Poker with Nanny

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Poker with Nanny

Nanny dealt the cards with a twinkle in her eye,
Five years old, I sat across, a sucker for a lie.
Two unmatched socks, a fistful of coins, my whole fortune there
She raised an eyebrow, muttered a crooked prayer.

Dice rattled loud, a plastic cup on the floor
Nanny with her ciggy, muttering hexes by the door
Snake eyes rolled, my hand shook, a tear welled in my eye
“Bad karma, child” she’d wink with a loving smile in her eye.

And Merle sang in the background
And Waylon played along.

Five years old, knees scraped from climbing too high
Nanny dealt the cards with a twinkle in her eye.
Five card-draw, a lesson with a playful disguise.
Pennies and dimes, a world turned upside down
But poker with Nanny, that’s where love was found.

And Merle sang in the background
And Waylon played along.

And Nanny would yell “Sing it, Merle”
Even when it wasn’t his song.

Pennies and dimes, a world turned upside down
But poker with Nanny, that’s where love was found.

Leigh Ann Raab a Virginia-based photographer and poet. Leigh Ann's creative journey spans over two decades. Her poems delve into themes of healing from an abusive childhood to navigating her own mental health. Known for her constant companions-a pen and a camera- she captures the world through both words and visuals. This poem honors her grandmother, who taught her to gamble at the age of five.

King of Hearts Might Not Have One

Photographer - Tobi Brun

King of Hearts Might Not Have One

Card games in Marianas Trench don’t feel the same without you-
Anyway, the monsters like Rummy more than expected.
Crustaceans play fair for the most part, but the sharks like to cheat and ruin the mood
I sip on a seaweed cocktail and pray waves swirl me into the abyss where you seem to have
disappeared to

Just in time to beat you at your own game.

No rules, right?

Anyway, the monsters laugh at me
I ask if they can solve a riddle; they can’t, and neither can I.

A good man is gifted a fiddle, but it doesn’t play any music.
None of his instruments do anymore-
Not the tiny violin in the corner or the piano or our favorite song on the jukebox
Is the fiddle the one playing him or is he simply not a good man?

Marinah Inman is a personal banker, bartender, and poet. She has published poetry in Northland College’s magazine, The Mosaic (2018), Anthology Turning the Corner, New Adventures (2021), and was co-editor for Prayers for Women by Women (2022), a Thrivent prayer book. She is a Washington State native but grew up in Oklahoma and Minnesota. Marinah now resides in the small town of Hartford, Wisconsin and enjoys being an aunt, daughter, and friend.

‘Where is My Son of a Preacher Man?’, ‘Fog’, & ‘High as a Kite’

Photographer - Beth Cole

Where is My Son of a Preacher Man?

Whose words would heal the cynic
Whose gifts I’ve heard in lyrics
Embraced and gentle-faced
would make mine glow
I fear only time knows,
but time has not been kind
each passage a newfound wound
each promise, a broken oath
that follows from womb to tomb
that hurts to love to loathe
I have not wished to live by song
To twist your words sweet for me
to feel your touch and still find longing, in such sacred company
I need no artist to be a muse, a lab man to be a tester,
Musician to share the blues
Lovelorn to rot, to fester
I only want my son of a preacher man

Fog

Fog engulfed me
Fog thick and cold
Fog stole my sight
Fog freez’d my eyes
Fog hid something
that terrifies
Hands were reaching out searching
Somewhere out there it’s lurking
Rapid quivering my hands, feet, whole body quakes
Something awakening
Panicked and dazed, my head it aches
Though Fog has blurred all space between
I know what I heard what I have seen
Intoxicated by misty dew
I have discovered the murder clues
Fog trapped me no clear escape

I scream and cry in pure blind rage
I scream and ache and drown in shame
Fog has trapped me, in the monsters maze.
In acceptance of my fate,
I feel the cold concrete as I lay
down on the ground
but make no sound - inhaling fog
And I admire the maze the monsters design
Hands on my face as it’s face meets mine
Dinner time
It’s chipped claws rip into my skin
And tears me apart limb by limb
It’s heavy teeth shatter my bones
The crisp snap makes the monster moan
It must’ve been starving
No piece of me left
No blood, hair, eyes teeth or flesh No clothes, thoughts, sound or pain
Yet in the void
Fog remains

High as a Kite

I fly a kite to greet the stars
The sun she kissed my left cheek
burning bright, she scolds me
the guard that keeps the gods
I feel her glow, but not her blows
For my song delights the flowers
they stand and bloom when magic leaves my core,
Entranced they dance for hours, and lift their limbs to greet me at the door
The birds they sway in flocks
both hugged by the wind
Their beaks speak but they sing in squawks, perhaps that’s why they grin
We pass the shore,
the matte flat of the rocks calms me
The plush Cush of the grass kneeling, my golden string reeling
My belly dropped, my song paused
rays stinging my sight

Nails flayed in the sky
as the sun laughs, my song is gone
As each second passes, the land revealed the blues,
Her violence in her wind
Reclaiming all her kin
She yanks me by my limbs
And makes me her dessert
This gift she steals for earth.

Janesia Stillwell is an Australian writer from Melbourne. A political science major at the university of Melbourne, She fills her time by watching hour long video essays and of course writing. Her poem ‘through the looking glass’ was published in ‘The Crow Journal’ of Ginninderra press.

THE EARTH IS A RELIQUARY

Photographer - Tobi Brun

THE EARTH IS A RELIQUARY

Her growth brings us to this forest; the forest I stand in. It’s as though a window’s picture could
not capture her elements.

She spills over our graves, swallowing our bones in plants. The streets are taken over with the
brush of her hand.

She plays with airplanes, pushing against the machines.
She visits me often.

Ribbons ripple through the air, a festival of mourning the living <things>.
My death was beautiful. The struggle to breathe mangled in a deep scarlet world.

I had a weak heart overwhelmed by beautiful things. And the horrid <things> tore me apart.
I ran through the highway now filled with itchy grass. My toes sank into the dirt as I wiggled them.

She was giggling at my expense. My mouth watered the mud; I was now in waist deep.
<ground> I would not struggle.

She lifted me as a child who was inconsolable to the whispers of the whirling sea.
I still cried though. She had buried me just to come and pick me back up as though time had
gotten to her, making an unstable fixation on her negligence.

Who am I to judge her nature?

I had joined society in the overthrow. I had polluted her love and rebelled against my own
mother.

Who am I?

Taylor Noe is a current student at Bowling Green State University as a Bachelor of Fine Arts major in Creative Writing. Her passion for writing began with self-publishing her early collections of poetry in two books showcasing her growth as a creative writer from 2022-2023. Since then, Taylor has been working on fine tuning her creative methods and studying in a more professional setting. If you would like to see more of Taylor and her work, follow her on Instagram at tay.writes_07.

Celebrity, Variation on "Variation on the Word Sleep," In Preparation & Father's Day.

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Celebrity

Sitting here, my peripheral vision decreases,
I feel important as eyes are forced to
to gaze toward the back of my head.
Up here, I see things more,
I’ve got a better seat in the house.
The girl’s hair is blacker,
her skin glows more,
I can hear the inconstant validity of her sniffling
in austere surround sound.
My perception is greater –
loose pipes spilling out clear and soluble water
in a cylindrical, constant stream.
I remember it smelt like chemicals in that room,
years of studying the mystery of the periodic table
was baked and seasoned in,
back and forth.
Those two were the celebrities,
whom I gazed at all through the year.
In the winter I dissociated into the weaves of their J. Crew sweaters,
I watched her tight ponytail bobbing up and down in
the curve of her back,
as the snow fell.
And it was perfect,
her mediocre-sized bra strap peeked out
with just the perfect tinge of conspicuousness.
And then, one dewy spring day,
I was surprised.
From below the rich chestnut locks of her tightly bound hair,
led a naïve path down to the collar of her shirt,
white, starched, and perfect as it was.
Scattered on that path, like invisible rocks on a dirt road,
sprouted the familiar sight of
a cluster of pink, newly formed,
round pimples.

Variation on “Variation of the Word Sleep”
Inspired by Margaret Atwood

My wish would be to sleep with you.
Not to sleep
with you,
like man sleeps with woman,
this talk of sleep yielding the uncanny
movements and hushed words whispered between
blankets and warm bodies, but
I’d like to sleep
with you. Near you.
In your apartment.
To have it be late.
For us to be alone, at first;
then to have your companion arrive,
the knight in shining armor returning
from his magic kingdom of rehearsal space,
to greet you.
And I will slide down,
assume my position,
the one I was granted at birth as the
only, the third, the fifth, the watcher –
I’ll bend into my desk chair behind
the paper-clipped stacks of content couples.
I’d like to lie near you, touching –
for us to talk for long hours,
for your hand to slip over mine ever slightly
when our mutual passions surface in conversation.
And I’d like for you to
watch me,
sleeping.
To witness this drowsiness as it overcomes my senses,
and unties the knot of practicality inherent in holy children.
I’d like you to relax, to sedate your neuroses.
Or if relaxation is not feasible, to
allow me the pleasure of closing my eyes on your couch,
your perfume filling up the place alongside your disobedient love for him.
And I’d like to watch you, with him,
as I begin to sleep,
subtle touches held by backward glances and
restraint.
I’d love to go to sleep here, in this peaceful
place, and wake up in my life that is
independent
as I wish it to be.
Until my mothers pocketbook,
her secret, newfound cornucopia,
reminds her of the yearn to shop with me,
and guide me
To play the obstructive, unending, irresistible game
that these two adults now play,
covering the loneliness of her quiescent breast, knotted shoulders, and back
which cry out to be touched by the one she begot.

In Preparation

When my mother dies,
I feel that somehow I’ll know
exactly what to do.
Not because she’s explained what
her funeral must entail for most of
my lifetime,
or because I attended my Grandfather’s
open – casket wake at the newborn
age of eight.
I suppose it could be some
sort of control issue.
I am sure that we will be sitting
in a hospital room in some far away
town or city filled with new smells
and an unfamiliar landscape.

Upon entering, I’ll take off
your socks first,
one by one,
and begin to wash your feet,
so you’ll know that it’s me.
I’ll clean the grime visible
only to me that the nurses
irresponsibly let collect
between your toes.
You’ll feel the refreshing
cool of alcohol as I remove
the polish remaining on your
toes from my last weekly
pedicure to you; I’ll know
you want to go purely.
Your clothes will be next –
against all orders of nurses
and staff
and your own mother
and husband —
I’ll lift your graceful,
cat – like back up off the pillow,
gently, like you’ve always taught
and wanted me to be,
and untie your gown,
lifting it away like wrapping paper
and quietly crushing it under the table.
Your breasts stare at me,
like two concealed souls trapped
inside some pool - some other planet’s pool -
your loose skin’s surface rippling with
your every breath, the life hanging on in them,
afraid to spill out over the edges and be gone;
I’ll wash them and your neck with warm water.
It amazes me how these bittersweet tables have turned, you look at me with grateful eyes
– we are so much more than mother and child,
Madonna and child,
woman and woman,
we are like the two last puppies of a litter left
in the whelping box, anticipating where the
other craves warm, real touch.
So, I take out the tiger balm because
it smells like our old house.
I rub it under your toes,
untying the knots you’ve always battled
that are reflective of your weak sinus cavities.
Everyone has left the room -
cats escape my black bag of tricks,
they are all around you, like the old days.
I apply them to you like a midwife
does leeches, curling about your
neck and defeated chest,
looking like they will transform into stone
and become part of your neo-Rasta sepulcher here.
They say you come into this world and out of it
alone, but we’ve been napping in the sun together
since I was a part of your womb.
In you.
I will always be there,
the cats, the dog and me,
and the music
I’ve turned on
loud and tribal,
the reggae cadence
to which I was
conceived.
We walk you down this
aisle in time,
we are your overdue army,
only one will take you.

Father’s Day

I always wondered how I
would feel on this day after
you were gone.
Your death left me in the
broad category of daughters
who experience this day with
a deceased father.

I wondered, would it be easier
now to encapsulate your life
and tuck it away neatly and say simply,
“my father is deceased,”
relieved that I no longer
have to explain your choices,
and our past?
For years, I knew that the day
you were no longer with us
would provide me with a
sense of relief from the worry
and anxiety that our relationship
caused for all these years.
I had hoped for any sort of closure,
a welcome release of the silent albatross
that I wore daily around my neck.
I watched your memorial service online
and wondered if there would be
any mention of me.
Then, I saw this picture of us appear
on the screen, one that you must
have kept for all these years.
In it, I am sitting on your knee, and you are
holding a borrowed camcorder,
the one you intrinsically knew how to use,
our shared familial duty.
Your eulogy included a simple statement
saying that you “had a daughter.”
Nothing more, and nothing less.
Clearly, you and your family used
the same strategy of encapsulating
our relationship that I attempted.
But, there are memories.

Some come to me in between
thoughts during the day,
memories that I haven’t thought
of in over twenty years,
maybe even longer.
They feel like unexpected
electrical zaps that can
jolt me from my deepest focus,
the adrenaline rush that comes
with suddenly swerving out of your
lane as you drive.
Others make me feel like
I’m surfing a huge wave,
the memory harnessing itself
to all the power of the ocean,
making the emotion
swell and swell
while I hold on and radically
accept the churning water.
And just like that, it’s over.
Grief is an ongoing process,
and it is never truly over.
It is why Leopold Bloom’s statement,
“Me. And me now”
still brings readers to their knees,
over a hundred years after it was written.
In Laurie Anderson’s masterpiece
Heart of a Dog, she says,
“But finally I saw it, the connection
between love and death,
and that the purpose of death
is the release of love.”
I love you, dad.
Somehow, I feel your presence deep

in my bones, like the genes that you
gave me are somehow annotated by your spirit.
You are a part of me, on a cellular level,
and I wouldn’t trade you for any other.

Katharine Chung is a New York transplant who currently resides in Connecticut. An Assistant Director in an urban public library by day, she enjoys stand-up paddle boarding with her dog, night photography, and movies in her free time. Her poetry has previously been published in Italics Mine. Find her on Instagram @vegancinephile.