October 2023 | poetry, Pushcart nominee
I.
Honeyed mystery of mahogany,
oak, walnut, teak, Fall’s tawny
offerings sanded into curves,
smooth invitation to touch,
like the sun-warmed thigh
& rising hip of that sunbaked
young woman you once were,
drowsing on a black sand beach
in Santorini, water beading
on your belly.
II.
This box hides your secrets:
How did you get from there to here?
What bodies? What lies?
The stolen quarters/kisses,
the unmade bed, the 6 a.m. departure.
What did you know & when?
III.
After you’ve been unmade,
can you learn trust like fitting
pieces of different puzzles
together? Remember how
they returned your uterus
to its wet cave after the knife
discharged its shrieking cargo?
IV.
How do you birth yourself
into a new name, receive
the gift of it in another’s mouth,
let it melt onto another’s tongue
like Amaro—bitter/sweet & smoky,
let that same tongue undress
your inhibitions, rendering
skin & sinew, splaying bones,
exposing the last hidden chamber?
V.
Is it too much—
all this allowing?
How your ribcage’s rusty hinges
once oiled with clamor and hush
swung wider and wider in desire.
VI.
Were you too much, wearing
your need like drought?
How he slipped away
in millimeters of silence,
disappearing even as he stood
before you—naked, dripping,
cowed.
VII.
Your blind fingers stagger
around the subtle lynchpin.
Had we arrived at the end
of each other? Or could a box
be a road to reunion?
VIII.
Relax. Let surrender carve
a door to a new dimension. Step
through. Let his arms curve
around you. Let his elegant hands
reveal what was jigsawed shut:
a lacuna large enough
for hope.
Elya Braden
Elya Braden is a writer and mixed-media artist living in Ventura County, CA, and is an editor for Gyroscope Review. She is the author of the chapbooks Open The Fist (2020) and The Sight of Invisible Longing, a semi-finalist in Finishing Line Press’s New Women’s Voices Competition (March 2023). Her work has been published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Prometheus Dreaming, Rattle Poets Respond, Sequestrum, Sheila-Na-Gig Online, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best New Poets. www.elyabraden.com.
October 2023 | poetry
(*For the runaway bunnies morphing into boys)
Good night you crooked little grapnel,
hanging on to possession
with the deference of a widow’s walk.
Good night to all the graphemes — back
slashes & sashaying greater thans buckling
brackets upon ballroom blitzes.
Rest easy tired tilde, till you are straightened
into an em dash — or simply
hyphenated between shut & eye.
Sleep well underscores, curly brackets
and ampersands. Asterisks notate inward
implosions as the parenthetical implies.
Brian Bruso
Brian Bruso has been putting words into various forms since just after reading Biddy and the Ducks prior to kindergarten. Those early 70’s were a blur, especially for a six-year-old. Fast forward a few decades and suddenly Brian finally has poetry worthy of submitting for publication. Since embarking on this newfound creature of submissions he has been included in several lit mags — LEVITATE, BirdHouse & Rathalla, so far.
July 2023 | poetry
May you sleep in slushy apples,
the acid mash of stomachs,
seafloor chimneys smearing
the deep with tartars of smoke.
I coo to poisonous beans,
noxious Botox twinkies,
and hum at naughty bonbons
of streptococci. Let your dreams
carry hordes through rotten tarns
and maggot guts. The world
needs your silent sawing:
wood to dirt, corpses to sand.
Waking, your tiny diamonds
dapple dog tongues and rain.
Your rancid flocks fester kisses
and ferment grapes to wine.
Eric Fisher Stone
Eric Fisher Stone is a poet and writing tutor from Fort Worth, Texas. He received his MFA in writing and the environment from Iowa State University. His publications include two full-length collections: The Providence of Grass, from Chatter House Press, and Animal Joy, from WordTech Editions.
July 2023 | poetry
& just like that aggrieved
or not thrust flush
against metal
the all of abandoned farm machinery
& all but barn of a house
nettled/ in shambles
of razor grass/ rooted/ my feet
stumbling close enough
to peace for breath/ waist high
to the ground/ the all of green caterpillar
& algae towers/ peaked up
in cicadas’ buzzing
make for rest
supine back against dock rust/ lake lap
& grass hungering for legs
leaving me for just a moment lying
back in black brilliants’ flame/ bursting
swallowing whole
in my dreaming sleep the all of everything
Mara Adamitz Scrupe
Mara Adamitz Scrupe’s publications include four full collections. BEAST (2014 Stevens Manuscript Publication Prize, National Federation of State Poetry Societies, U.S), in the bare bones house of was (2019 Brighthorse Books Prize in Poetry), Eat The Marrow (2019 erbacce-press Poetry Book Prize UK; shortlisted 2020 Rubery Book Award UK), and REAP a flora (2023 Shipwreckt Books). She has selections in generational anthologies by Southword/ Munster Literature, Stony Thursday, and 64 Best Poets/ Black Mountain Press, and poems in key UK and US journals including The London Magazine, Mslexia, Magma, Abridged, and The Poetry Business/ Smith Doorstop. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize in Poetry, she has won or been shortlisted for significant literary awards including Arts University Bournemouth International Poetry Prize, Magma Pamphlet Publication Award, Gregory O’Donohugh International Poetry Prize, Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize and National Poetry Society UK. She serves concurrently as Lance Williams Resident Artist in the Arts & Sciences, University of Kansas, and Dean and Professor Emerita, School of Art, University of the Arts Philadelphia.
July 2023 | poetry
Reading poetry online takes me
down the rabbit hole of the next poem
and the next, and oh, I like this poet
and how did they even come up
with gold leaf or orange sweat.
Outside, Spring is in the world.
My husband’s down the hall
drawing machinery on his computer.
He says he’s not an artist,
but those clear, concise lines
are strong enough to swing on.
Lay down your mouse, my beloved.
Look! The pine tree across the way
has released a cloud of golden pollen.
Patricia L. Scruggs
Patricia L. Scruggs is the author of one poetry collection, Forget the Moon. Born in Colorado, she spent ten formative years in Alberta, Canada before taking root in Southern California. Her work has appeared in Burningword, McQueen’s Quinterly, Inlandia, ONTHEBUS, Spillway, Rattle, Rip Rap, Cultural Weekly, Crab Creek Review, as well as the anthologies l3 Los Angeles Poets, So Luminous the Wildflowers and Beyond the Lyric Moment. A recent Pushcart Prize nominee, Patricia is a retired art teacher who earned her MFA at the California State University, Fullerton. She and her husband of over 60 years are parents of two and grandparents of three.
July 2023 | poetry
- June-ish.
We drove by William S. Burroughs’s house
to see if we could feel his
aura from the street. We were confused about
why he lived in Kansas, of all places—
because we’d only ever prayed to leave it.
I was young and dumb and didn’t know
half the story behind this cynosure
who looked like my grandpa.
But I knew how I felt after reading Naked Lunch:
Stoned, mostly. And a bit revolted.
You, though, were smitten
with the wasteland of his words.
Obsessed, really—
keeping his books, dog-eared and disguised
from your mother’s eyes (or so you thought).
I watched you leave Kansas as a
high school dropout turned
stripper turned
drug addict turned
prostitute.
And I started to wonder where it all
went wrong.
I ran into your mom at the store a while back.
Through tears, she claimed it was those
damn books.
I thought back to your childhood:
No dad.
No sugar.
No skirts.
No boys.
No fun.
No anything.
Except taking care of your little brother
while your mom got tanked.
So I said to her,
“I don’t think it was the books.”
Erika Seshadri
Erika Seshadri lives on an animal rescue ranch with her family. When not caring for tame ritters or feral children, she can be found writing.
