WARM #11

I had to move more

on my own before

 

the wind would ever

consider me a ship.

 

I was born far away

from the ocean.  I

 

had to break myself

to spill into the sea.

 

Darren C. Demaree

 

Darren’s poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including the South Dakota Review, Meridian, The Louisville Review, Diagram, and the Colorado Review.

R.M. Cymber

Roadkill

car

blood slither, vomit, road shoulder, broken

car

antlers, up a hill, looks eighteen, frosty grass,

shivers, entrails, air like needles, hyper ventil

car

late cameo in glass, commuter, brake musing,

nausea, back road helplessness, call the police?,

grounded, mom’s breakfast, sausage goo,

failure, puffs of air, coalescence, coughing,

car

another payment, another day, another dollar,

dad’s glare, bruises, schoolhouse rumors,

irresponsible, grandma’s prayers,  doctor visit,

whistling wind, ashen clouds, naked trees

 

 

Looking Through a Hole in the Brick of the Bingo Hall

 

I see an excited man standing, everyone else sitting,

in the fourth row through the tobacco haze

 

He looks at his card, finger tracing,

eyes looking up down up down while a

toothless man somewhere in the back lifts

a bottle to his lips

 

The plastic balls click in the drum like

forgotten change at the laundromat

 

The man, hand raised, shouts over

four laughing ladies and the room

hushes to hear his case

 

R.M. Cymber

R.M. Cymber is a  graduate student at Fontbonne University in St Louis, Missouri. Some of his works are featured in Scrutiny Journal, The Provo Canyon Review, and Crack the Spine Literary Magazine. His poem “Manna” was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize. He is also an editor at River Styx Literary Magazine. Currently, he is writing poetry and short stories.

Reconstruction

The power saws of my childhood

sneak into the wind, great whirling

 

motors spitting dust, soft

and clinging to the hair of my arms,

 

transforming me from child

to Nordic beast, wild curls of blonde

 

lumber blurring my edges.

My father’s leather-pouched belt

 

hovers by my ear, smelling of nails

and sweat, and the chalk of a snapped line

 

hangs in the long air behind me, marking

the path from here to the place

 

where I once placed fallen screws

in a blade-scarred hand, certain

what I offered

was needed.

 

Alice Pettway

Alice Pettway’s work has appeared in over 30 print and online journals, including The Bitter Oleander, The Connecticut Review, Folio, Lullwater Review, Keyhole, and WomenArts Quarterly. Her chapbook, Barbed Wire and Bedclothes was published by Spire Press in 2009, and her full-length collection, The Time of Hunger | O Tempo de Chuva, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Pettway is a former Lily Peter fellow, Raymond L. Barnes Poetry Award winner, and three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Currently, she lives and writes in Bogotá, Colombia.

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