmother, who taught her to gamble at the age of five.

King of Hearts Might Not Have One

Photographer - Tobi Brun

King of Hearts Might Not Have One

Card games in Marianas Trench don’t feel the same without you-
Anyway, the monsters like Rummy more than expected.
Crustaceans play fair for the most part, but the sharks like to cheat and ruin the mood
I sip on a seaweed cocktail and pray waves swirl me into the abyss where you seem to have
disappeared to

Just in time to beat you at your own game.

No rules, right?

Anyway, the monsters laugh at me
I ask if they can solve a riddle; they can’t, and neither can I.

A good man is gifted a fiddle, but it doesn’t play any music.
None of his instruments do anymore-
Not the tiny violin in the corner or the piano or our favorite song on the jukebox
Is the fiddle the one playing him or is he simply not a good man?

Marinah Inman is a personal banker, bartender, and poet. She has published poetry in Northland College’s magazine, The Mosaic (2018), Anthology Turning the Corner, New Adventures (2021), and was co-editor for Prayers for Women by Women (2022), a Thrivent prayer book. She is a Washington State native but grew up in Oklahoma and Minnesota. Marinah now resides in the small town of Hartford, Wisconsin and enjoys being an aunt, daughter, and friend.