Attunement

i follow your pulse to a hum,
sonar transmits from breastbone to ear.

i hush myself to the same degree 
of separation that pupils dilate.

a single alley bulb casts silhouettes and
harbors walls in an exhausted room. 

rip apart my rib cage, and build back 
more fragile next go-around.

simplicity now resolves itself through 
the rhythm of manual breathing. 

to merely know myself within it,
it is all that lingers from you.


@sentient__sentiment
Carly Zoladz

Bleeding Honey

                For Heba in Gaza

I’m treading through a rising wave
             of oily peaches; the stench 
grips some primordial lever 
            labeled too far gone. Inside lay 
three pies latticed 
            with cardamom, ginger, 
my last summer evening.
            I’m drenched in overabundance.
I offer small spells to those
            in reach while so many 
rake the soil with a rubbled 
            and hateful tongue;
but the land, it gives and gives
            and gives, bleeds honey, 
sutures horn and hoof 
            with threads of grass 
and grape vine. Scorched 
            in the fight for more she still 
yearns to sing. I wish I could 
            portal the sweet little suns 
across scarred earth but my pen 
            will not open such a gate. 
The peaches plummet and gasp 
            like years.


Jessica Aure Pratt
@jessaure.poetry

Crimson Static

 consume all the silence that's left in my head
i haven't been quiet in like a week
you are the thoughts I need to shed
lurking like the wolves for sheep
just beyond the fences of sleep
where my heart lies - ripe for you to reap
rip it open, pomegranate seeds
hit the soil, roll up to my feet
try to hide your crimson deeds
with sounds cripplingly sweet
a hoarder's bloody fingers
reaching for the harvest
and the static lingers...

C, @luneandlyrik

Collapse

muster up the courage to
agitate the soft tissue.
a kind of wisdom, i know it now. 
to lay down in the barrens
and plead the universe to carry 
me far beyond potential. 

if my memory ends here, 
so be it. out on the deck watching 
comets collide - break apart 
the horizon, 
and streak the pavement. 

asking why is rhetorical. 
a clothespin holding up
a minor role. 
once i sink through the tarnished 
subfloor, i will rest well. 
to know it was everything i could offer 
and it still ceases to be 
anything you wanted. 
just an airburst and impact. 

@sentient__sentiment
Carly Zoladz

I walk in the woods in my mind

I walk in the woods in my mind –
Through the towering oaks
Of my formative years
Sturdy and stoic
A solid base to climb
Past neat rows of pines
My memories laid out in lines
Orchards of dreams
The willow whose leaves
Contain endless possibilities
Trunks holding thousands of stories
Their branches forked with multiple endings.

I walk in the woods in my mind
Towards the dark shadowy corner
Where fears and worries dwell
Among thorns and vines
I tread carefully
Not wanting to go further but knowing I must
I’ll be better off for venturing through it
For beyond the darkness
On the other side, I see new growth
Saplings and shoots
Coming up through the forest floor.
Just as trees release nutrients when they die
To support the growth of new ones
My mind has shed its bark over the years
Letting go of unhelpful thoughts
And painful memories
Allowing space for new life to grow.

I walk in the woods in my mind
And notice gaps
Where there were once before
Invasive plants
Crawling and winding their way
Across the woods
I see blooming flowers
Where there were once squashed dead leaves
The forest is in flux
A constant living changing thing
Ageing and growing and dying and being reborn.

I walk in the woods in my mind
And am at once the walker and the woods.


Nicola Cronin
@wordswithnicola

Just Outside

I've kept my window closed for too long.
The blinds are heavy.
I woke up from days of just a quarter sleep
to stale air with an empty sound that is like peace only when
I tame my anxiety through unusual meditations
of finding you in the forest, 
just outside a door
that is actually my window.

Autumn Williams
@autumnwilliamspoetry

Ode to the Poet at Seventeen

after Larry Levi

I see my youth mostly
in the slurred lips of a costume
party        backseat of a Honda        black pick-up
truck where you smelled
like a lie I wanted to believe in
like wisteria drunk
on the weight of itself        heady like vanilla-
scented morphine        unpacking all the boxes
I didn't fit into        then folding me
so fit into the walls of your torso        birthmarks and freckles
like how a berry takes shape
inside a crevice        falls asleep inside
a question lulled        by birdsong and lonely
lyre        stubborn hearts
club where dreams dust and spirits start
aching like sad stories        told on special occasions
like the exact science of fizzy gums
and yearning        or a love poem
like a worry-worn wound anticipating
an unhealthy obsession        or a heavy rain.


Kait Quinn
@katequinnpoetry

The Keeper of Dreams

If you have ever held a dream, 
do not whisper it to the trees, 
nor scatter it among indifferent stars, 
give it instead to a woman who loves you.

See how it quickens, 
takes root, 
as though she tended the 
very well from which your soul drinks.

She is a threshold, 
a trembling seam, 
a doorway between the flesh 
and the spirits.

All life begins in the chamber of her body, 
is it any wonder she can cradle, 
and deliver, 
the wildest shape of your longings?

Kiara Rose
@kiararosetalley

Twenty Years Old, Barely Married

I take a nanny job in Ireland 
for the summer, my new husband 
about to leave for basic training,

I, about to start graduate school,
sprinting for an adventure
before life consumes me.

I’ve never left the firm palm 
of my country. Scarcely an adult,
I have a passport, a ticket, 

and some nerve in hand. When I land 
on the emerald fairy island 
an immigration officer asks

me where I will be staying, for how long 
and to do what? Three months, Donegal, 
with the M family, to nanny.

She is irate at my lack of work visa,
gawks at my stupidity and illegal entry;
I’m taken to holding. I’ve never felt 

so scared and ashamed and alone. 
The tall white cube of a room, 
graffiti laced, reminds me 

of a racquetball court, like I’m here 
to play at adulthood. Who was here last - 
drug smugglers, violent men,

or young women like me, 
trying to navigate the world 
with a compass no one taught 

them how to use? I’m escorted 
to board a plane home. It’s years
before I dream of velvet fields again,
past tall white walls.

Jessica Aure Pratt
jessaure.poetry

My Aesthetic?

       After Prudence Brooks

Prism rainbows graffitied across cobwebbed frames / 
a dusty piano four generations deep / flowers wilting 
in the corner / rain chiming like an apology / hazelnut 
coffee at the clatter of a breakfast spread / ivy drinking 
in the slow wink of evening light / books strewn across 
every surface like the bright wound of fall leaves smeared
on the driveway / pear scented candles musting a shrine 
of daily talismans / an overdue medical bill curling 
on the counter / sink full of blue pottery / paper banners, 
bent by the pull of life / barbies in the bathtub / a hawk 
ornamenting the shock of yellow trees fizzing 
over a suburban hammock / rhythmic zush of a fire 
under airplane starlight / Uno cards on the floor 
where my daughter rage quit / a love so bright 
color forgets itself / a sunset so holy the sky burns 
into prophecy

Jessica Aure Pratt
jessaure.poetry

Upon learning that murder rates raise in the summer

I lodge a prayer beneath my tongue and a canister of pepper
spray in my sweatpants pocket; throw on a hoodie, suffer the heat.

July should come with a trigger warning, melted snow water
on every street corner instead of wolfish appetites with sharp teeth.

I beg the sky to stay grey a little longer, but even after I sealed
the old dryer vent where the mice got in, they still found ways

to fool the putty, elude the cold. I'm the only wall left standing
in this house of ruins. I am the wildfire and the bloom thereafter,

and I am trying to still my own birth, but the midwife insists
on tossing the windows open, boiling the water, tearing strips

of fresh linen for the blood. She bathes winter's womb from my limbs
until I am too pretty, too pert, too pink for a world that wants

to smudge what gleams. I once read that many fish change sex
as they age, and assume by many they mean female, by they age,

mean survival. The sun is up late tonight. Hibernation season wanes
with the crescent moon. Soon the clocks will spring forward, buds will shoot

toward sky. The crocus, the daffodil, the tulips next. How proud
they stand, how basked in amber, how unafraid to be so

unfurled. I'm almost jealous. Almost think peonies are invincible,
until a heavy rain, a heat warning, some man comes along with shears.


- Kait Quinn
@kaitquinnpoetry