Prison of Thought

My life is obsession without passion,

compulsion without end,

disorder without rhyme or reason.

A chemical maelstrom dragging

my free will into the crushing ink-black of hopelessness.

Hands bleed in perpetual cleanliness next to no god.

Grey matter overclocked,

overflowing with thoughts

too numerous to comprehend, too chaotic to control.

But control is what I seek,

bleak as that pipedream may seem,

I must fight to walk

without retracing my superfluous daily routine.

I am a blind hummingbird flitting

around the same depleted flower;

I linger around the same moment

too disabled to press on.

I’m nothing if not consistent;

consistency is my curse and my savior,

but a savior I wish would abandon and forsake me.

Mine is a life defined by tepid perfection

in an imperfect mind.

I dwell in every moment…

and yet…

Joseph Vickery

Joseph Vickery recently graduated from Oregon State University where he majored in creative writing. He is currently working on his MFA in writing at Lindenwood University. He has lived all over Tennessee but currently resides in Nashville. His work has been featured in The Phoenix.

The Orchard

My father hated coyotes, implicated them

in every “missing pet” poster we passed. I didn’t understand,

not really, until they took my dog. They must have been

just beyond the fence, eyes glittering an amber light, like yellow flames

 

in the dimness, yipping, jumping, speaking

a language my dog knew once, but had forgotten.

Like seeing himself in a river: they the bright, sharp jasper and he,

these centuries departed, the smooth river stone.

 

They led him out into the neighbor’s orchard, where he found himself

trapped, those yellow flames rising, climbing the walls,

he was trapped in his becoming, all those eyes of pyrite

turning in their sockets with each snap, each severance.

 

Come morning I found the pieces of him, bones

littered around, broken open

like glass bottles they drank the liquor from,

the tufts of fur like flocks of fallen birds, and all of it

 

gone so cold in its stillness, I’d consider it a painting:

the Goya in the pale hair, the dirt, the vermilion

of Saturn’s Devouring. I hated them for it,

for years, but why shouldn’t they

 

feed their hunger in the ways they can, have the thing

that climbs into their mouths? Why shouldn’t they,

voracious jewels of stone or glass or fool’s gold,

glitter like they do?

 

Cami DuMay

Cami DuMay is an undergraduate at UC Davis, pursuing a degree in English with an emphasis in creative writing. She has won two first-place awards and one second-place award for her writing at the university, and her work has appeared in Equatorial Magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, and by the Moonstone Arts Center. She writes about myriad aspects of life, from intimacy and trauma to nature and insects, but has a particular fascination with the intersection of the natural world and secular worship.

Moon Child

We drank Tang, just like the astronauts,

but stopped short of breakfasting

on freeze-dried eggs. Saturdays,

Dad melted Crisco in the fryer,

dropped little meteors of batter

into the bubbles, served up fritters

with real maple syrup. Sixties kids

had it made in the shade— all-day freedom

on banana-seat bikes, Oscar Meyer

bologna sandwiches eaten on the fly,

Nestle’s chocolate chips folded

into Toll House cookie dough by Mom,

a June Cleaver clone except that she wore

capris instead of a dress, and hair statuesque

in an eight-inch beehive. Her Max Factor lipstick—

Electric Pink— always freshly applied,

the house swept, dusted, and promptly at 6,

martini’d. The family’s crisp white edges

began to curl at cocktail hour, threatened to tear

at dinner, the effort of kindness simply

too burdensome for our mission commander to bear.

As the Green Giant canned peas were passed

and the potato-chipped tuna noodle casserole

spooned out, one wrong word, an errant opinion,

an ill-timed sigh— and all planets ceased

rotation around the sun. I sat farthest away,

little brother too close. Little elbows on the table…

a big man can be a fast man. A spoon a weapon.

A woman, powerless. A moon child escapes

in her mind-made spaceship— rocketing away

to the lunar maria, their vast darkness

so perfect for hiding.

 

 

Ann Weil

Ann Weil is a past contributor to Burningword Literary Journal. Her most recent work appears in Maudlin House, Pedestal Magazine, DMQ Review, 3Elements Review, The Shore, and New World Writing Quarterly. Her chapbook, Lifecycle of a Beautiful Woman, debuted in April 2023 from Yellow Arrow Publishing. To read more of her poetry and flash fiction, visit www.annweilpoetry.com.

A Romance to Night

In the crisp death of summer, a cat

falls from a broken branch.

The moon sings, amused by paw

half-crushed under the stares of a passing car.

 

Vacant children drive purposely

through the blaze-maze of gilded cul-de-sacs

scattered with condoms and crushed fireball nips,

numb to clouds adulting overhead.

 

Outside the bar a couple try to kiss for the first time.

 

On the fire escape, some woman hums anxiously sweeping.

Waiting, I stare into my scotch

as the glow from an RCA television

and smells of ammonia suffocate the pub.

 

Above the bar, the moon reflects a rooftop coop.

The pigeon sits upright in its wired grave, cooing

as a priest doubles over.

 

Ed Gaudet

Ed Gaudet is a writer who lives in Hanover, Massachusetts, where he is a cybersecurity software entrepreneur in healthcare. He has written for Forbes Magazine. His journey with poetry began at an early age and grew during university where he studied under poet Ruth Lepson and was greatly influenced by Robert Creeley. While attending Bentley University, he was the Editor-in-Chief of its literary magazine, Piecework. In 1999, Ed was awarded the grand prize for his poem, “Sitting Shiva,” which appeared in Into the Sun. His work has appeared in The Inflectionist Review, Panoply, Clade Song, and Book of Matches, Lit.

Girl #4

Back there, someone crowned me.

Yes, me! — Where do you think

I got these carnations?

 

I’d like to unclaim candidacy,

but there’s already a Klimtish woman

threading my hands with rings while

someone calls for shin ribbons.

A man cradling five pincushions

coaxes my sclerae to bloom.

 

I enter on a bridge of hands.

Dozens, it seems, press my midriff,

and thumb my hair.

 

What’s this? Only halfway

to the stage, and they’re dragging

dimes from my curls. Too much

tugging, clinking,

I feel myself kick —

 

When I find my way home,

you’ll have many questions, like:

Out so late? Tea, my love?

Darling, where are your shoes?

 

I’ll promise to explain later,

complain of a headache —

could be the cold, or the hour,

or maybe the wind,

 

rattling the coin slot

wedged between my eyes.

 

Christianne Goodwin

Christianne’s chapbook “Oracle Smoke Machine”, a collaboration with painter Stephen Proski, is forthcoming with Staircase Books (Cambridge, MA). Her work has been published by Rust + Moth, The Lakeshore Review, Fahmidan Journal, and Panel Magazine. She is a graduate of the Boston University MFA program, the recipient of an Academy of American Poets University Prize, and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow.

Migration

he passed through brackish streets

filled with disintegrated rubble

and dilapidated homes unmoored

from their footings strung together

by sagging electrical lines extinguished

of power and children’s playgrounds

with rusted jungle gyms lonely

and exsanguinated of their frivolous

vigor like some wandering itinerants

living in hollowed shells of their

former selves searching for morsels

of food for his quavering children

who hadn’t eaten since saturday

and even then it was only oily corn

from a rusted tin can salvaged from

an abandoned root cellar at a

devastated farm with poisoned

crops sagging in their furrowed

fields devoid of any identifiable

forms of life not even cut worms

or creeping charlie or redroot

pigweed and just six days removed

from burying their swollen mother

in that ashy soil on the outskirts

of some backwater town on the

shore of some wandering river

populated with unmoored tug

boats and land locked pleasure

vessels long ransacked and devoid

of any human usefulness what

with the rancid water and rotting

fishes peppering the swollen

shoreline like some biblical

plague of epic proportions and

all the while following the circuitous

route of some meandering railroad

line in an unmitigated effort to

to salvage another form of life

in an undiscovered land devoid

of suffering owing to its sheltered

location between two preening

mountain ranges while carefully

evading those roving bands

of demented marauders

 

James Butcher

James has published work in Box, Hole In The Head Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Rivet, Prick of the Spindle, Midwest Review, Cream City Review, Wildroof Journal, and Raw Art Review.

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