I am nowhere and love still finds me. On feather toes and gentle wind, it drops in. It settles in the hollow, drowning out the echoes. Some of the echoes say your name. Some float away. I wait outside the seawall, untangled and unshackled. I hold no phantoms hostage, swim away, swim away. […]
Love Still Finds Me – Kristin Kory
Pretend otherwiseRooms steaming with women in towelsHair dripping, feet slick, thrum of lifeLet loose, voices shrill in gossipAre they talking about you? Are they pullingTheir vicious needles throughYour thin, thin skin, where no oneHas been, those secret corners within Time turns her unwashed skirts outThe sauna is set too high to see Faces melt behind […]
We the unhinged – Candice Louisa Daquin
flag display in the El Pavo Real DTLA jewelry gallery on Broadway these beauties have hung there since my kidhood seeing them there so dignified brought back so many wonderful and tragic memories Bruce Lee movies arcades colorful candied almonds parents embroiled in DV fear panic and coloring books fat crayons my pigtails and witnessing fatal drunk fights the stars in the sky an upward continuum of the light bulbs on the marquees and the ever hypnotic Million Dollar Theater and the frightening giant Victor’s Clothing blue groom and so forth and so on Los Angeles here I am your daughter….
ive reduced life to see and keep
watching those outside of me
wandering through the forests of the street
i wandering but knowing my truth
keeping in time with the breath of us
i walk watch look down and teach
myself to bury it all in
like the subway at five
the scents of dust and gasoline
transport me to my early youth and years
when primordial rules of procreation haunted my womb
but there were no takers in the battle
as nights unraveled in perplexity
and days ended in sullen tragedy
no options left amid the fields of nothingness
now a mother to my years i orphaned most of them
walking away from normalcy into the mouth of modern beast who struggles with love for me
what the hell?Dream vapor clings, fried egg reality. I blink pie crust from my eyes. Conscious and not high enough, I fumble through the utensil drawer for a joint. Finger joint, knuckle bone, fill the stock pot, migraine on simmer. Add mushrooms. Throw in an orphaned sock, a lost earring. Solo journey to technicolor awareness […]
Awake and Mostly Sober – Rachael Z. Ikins
I’m awake and pretty much sober. Yet I do not wish to be sober. I want to swirlmy anger in my mouth, letting its tannins coat my tongue until my tongue doesn’t care what words it forms to hurl at old, pasty white men who place chains and shackles upon our bodiesto drag us backthrough […]
Awake and Pretty Much Sober – Annette Kalandros
my sisters are grace
they walk among the angels high
alone together plowing through
picking evil out of truth
my sisters are the revolution
History hurts.They told us back in the day:whatever you do,don’t study history.You’ll see livesmisshapen, possiblymurmured in vastderangements ofyour own.You’ll see peoplegnawed by life;dreams sewn shut.(But you’ll also see the strange chemical languageof constellations shattered over the Kewa rez.The ancient stain of night in its diamondsplash and to breathe& sleep here is to breathe& sleep in […]
Land of Enchantment – River Lucero
words less spoken 