‘$5 on pump 3’, ‘Window Watching’, ‘Bosworth’s Jacket’ & ‘I Keep Cutting Myself on J.K. Simmons’ Bald Head’

Peyton Fultz is a self-taught acrylic painter hailing from the DC area.

$5 on pump 3

He says he’s from Only, Tennessee

but he’s got Colorado plates.

And he asks around for a brown haired girl

in every shopping mall this side of that way.

Well, he’s forgotten what water sounds like 

since his tap broke 

and he doesn’t pay his bills.

But the Pinkerton’s can’t find him 

since his name washed away in that flood.

“Glacial,” he says

he went to Princeton

when he broke down off State Route 65.

And he’s always offering directions

but nobody’s ever seen him in town before.

He says he’s from Only, Tennessee

but he’s got Colorado plates.

And all he’ll ever buy is Folger’s Instant Coffee

and the shirt off your back.

Window Watching

It’s one of those nights 

where there’s yellow light

shining right before the rain.

So the man hauling the cross along the boulevard

is cursing out Barabbas.

until his throat drips.

I’ve heard there’s bedlam in the cabaret

And that salvation’s just a day away.

That any glimmers in the clouds aren’t stars.

He can’t help it.

Claims to know a place 

where everything gets fixed.

Is this all that waits for me?

Is this all there is for me

in this yellow end of days?

Bosworth’s Jacket

The water did a real number

on that old calf-leather.

That old calf-leather that saw

ribbon roads.

Desert swept,

sand-torn roads

cracked like old calf-leather,

like a New Mexican’s skin.

That kind of leather.

It belonged to somebody’s father named Bosworth.

I don’t know about any Bosworth

‘cept for their taste in calf-leather road jackets

and their habit of stitching their name in the lining.

And it’s gotta be sixty-odd years old at least,

so any Bosworth’s gonna be dead by now.

But his kids oughta be dead too

‘cause this old calf-leather’s an heirloom, man.

Now it’s sittin’ in a puddle.

No Bosworth son is gonna let that stand.

I’m no Bosworth son.

I’m just wearin’ his jacket.

Least I can do.

I keep cutting myself on J.K. Simmons’ bald head

I keep cutting myself on J.K. Simmons’ bald head

because there's razor blades between those 

sphynx cat wrinkles of his

and I’ll tell you why I am bleeding all over his perfect yellow drum kit

when I haven't apologized yet for having so much blood

is because I want J. K. Simmons to hate me like he knows what love is

because then I would know what it is to be perfect

because you know how much I want that

that being perfect and one of the greats is worth having so much blood

for J. K. Simmons to hate at and 

I want you to know that this is good for me

because when I tell you that jazz is all about being perfect please believe me

because I need you to 

because what else have I been doing if it isn’t all jazz this way

I want you to watch J. K. Simmons be perfect at jazz with me because he’ll hate you too and

you’ll bleed all over his perfect yellow drum kit with me and 

just imagine being perfect like that

just imagine being perfect like that

can you imagine being perfect like that

when no amount of blood could ever make anyone hate you and

it's only love when you die

because that's what blood is

love

Daniel Martinelli

‘The Gold Tooth’

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art

The Gold Tooth

Poor clumsy Alan resembled a gray shaggy carpet stuffed under a baseball hat. He was the saddest and meanest looking creature, his droopy nose was probably broken more than once because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut or his hands to himself.

Alan usually felt miserable but today, he felt charming and handsome as he basked underneath Madison’s blue eyes. She was one sexy woman in black tights, shoulder-length blonde hair, and her face sparkled at him like a diamond and she smelled so fruity. He enjoyed watching her pretty fingers fondle the apples.

Alan spread his mouth into a bad breath grin at Madison. A foul stench of onions and booze should have made her turn away except it was the yellow canine. The yellow canine beamed like a neon-light beside the rest of his rotten teeth. It was gold. Alan, the old man who had managed to almost drop all the apples from the produce display had a golden canine.

In the gaze of her attentive eyes, she noticed his old blue eyes had yellow polka dots. It might be her day off from the nursing home but she was still stuck in her lilac scrubs and examining patients, she really tried to stop herself. But Madison knew those yellow spots meant pinguecula or his liver was dying from an overload of liquor. She opted for the later version.

She handed him his bag of apples and was about to go find those overpriced raisins and maybe she would need butter that would be priced at an arm and a leg. It would save money to buy the pre-made stale butter tarts. But she really wanted to make them for her fiancee, she promised him.

“Thanks Blondie.” He chuckled and grinned.

She wished he never grinned, that contagious gold-feeling, that golden canine – one tooth – one cap of gold in his scummy mouth.

For Alan’s sake, Madison’s frozen smile and her stoney-blue eyes were so charged on him that it should have scared him but he was so enamored by this young-thing being so kind to him. It reminded him of the old days when women would be lined up to make time for him. That was really a lie, but that’s how he remembered them. In reality, Alan only picked up two women in two different decades and both of them divorced him. All the other times, the police were called to pick him up because he was harassing women at the bar or he was fist-fighting about politics.

Meanwhile in Madison’s mind, she was already twirling around her gold collection, her pretty things: chains, hearts and crosses. The gold tooth was so bewitching that Madison had to have it.

The shrill voice of her conscience preyed on her to do the right thing: make those butter tarts, you promised him. Madison knew that she should walk away, and she was in Lulus and maybe go to the gym and then bake those butter tarts. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t resist that pretty gold tooth stuck in his horrid mouth.

“Mads, It’s so pretty,” Granny whispered in her head. “Don’t you worry, you won’t get caught. Who would even love a man like that? Remember Audrey? Her bottle collection and fruit flies, and a couch with a small fortune of ten thousand?” Granny could spend all night listing off everything that she had taken and she was never ever caught.

When Madison was only four, she awoke to a dozen swirling red and blue butterflies except she knew now, that it was police lights spinning on the wall.

That night Granny wrestled with the policeman before they successfully handcuffed her and they left behind her Elizabeth Taylor wig on the floor. And then her mother disappeared into the pitch black night like she never existed. After that Madison lucked out on a foster family adopting her but somehow her life fluttered onto the fringe of disaster...

On her very first graveyard shift at the hospital she was in charge of Lillian Page. Mrs. Page was a lonely soul and she didn’t have anybody to come and visit her, and she didn’t sleep too well; she loved to talk until her voice just gave up. She had cancer from smoking since she was twelve so she knew that she going to die so she wanted to stay awake as long as possible even though the other nurses couldn’t stand her, Madison had a sweet-spot for this unwanted curmudgeon.

Madison gave her a nightly dose of temazepam and the old lady gobbled down the red and blue pills like they were her happy time.

When Madison picked up Mrs. Page’s chart she saw the wispy black-ink scribble that somebody already had given Mrs. Page her nightly dose. To Madison, an alarm went off and she had just double dosed the patient. She had given Mrs. Page a fatal dose. She had murdered her. Madison felt the room spin and the butterflies, the sirens she saw it all coming to an end with her in cuffs and nightmares.

Mrs. Page wasn’t bothered by Madison sticking around. In fact, she grinned at Madison as she felt the warm-drowsy feeling of sleep falling over her and she even called her by her daughter’s name: Lisa.

Madison was tumbling down a hole and she knew she should go and get help but that’s when she felt Granny’s old ghostly scratchy hand hold her around her wrists so tight and Madison could taste that bitter-tasting milk at the back of her throat.

“It’s going to be okay. You don’t move a muscle, child.” Granny coaxed her with the sweet words. Madison disappeared and she let Granny help her clean up this horrible accident.

Mrs. Page went into cardiac arrest. She never ever could remember how Mrs. Page’s gold necklace got into her pocket. All she remembered was Granny’s haunting goodnight-wishes:“I love you to the moon and back.”

The gray house, Alan’s home, stood not straight but not completely crooked. Once Alan died it would destroyed for a million dollar home. The ad would boast as being super private with a natural garden of hedges and gigantic mature cedar trees. Plus, a block away from the beach. Close your eyes and imagine your dream oasis.

As of now the property was anything but dreamy. The huge trees had uprooted the grass, broken the cement path and dishevelled the front stairs. An assortment of blackberry vines crawled their way out of the cedar bushes. Their thorns cutting into the air, seizing hold onto anything that would give them a speck of sunlight.

“My two wives are resting there. They were all sour bitches in life but now they’re sweet. The best berries for wine.” Alan bursted his gut into laughter.

“My husband makes a perfect pie.” She gave him a wink.

“Where’d you bury him?” He asked her.

“With the rhubarb.” She teased him into another blast of laughter.

The home was ugly, ugly by the fact that a white smudged fridge was at the very back of the house separating the kitchen and the back door.

An unhappy feeling of death was in all corners of the home for poor Alan. Alan could be dead in so many ways: Alan sleeping on his favourite chair while a fire from the tiny fireplace roasted him into a gooey ash, or him being crushed and beaten to death by all the books and bookshelves by the nasty Queen Charlotte Fault earthquake.

“It’s cozy.” She reflected as she shrugged her shoulders with the friendliest of smiles at Alan.

“Would you like tea, my dear?” He asked her as he rested his back against the fridge.

“No, thanks.” She sneered at him, how she wished she could just pry his mouth open and take that gold tooth rather than suffer a game of pretend with him.

“But Alan.” She paused to get all of his attention. “Let me spoil you. Let me make you a drink.” She volunteered and right away his frown of disappointment turned upside down and the golden canine winked at her.

The kitchen was narrow with just enough squeezable room for a round table with two seats. The sink was filled with a stack of smeared plates and ancient tea bags hanging off the faucet. In the corner was a zillion stack of fliers, and she was sure that she saw a mouse’s tail at the very bottom.  Mice or any rodent with snaky tails scared her. But Granny was right there with her sweet words. “It’s alright. He needs a friend. He needs your help, Mads.”

Alan eased into the wooden chair and she could tell that he had a sore back: it could be a deteriorating disc or cirrhosis. It made her back hurt by just watching him.

Madison took charge of putting the groceries away as she also searched the cupboards that were filled with more books than cans of food for a pair of clean glasses.

Granny stood beside Madison, she could only see Granny out of the corner of her eye: Granny was like a dark blobby shadow. Deep down Madison was also frightened that it might be a torn retina but it was better to believe that Granny was always with her.

“It’s colder today than yesterday. I’m going to have to start a fire tonight.” Alan rubbed his arms.

“A whiskey will warm those old bones too.”

“Old? Who says I’m old.” Alan barked as he liked to leer at this young-thing scooting around his kitchen. He felt so lucky today.

“I got your poison, Alan.” It was so corny but he loved how she wiggled the whiskey at him.

Alan grinned. She made him feel so young and important and like a king of his own castle.

“Alan, my dear, I thought I was the only one that kept books in my kitchen cupboards too.”

“You collect books?” his silver eyebrows peaked into a point as she handed him his drink.

“Yes.” The truth was she didn’t collect books but Alan liked to think that they were soulmates or something that was totally impossible. “So where do you keep these fine first editions?”

“In my bedroom.” He told her as he took a big gulp. His lips glistening with booze.

Madison peeked into the inky dark room. The walls were armoured with oodles of books and shelves; she could see the kitchen light reflecting off the shiny spines of hardcovers.

“You mister Alan, have such a charming smile.” His gold tooth rattled at her and she noted how he couldn't leave his glass alone until it was empty and her’s was still seventy-five percent full. “Where did you get that gold tooth?” She asked.

“My darling, Maddy, I panned for that gold.”

“Really?” She asked while she poured him another whiskey behind him. Then she sprinkled the fine white powder of crushed temazepam. Instantly, the powder dissolved like it never happened. Vamoosed into the ambers just like all her fathers that Granny had poisoned. Each one dead and striped of his gold chains or rings and Granny always wore at least five gold chains underneath her turtleneck tops.

Madison coughed and it didn’t sound good. She could feel that yucky taste of a germ bug swimming down in her throat.

“Are you getting a cold?” His face squinted into a grimace.

“No, allergies. I’m one of those people: dust, hay and alder trees and pollen too.” She took a sip of the whiskey. “So, when I went panning for gold. I collected nothing. Not even one tiny speck.”

“I have five vials of gold in my bathroom.” he told her as he took a big gulp and his soft grimy hand pressed her hand. “You are so sweet, Maddy, my dear.”

Granny’s white hands slithered around Alan’s neck and he shivered.

“Oh, Alan, cheers to you and all your million successes.” Madison cheered him on.

He wheezed into laughter. “Maddy, you want to know something else?” He wanted to impress her and to have her stay a little longer; he enjoyed her company.

“What is it, my dear?” She squeezed his hand.

“I’m a millionaire too.”

“In gold?” She asked.

“Nope, American and Canadian. I sleep on it every night. Sweet dreams every night.” He laughed up a storm as he took a mouthful of whiskey.

Madison wiggled comfortably into her seat as she waited for the temazepam to kick in. The temazepam metamorphosis began with the dilation of the pupils, then their speech became slurred followed by their gross motor skills: it became harder for them to walk or to move. Then soon enough they were knocked into a coma followed by a cardiac arrest. And they were dead. She never waited for their last breath before she went hunting for their treasures.

And Alan’s tiny pupils were blooming into black holes.

“You are a devil.” Madison told him quite frankly. “But a charming one.” She knew that was Granny talking she would never say anything like that.

Alan loved it and begged to hear her story and Madison thought it was only fair that she give them a little story as they gradually cease to exist.

“I’m a nurse. I’ve been working for about six years. My parents named me Madison after the mermaid from Splash. So every Halloween, I dress up like a mermaid. I call that my fun fact.” Madison crinkled her cute knob of nose at him as she stared deeply into his black pupils.

“A mermaid?” He asked amused and he liked to see her in a bikini. He wished it was still summer.

“Mmm, yep, and in my lifetime, I’ve met like ten other Madisons all named after the same mermaid. It doesn’t seem so original when you’re a millennial.” She took a sip of whiskey. “Ugh, this is so gross.” She wiped her lips on her sleeve. “It makes me want to hurl.”

“You’re a virgin.” he barked at her in good humour.

“Alan, you’re so silly.” She hissed at him. “I am engaged. I met my fiancee in detention in high school. It’s kind of funny when I think about it now. My fiancee, he lived in detention, but you see, it was my first time at detention in high school.” she yawned.

“What did you do?”

“Oh, it was meant as a joke. I bought a bunch of wild mushrooms to cooking class. Panther Cap. Amanita pantherinoides. It’s a mouthful but they are these beautiful spotted brownish mushrooms. So, I just bought them in as a stupid joke. I wasn’t going to poison anybody for real. So, I got detention and that was the day I met him. He was the kind of guy who pretty much lived in detention. A real hands on kind of guy. He’s a paramedic now.”

“Your fiancee is very lucky to have you.” Alan told her.

“Thanks. His step-mother tells me that I am lucky to have him.”

Alan laughed and he asked for another drink but she didn’t hear him and she didn’t care. Even though his movements were slow and clumsy, she knew in about five minutes he would be dead and forever resting in his own piss. And in her mind, she was already thinking about the mattress behind her in the dark room and she couldn't wait to have all that money along with his gold tooth.

An iron-fisted knock pounded at the front door, it almost sounded like they were going to tear the door down. The pounding knock hurtled her out of her cash fantasy and then she heard Alan repeating her name like a dog.

“Are you alright, Maaaddddyeee? He squeezed her hand. “They’ll goooo awwwayyy.” He grinned.

In spite of Alan’s words they didn’t go away, the pounding knock turned to the doorknob being wickedly twisted and turned.

“Who is it?” She asked horrified that they could just barge in during the day.

The door banged open and it was like all the air in the house blew out the front door. She sat there clutching her throat and then she heard two feet stomp inside and she knew she was being cornered.

“Father, I’m home.” The stranger shouted from the living room.

Alan dragged himself to the living room as Madison almost tripped over the kitchen chair.

“Youu, geeet ouut!” Alan yelled at his son.

“Drunk in the afternoon. Classic, pops.”

Each beat in her heart felt like those butterflies caught in her throat and twirling in her head. She knew this wasn’t part of her plan. She could hear both of them yelling and shouting and it was all gibberish to her.

 The darkness in the bedroom eclipsed over her, leaving the light behind her. The kitchen and the glasses of whiskey became farther and farther away, and the fear fluttered around her like mad butterflies and their wings had teeth and they were lashing at her - trying to tear her apart.

Then something stubbed her toe and she almost screamed but then she saw it was a book, just a book and a horrible feeling came to her that maybe she had poisoned herself. She didn’t want to believe it. That Granny had poisoned her. It was even a more horrible thought than the stranger. The bitter-tasting milk that Granny gave her every time she put her to bed. “I love you to the moon and back.”

Madison groped at the dark air trying to find her way out. Her hands stumbled upon a bookshelf and then another bookshelf and then another bookshelf.

In the pitch black, she searched for a halo of light that framed a window. A horrible thought that the window was behind the bookshelves. She was trapped and death was right there just like in Alan’s whiskey glass.

“Where’s the window? Please help me.” She whispered into the dark, hoping that Granny or some angel would help her. Would take her blind hand and show her the exit.

She didn’t want to die yet. She didn’t know where she’d go. At that moment she knew she wasn’t an atheist or even a Buddhist anymore; she was too terrified with fear of what else was hidden in the dark when she died.

Then she felt something a cold musty fabric between her fingers and she yanked it back to reveal a single window. Her only escape was covered by a thick knobbly cedar bush and streaming blackberry vines. High above the towering cedar she could see a few black crows flying in the free gray sky.

She opened the window and the cedar bush and the vines bounced into the room and the crows she could hear their cawing-howl that felt so close that it sent a shiver down her spine.

The moist air breathed onto her face and she could taste the salt of the sea on her lips that was a block away. The crows howled and it sent a tremor of cold chills.

That crazy-hurling howl wasn’t the crows, it was Alan howling from the living room.

Madison squished herself onto the windowsill and all she had to do was jump into the cedars and the dark thorns; her skin prickled with anticipation of all the blood-trailing scratches.

She pushed off from the ledge and and instead of thorns the curtain snatched her away from escape.

Madison screamed and squirmed and did everything to stay alive and try to get away from the man who held her in the folds of the curtain.

She could hear him yelling at her to shut up as his hand pressed down on her mouth wanting to crush her. Suffocating her under the mushy fabric. The yucky fabric she could taste all the bitterness of the pee, the nicotine and the dust heavy with failure and she became so afraid that she was going to die. She could taste the bitter-milk: chalky and so bitter that the cinnamon on top only made her lips spicy.

Abruptly, Madison was chucked onto the floor. She curled herself into the folds of the curtain like it would protect her from any harm that was going to come her way.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” He told her but she didn’t believe him even though she heard his footsteps move away from her.

Underneath the curtain she could just make out through the weak weave Alan’s son underneath the kitchen light. She watched him pace back and forth and then she saw Granny. Granny standing beside him as he drank down the two glasses of whiskey.

Inch by inch the curtain slipped away from her head and then she sat there like a doll spying at him. She knew him. He was the butcher. Usually, his long black beard was stuffed underneath a hairnet but she recognized those mingy eyes and his giant stance and all those tattoos of Vikings and Celtics and fiery flames on his arms, hands and neck.

“He’s dead.” The butcher told her and she knew she meant Alan.

Madison sat there and the room became lighter and she could hear just the crows and the mist turning into rain and Granny words on the wind telling her it was going to be alright.

“I am sorry.” She wasn’t that sorry for him, she was sorry that she had ended up here with him. “If he’s dead and you called 911. They won’t be out here for at least an hour.” She kicked off the curtain. “I know because I’m a nurse.”

“A nurse?” he still didn’t recognize her and that made her a little bit mad.

She stepped underneath the light and his face turned friendly because he recognized her. The young lady around his age buying steaks or a whole chicken. He had even given her a recipe for roast chicken with a beer can in the summer.

“Madison.”

“Corey.”

She picked up the two glasses. “I should probably be here when they arrive.” She invited herself. “So, maybe, we should have a drink as we wait.” She told him as she poured the whiskey.

His head was weeping between his hands as she sprinkled the rest of temazepam that was left in the pouch. She hoped it would be enough.

“Yeah. I did everything to save him.” He turned around to face her.

“To save him?” She asked as she passed him a drink.

He really didn’t want the drink but he took it anyways. He didn’t like to look at her too long because he found her fake eyelashes creepy.

“I think he had a heart attack.” Corey informed her.

“A heart attack?” She questioned it like he was an idiot. “Well, he wasn’t well, you do know that. He was in a lot of pain. His liver was practically killing him. Not much you can do.” She grinned but he didn’t smile back. “We should drink.” She took one of her tiny sips while he downed the booze in one shot.

“Miss, can you check on him?” Corey stood there. “To just make sure. I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Sure.” The living had a hard time when death finally came and all they had was something lifeless whether they loved or hated them. It was all the same. They wanted her to check one more time to make sure that they were really dead.

He followed behind her like a little puppy as she approached the old man who was sprawled out like a bear rug except he rested on his back and in a pool of his own piss. His mouth was wide open and his golden canine so shiny.

Madison kneeled down and took his pulse, pretending that there was a half chance of life in him. Her two fingers pressed against his neck, where the pulse would be, and then for real theatrics, she picked up his hand and checked his wrist.

“I am so sorry, Corey.” She told him even though her eyes never left the gold tooth.

“We were arguing.” Corey said. “He fell over. I didn’t know. I didn’t think.”

“I heard.” She silently said as her finger touched the gold tooth.

“He just fell down.”

“Were his eyes open and his eyelids fluttering like this.” She showed him, and she didn’t read the horror on his face. She had no idea, that he knew, that she had the taken and hid the gold tooth in the palm of her hand.

Corey’s hands went numb as he watched her face smirk at him. Her blue eyes were like glass and her face glared at him like wax. It was like she wore a mask and a wig of blonde locks.

“Are you okay?” She held his chilly hands as her warm hands fell over him checking his vitals. “You’re ice cold.” She giggled at him. “Maybe you need to sit down?”

The liquor, and he had just a little bit, he’d been sober for about two years and now, he could feel the poison in him and he could taste that vile part of him erupting. After one shot of whiskey he was a cheap date but back in the day he drank like a fish. Corey didn’t like having her clammy hands on him.

Madison moved like she was in water, swimming around his legs, until he caught and squeezed her by her neck; she felt like quicksand in his palm.

Nothing ever worked out for him except the job he had, the butcher, packing up the meat and he was good at that. He liked butchering and then packing it up for people for dinner, or his meat recommendations if he got asked about a good cut for steak or a roast, or reserving their turkeys for Christmas. It was like he was right at the table with them.

Corey did feel bad for burying her in the back with the cedars and he felt even worse when he saw her missing person poster. A family missing a loved one. It was a horrible feeling. He didn’t like to think about her but he couldn’t erase the last memory of her. After Madison died her eyes twitched and twitched and her fake-lashes quivered like caterpillars. It freaked him out a couple of times as he dragged her body away from his Dad’s body before the ambulance arrived to see his dead father.

The blue house, Corey’s home, stood straight and sturdy with beautiful tall hedges that he trimmed on his days off. With his dad’s inheritance, he got a new truck that he drove from work to home but one day he would take a trip to some place less gray.

Veronica Gardner lives in Red Deer, Alberta (Canada). She has moved around the globe from NYC, LA, and then to Comox Valley to find gold, and then for a summer, she watched David Blaine live in a box for 44 days in London, England. Her poem "A Cat With Wings" has been published in Poet's Choice: Poems Now and Forever edition.

‘Sex on Moto’, ‘The Moto’s Cubby Hole’, ‘Ouaga Cowboys’ & ‘Catching Up With Friends’

Michael Raqim is a photographer and writer based in Texas. He began practicing film photography in 2004 and later moved on to digital format. He is currently working on a photo book called "Dreaming in Monochrome."

Preface Note:

Located in West Africa, Burkina Faso (formerly known as Upper Volta) is north of Benin and Ghana and south of Mali. Ouagalais refers to the people living in Ouagadougou, its capital city.  

Ouagadougou is known as the premier motorcycle city in West Africa because motorcycles are the major means of transportation. In fact, Burkina Faso is called “the African capital of two wheels.”  Out of Ouagadougou’s 1,62 million population, as of 2015,  765, 477 people owned a motorcycle. So almost one out of two people own a motorcycle. There is a hierarchy of Ouagalais transportation; walking is on the bottom, followed by bicycles, motorcycles, cars, and then chauffeured cars. 

Burkina Faso was colonized by the French, so French is a dominant Western language there. Note, French words in the poems will have footnotes with their translation on the bottom of the page where the poem is. 

Watching the Ouagalais on their motorcycles (aka motos) one can see a gamut of emotions and transportation scenarios. I hope to give you a glimmer of the roads in Ouaga. These poems were based largely on my time living in Ouaga from 2018 to 2020.

Bonne route!

Sex on Moto

It’s one or two a.m.

They are parked by the dam.

An old homeless man watches

the fire in a large can

several yards away from them.

She has a red mini mini skirt.

He sits as if driving,

and she straddles him,

facing him.

They pull towards each other-

she pushes up and away 

from the dam and bridge, 

aims for the fire 

with her hips.

He pulls her to him 

to land down again

and again.

Her hair,

hips,

and that oh so tiny space

void of fabric.

The moto stares across 

the dam, 

wants to go forward

and forward.

The Moto’s Cubby Hole

Under the rider’s ass

is not only the seat,

but a storage hole.

Lift up the seat

and stash your treats-

like cigarettes,

peanuts, or an orange.

Hide away your 

extra pens and pencils,

spare change,

or that romance

novel Mom just won’t

have in her house.

Great place to conceal

a second phone

to the deuxième bureau

or keys to her house,

placed underneath

or inside your Bible

or Koran.

And remember,

first and foremost

to keep a towel

to wipe the dirt

off your seat

so your ass stays nice

and neat!

* deuxième bureau literally means second office but is used in West Africa to refer to a mistress

Ouaga Cowboys

Ride high in style with

shined shoes,

starched shirts,

and motorcycles washed

daily.

Ouaga cowboys press earbuds

in while they drive.

The music pumps them up

and their motos become 

thrones. They are kings

of the road, so

they jut their right knees 

out to the side

at 45 degrees,

and zoom by.

A gesture to say:

I claim more space.

I am large.

Check me baby.

I am cool!

Catching Up With Friends

She has her hair teased and highlighted.

She’s feeling good,

She’s made all green lights.

She’s right on time.

Then someone calls her name.

She turns to her left.

It’s him, the guy who made jokes

In chemistry. She smiles.

He remembers her name.

He asks how her exam went.

He says it is nice to see her.

She smiles and tells him he 

Better watch the road.

They move up to the light.

It turns red. He moves closer

To her. He says he misses chemistry.

She clicks and hisses, chiding him.

Someone honks behind them;

The light is green.  They both

Turn left. She waves.

He nods.  They wait for further

Surprises on the road.

Suzanne Ondrus' first book, Passion Seeds, won the 2013 Vernice Quebodeaux Prize. She was Gordon Square Review’s 2022 runner up winner for prose, the 2013 Reed Magazine Markham Poetry Prize winner, a 2017 featured UNESCO World Book Capital poet in Guinea, Conakry, and a 2018-2020 Fulbright Scholar to Burkina Faso. Her work delves into love, desire, different cultures, history, racism, body image, African fashion, and women’s sexuality.  Her forthcoming poetry book, Death of an Unvirtuous Woman (Finishing Line Press) from which these poems come, examines domestic violence and homicide in an1881 Ohio German immigrant couple from Wood County. Hear her read on her YouTube channel Suzanne Ondrus and find her updates on suzanneondrus.com.

‘Legacy by Misfire’

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Lithuanian/Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet who has had over 700 poems published and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.

Legacy by Misfire

(or: The Accidental Monument to the Wrong Thing Entirely)

You think legacy is earned?

You think they built statues for brilliance?

No, darling.

They built statues because somebody died inconveniently,

because somebody’s friend couldn’t take a hint,

because a slow news week met a posthumous publication

and the New York Times had column inches to fill.

Let me tell you something soft and awful:

Half of art history is a clerical error.

Dickinson wanted it private.
Sappho wanted it sung forever.
Modigliani wanted it to outlive the body.

Jesus, most of them just wanted a nap.

But their reputations came wrapped in ribbon and post-it notes and secondhand ambition—

all slapped together by the survivors—the meddling, grief-laced, attention-starved survivors—

who couldn’t leave a single scrap uncanonized.

[INTERJECTION: Or maybe they just liked the sound of their own name in a preface.]

Sometimes I think the most influential artistic movement in the world is “Oops.”

It wasn’t genius that cracked open the canon—it was error, accident, misfiled intentions.

A misinterpretation so confident it became fact.

A first draft mistaken for a final statement.

A rejection letter that got intercepted by someone who couldn’t read the room or the handwriting.

Let’s catalog a few:

• Van Gogh: failed in real time. Got meme-ified posthumously. Now he's merch.

• Satie: wrote furniture music as a joke. The world said “brilliant minimalism.” He said “please ignore this background sound while eating soup,” and we said “let’s teach it in conservatories.”

• Rousseau: self-taught, laughed at, dismissed as a dilettante. Now they hang him in the same galleries as the people who mocked him. Irony sold separately.

• Joyce: wanted language to implode under its own weight. Wrote the book no one could finish. Critics call it a linguistic cathedral. Everyone else just wants to know what the hell happened on page one.

• Rachmaninoff: crushed by failure, retreated into depression. Came back with a symphony that made critics cry into their programs. Still gets dismissed as “overly emotional.” God forbid a melody makes you feel something.

• Sendak: wrote children’s books full of monsters and loneliness. Adults panicked. Kids got it immediately. He didn’t soften the world, he admitted it was scary.

(Footnote, scribbled in the margin of literary sainthood: The more you resisted biography, the more they padded it with lace.)

What we call a legacy is often just persistence by proxy.

The work survives because someone couldn’t let go—

or wanted to feel important,

or needed a project after a breakup,

or thought, maybe this will make me famous too.

(That last one hits harder than anyone wants to admit.)

What the Artist Wanted

What History Did

Sylvia Plath: To burn her work

Released deluxe annotated editions

Bas Jan Ader: To make people uncomfortable

Made him a tragic-romantic metaphor

Samuel Beckett: To scream into the void

Turned it into curriculum

Jean-Michel Basquiat: To escape

Immortalized

Anne Sexton: To confess

Canonized

Joseph Cornell: To fail privately

Celebrated retroactively

David Wojnarowicz: To rage without filter

Quoted in coffee table books

Vivian Maier: To keep her work hidden

Became posthumous Instagram icon

How do I know all those artist stories?
I don’t—not all of them. I looked some up to fill out the tables.
But that’s not the part anyone will remember.
What they’ll remember is the impression that I knew them all already.
That’s how legacy works.

The Myth of Recognition

Recognition is not redemption.
It’s misunderstanding with a commemorative plaque.

We like to pretend there’s a justice to it—like the universe eventually sorts things out, like legacy is some karmic refund for being underappreciated in your time. But recognition doesn’t always mean you were seen. It just means you were finally useful.

Useful to a critic with a deadline.

Useful to a publisher trying to look progressive.

Useful to a curriculum designer who needed a token freak to balance out the dead white mainstream.

Useful to a retrospective at a museum that just realized it hadn’t shown a woman in three seasons.

Recognition is often just a rebrand.

They take the weird thing you made in a dark room on a desperate afternoon and clean it up for exhibition. They write panel descriptions about “visionary restraint” and “early prescient modes of minimalism,” while ignoring the part where you were just broke and trying not to scream.

They call it timeless.

They mean toothless.

They put your mistakes under glass.

They don’t ask why you made them.

Recognition is not understanding.

It’s often just consent, retroactively applied—approval given to a version of your work you wouldn’t recognize, because they cut it, trimmed it, captioned it, and erased the splinters.

They didn’t finally get it.

They just found a way to make it palatable.

You want proof?

What Critics Said Then

What Critics Say Now

About Debussy: “Derivative nonsense.”

“A bold reimagining of form.”

About Munch: “Lacks cohesion.”

“Pioneering in its fragmentation.”

About Mussorgsky: “Ugly, dissonant, confused.”

“Raw emotion and structural daring.”

About Stein: “Nonsensical drivel.”

“Revolutionary force in literary modernism.”

About Kusama: “Pretentious claptrap.”

“Meditation on language and identity.”

About Stravinsky: “Unrefined.”

“Striking in its rejection of polish.”

About Bourgeois: “Disturbing, indecent.”

“Fearlessly mining the subconscious.”

About Glass: “Repetitive nonsense.”

“A minimalist reshaping musical language.”

[A Lecture Delivered at the International Symposium on Accidental Legacy Preservation]

(Lights up. A single podium. The speaker approaches, papers spilling. The microphone squeals. They clear their throat like it owes them money.)

SPEAKER:

Good evening. Thank you for attending this hastily convened symposium on the Unintentional Immortalization of People Who Did Not Ask For It.

Tonight, we gather to honor those whose legacies were shaped not by intention, but inertia—whose posthumous fame is the result of archival accidents, interpretive gymnastics, and the sheer cultural momentum of someone else’s thesis project.

(Pauses to adjust glasses that are not there.)

Let us begin with a case study.

(gestures to a chart that doesn’t exist)

The Arc of Accidental Greatness:

Phase One: Artist creates something weird.

Phase Two: No one likes it.

Phase Three: Artist dies.

Phase Four: Someone repackages the weird thing as “visionary.”

Phase Five: University lecture circuit.

Phase Six: Tote bags.

Now, some may ask, “Isn’t that just how legacy works?”

To which I say: No. That’s how laundering works.

We rinse the strange until it becomes aesthetically sanitized. We scrub off the intent, spray on some Meaning™, and hang it in the canon like it always belonged there.

Take Berlioz, our sonic maximalist—

He wrote music for imaginary orchestras.

History called it Romanticism.

I call it a brass section hallucination scored in eyeliner and unfinished wine.

Take Kafka—

He wanted oblivion.

We gave him a Google Doodle.

SPEAKER:

And do you know what unites them all?

They weren’t trying to be legends.

They were trying to be left alone.

They were trying to survive a Tuesday.

And yet—here we are—staging lectures in their name, building careers from their reluctance, citing their awkward last words like scripture.

Maybe the most honest legacy is the one that slips away.

But that’s not the one we publish.

[Scene: The Narrator Loses Their Grip]

Okay. Okay. Let’s be honest now.

Forget the lists. Forget the tidy pairings.

Forget the clever comparisons and academic winks.

You want to know what a legacy really is?

It’s a knife fight in a library.

It’s someone quoting you in a thinkpiece titled “10 Artists Who Knew Pain.”

It’s a street mural of your face next to a quote you didn’t say.

It’s a scholar explaining your use of symbolism and you screaming from the afterlife, “I was drunk and mad and it rhymed, Deborah.”

(...Deep breath.)

Sorry. That got away from me.

This is a literary essay.

A cultural examination.

A thoughtful meditation on posthumous narrative construction and the ethics of reception.

[beat]

It’s a joke, right?

It’s always been a joke.

[APPENDED RESPONSE FROM A CONCERNED ACADEMIC]

The following commentary has been submitted by Dr. Reginald T. Harbridge, Professor Emeritus of Canonical Studies and Interpretive Recontextualization, East Midwestern University.

While the author of the preceding essay has clearly engaged with a number of figures in what may be loosely described as the “creative arts,” I must respectfully object to the tone, methodology, and general comportment exhibited throughout. The liberal use of sarcasm and metaphor (some of which border on the grotesque—e.g., “a brass section hallucination scored in eyeliner and unfinished wine”) undermines the critical rigor necessary for productive discourse on legacy construction.

 Moreover, the essay’s assertion that historical recognition is “a repackaging job” fails to acknowledge the profound contributions of interpretive scholarship, particularly as demonstrated in my own recent monograph, Toward a Taxonomy of Posthumous Symbolic Capital in the Late Modernist Field. I would urge the author to familiarize themselves with the relevant frameworks therein, particularly Chapter Five: “From Obscurity to Inclusion: The Institutional Processing of Artistic Residue.”

Finally, the claim that art history is “a knife fight in a library” may make for compelling rhetoric, but it lacks sufficient footnoting. This essay, while stylistically energetic, should not be mistaken for a serious contribution to the discourse on artistic legacy.

In conclusion, while I commend the effort, I cannot endorse the approach. I look forward to future work from the author that better aligns with accepted disciplinary standards and includes more tables.

Legacy as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Here’s the part nobody likes to admit:

Once you’re canonized, everything you ever did retroactively becomes “early genius.”

You wrote a grocery list? A meditation on domestic minimalism.

You scribbled a phrase that didn’t go anywhere? Fragmentary brilliance.

You passed gas in a gallery? Performance art, obviously.

Legacy bends interpretation. Once the label says “visionary,” everyone starts squinting at the noise and calling it signal. The critics begin reconstructing intent from garbage. They publish entire essays on the significance of your coffee stains.

We pretend to study the work, but really we study the name. We build myth backwards. We map meaning onto scraps. We treat coincidence like prophecy.

And eventually, even the mess looks deliberate.

Even the silence sounds like genius.

Even your misfires get hung in the hall of fame.

Museum Tour Script (Please Memorize)

“Now if you’ll follow me to Gallery 3, you’ll notice this dimly lit corner with a single torn page nailed to the wall. The artist’s original intent remains a topic of vibrant debate— some believe it was a shopping list, others claim it was a conceptual protest against consumerism. Either way, we know it was powerful, because the artist died poor and misunderstood, which, as you know, is a strong indicator of quality.”

“And here in Gallery 5, we have a replica of the artist’s bathroom mirror. You’ll see the lipstick smudges on the glass—interpreted by some scholars as coded commentary on gender politics, by others as a chaotic morning. Either way, it’s in a glass case now.”

“Moving along…”

The Critics Who Missed It

“They’ll never amount to anything.”

“Too strange to be relevant.”

“Derivative, dull, overly ambitious.”

“Style without substance.”

“Lacks the gravitas of their peers.”

Those were the reviews. The ones pinned to studio walls, folded into desk drawers, reread with shaking hands. The ones that killed projects. Delayed publication. Made artists doubt everything they touched.

You know where those critics are now?

Footnotes.

They were wrong then.

We’ll be wrong now.

Circle complete.

What They Left Out

They never mention the migraines.
Or the drafts that bled through the paper.
The burned dinners. The shoes that blistered.
The hours rearranged around someone else’s needs.
The work that got torn up in a fit and taped back together, twice.
The panic over rent. The mold in the corners.
The friendships frayed thin, then snapped.
The notebooks warped by water, or wine, or weather.
The rejections that didn’t sting until the third reread.
The nights everything felt like noise.
The mornings they almost quit.

None of it gets carved into plaques.
None of it gets canonized.

But maybe it should.

Legacy isn’t earned.
It’s rehearsed until it sounds like fact.

[end]

Ryan T. Pozzi is a writer and historian whose work blends cultural commentary, biography, and emotional narrative to challenge received wisdom about artists, legacy, and what we leave behind. He is the founder of the Nebraska Writers Collective and former director of the Apollon Art Space. His nonfiction is forthcoming in Ponder Review, Cursed Morsels, and Villain Era. Ryan is a member of the Biographers International Organization, Historical Writers of America, and Authors Against Book Bans. He lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa with his wife and too many notebooks.

‘They Quiet Now’ & Collected Works

Edward Michael Supranowicz is the grandson of Irish and Russian/Ukrainian immigrants. He grew up on a small farm in Appalachia. He has a grad background in painting and printmaking. Some of his artwork has recently or will soon appear in Fish Food, Streetlight, Another Chicago Magazine, The Door Is A Jar, The Phoenix, and The Harvard Advocate. Edward is also a published poet who has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize multiple times.

They Quiet Now 

An aimless walk 

through empty rooms. 

Lights switched 

on then off. 

Sickly light casting 

from the clouded moon. 

A horror of mundane 

fragility and smiles. 

A shadow branch 

lingers on faded frames. 

A terror of absurd 

normality and loss. 

A floorboard cold 

under padding feet. 

An ache shaped rise 

through sinking breath. 

Kind and unkind memories, no longer haunted. 

34 and I no longer see your ghost.

Love as the land 

Love is the greatest knowing. 

Like the fullest understanding 

of your home county. 

A stumble through 

wildest bramble, finding 

yourself, the trails, 

mapped beyond adventure. 

And, in the mapping, 

boredom, disappointment, joy 

and wonderful knowing. 

Love is the changing landscape. Seasons and man’s desire, 

a constant scarring of England. The drive of felled forests, 

planted gardens, shadowed 

by towering winter clouds 

over a looming headland 

or bluebells singing 

to a quiet copse, 

new secret beginnings. 

Love is the slow and firm hand. 

The lingering touch 

that has nothing to find new, 

but shivers in the ground 

made rich and familiar by time. 

The tracing, skimming fingers 

standing hairs on end 

like sheets of sunflowers 

fielded towards eternity. 

Love is as the land, somehow possessed and unpossessable by its nature. Love is as the land, forever shaped and shaping all of its wretched creatures.

Bournemouth in the rain 

Rain on the cold hard road, but soft clouds. Tyres on the rain, but still the widening sky. Naked trees lining, as if to grasp at stars with fingers that once held a babe. 

This land was once a garden, a lawn. This land was once a terraced garden, massive. 

In every crack is every event lived, every drop of drowning water and mother’s milk, lived. In the dull reflection of tarmac is the night, and in the night a car embedded into a fence. This town was once a haven, a future. This town was once a terraced heaven, infinite. 

The dark comes quickly now, its seasonal quickening blanketing the unhoused souls. Grey looming offices with yellow eyes fight with the memories of beer on breath. This road was once a bottle, suckled. This road was once a terraced bottle, murderous.

Men from the south 

Have you ever visited 

a Provence hilltop village? 

The immovable time? 

Menerbes say? 

Stained with wine and sun? 

There you will often find a plaque, 

hot to the touch, 

listing the resistance fighters, 

young and virile, 

who traveled north across the newly made border to fight tyranny and miss 

their sweethearts. 

Now, blonde Englishmen 

roam in linens 

to stay cool 

and drink their ancestors 

dry while marveling at the beauty 

and silence of the quaint arable land. 

How strange to feel the echoes so clearly yet be so detached. 

How privileged we are to walk the cobbles laid by hands long cold. 

To quaff the wine, flagged red and white beneath eternal blue. 

To cook like suckling bacon, oblivious and fumbling our french.

James Richard Walls is a poet from Dorset, UK known for his explorations of alcoholism, nature, death, his father, love, and longing. He began writing and performing at university while studying English and Philosophy. During this time he organised and performed at stage poetry events with the late Benjamin Zephaniah. His recent writing is heavily inspired by Jack Gilbert, Ocean Vuong and Sharon Olds. If not out on the Dorset hills you can find him on Instagram at @wallstonej.

‘What We Have Learned About the Victim’

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art

“What We Have Learned About the Victim”
(or, “If I Had Died that Night”)

I will return to dust, my body reduced by fire, soul released back to the sky
in smoke tendrils;

a branch becomes a stick; pared, dropped, shook from the trunk––in death, still
a purpose: creates shelter, feeds fire;

once: a guitar under water-falling trickles––each drop percusses a stick atop
the strings, evokes an ancient refrain;

I cry out, am cried out, am the cloud that hides the sun until I empty or move
on––the sky is constant; I will return to it.

Michelle Ortega has been published widely online and in print. Her chapbook “When You Ask Me, Why Paris?” (Finishing Line Press) is forthcoming July 2025.

‘His To-Do List’, ‘Forever in Service’ & ‘Enough with Wives’

Athena Rowe

His To-Do List

Erstwhile uxor, the once wife,
refuses to pour bitterness cocktails,
despite the many ingredients he left her.
Instead speaking to their son of him
she uses neutral tones, citing his virtues.

She ceaselessly has refused to defame him.
This evening though, after a second bourbon,
she tells true. She has long found her
self-pity bone sweet to suck on and chew.
By her adult son, she spits out the small bone.

“Your father,” she said, “was always going to
do something. Tasks I asked were on his to-do list.
He never refused a request. He’d say he meant to.
So, never tell me you were about to do this or that.”
The young man did not question her new candor.

Forever in Service

Oh great and noble,
generous and gracious,
hoary headed maternal unit,
you are kind and pious.
Why do you always atone?

You do for others ceaselessly.
Forever teaching Sunday school,
always volunteering,
donating pints of blood.
You are compelled to serve others.

Your own mother was severe.
She baked for church sales, only,
She hugged no one older than six.
Her daughters never pleased her
and she never praised them.

You neither resent her nor whine.
You would rather stand in chains
held to an oak than talk to a shrink.
I am not a priest, not that kind of father.
I am only a son, your son.

Yet I absolve you of all sins,
conceded, observed or imagined.
Would that I could press solace palms,
to each temple, performing a mind meld
and freeing you of your need to serve.

I would provide you such peace,
I would sooth you, heal your mind,
cleansing you of imagined guilt.
I don’t work 50-minute hours.
Perhaps my help is acceptable.

Enough with Wives

P.C., old man, how about one hour without
telling me again about your three wives?
All of us know too well you wore each out
having your babies, or trying to make them.

Christola, that was 40 and 60 years long gone.

And don’t even try to point to my many bits
about my girlfriends — not at all the same.
They were recent enough I can still smell
their fragrances on my shirts and sheets.

No, it is you who drill into our ears as we sit
on nail kegs at the co-op by the pot-bellied stove
or chatting captive on rocks with fishing poles.
We are still hearing of your womenfolk.

Can you go an afternoon without reminiscing
on Ruth and Mary and Nancy, the missuses?
Did nothing other than marriage and crops
happen in your long life of sameness?

In our semicircle round the stove, watching
the red glowing teardrop vents, do your best
not to spit tobacco across the room to an opening,
even though you can hit one while I could not.

Please stifle your bull about your Angus bulls
and leave some air for other stories, my tales.
It’s almost St. Patrick’s Day and I can tell timely
about my red-headed Kathy the fabric artist.

I am sure she was Irish and just as sure that she
adored me more than all your wives loved you.

Michael Ball scrambled from daily and weekly papers through business and technical pubs. Born in OK and raised in rural WV and SC, he became more citified in Manhattan and Boston. Now one of the Hyde Park Poets, he has moderate success placing poems including in Progenitor Journal, Griffel, Gateway Review, Havik Anthology, SPLASH!, Reality Break Press, In Parentheses, Kind Writers, Fixed and Free Anthology and Dead Mule School. HeartLink published his Leaving the Party chapbook in 2024.

‘I’m Not A Writer’ & ‘To Feel Something’

Donald Patten is an artist and cartoonist from Belfast, Maine. He produces oil paintings, illustrations, ceramic pieces and graphic novels. His art has been exhibited in galleries across Maine. His online portfolio is donaldlpatten.newgrounds.com/art

I’m Not A Writer

I never imagined my fingertips would wrap around a plastic black pen. 

Never imagined my limbs would run feverishly until the ink kisses the side of my index finger, leaving a hickey on the inside of my knuckles 

I never thought hours would fly by as I brought to life the night sky that pulled back the curtain of time and exploded all my dreams into a metro shower of possibilities 

But then again, I also never thought I would want to go back to that night 

The night when we laid our backs effortlessly across the feathery, moist grass As the sky slightly cried 

My caramelized skin, breathing to life as each drop melts into place 

Causing my rib cage to break with a breath that finally allows me to feel alive again And I notice that maybe I’ve spent my whole life decaying 

Maybe I’ve spent my whole life in a heart that never noticed it wasn’t beating 

Then you appeared 

Whispering a secret song, as your bottom lip rolled against my ear 

I love you, I love you, my dear 

Even as the sun overtakes, the moon and the stars fall to the earth and turn into flowers that bloom. 

Even when the water pulls back into the sea, and the thunderstorms awaken the rainbow's destiny. I love you until my heart can’t beat, and even after that, I’ll love you until life itself disappears from reality 

And for the first time, I look at you 

Beholding the almond shape dark brown puddles of your eyes 

I always thought blue eyes were the footprints that the angels left behind As they splashed in the puddle of a miraculous baptism left behind by a soul who finally let out the wailing deep bellyache of a songbird who accepted that beauty can only come after a good cry 

But staring back at you, I can’t help but feel as if every truth I’ve ever believed was a lie 

I never noticed that brown eyes can warm up limbs like a fire shot of whiskey as it travels the lengthen of your body 

I never noticed that brown eyes can bath you in the sweetest dark chocolate, making you crazed with a sugar-like addiction that crawls down the length of your tongue until you scream for a taste 

Allowing you to get lost in a cave of mystery while the darkness covers your flesh in a way that makes you feel safe

Because even if the world disintegrates and the ground beneath my feet shakes, I can still hide away in the mountaintop of your eyes until the rise of daylight 

The tip of my pen rips through the paper 

As my cheeks get soaked in the calling of the songbird who has possessed me Because all the “ I never” has rolled up my sleeves, past the bridge of my chest, setting up house in the dry, barren hole of my neck 

I use my right hand to cradle my left in a desperate hug, hoping that it can smooth the vicious shake 

Just long enough so that I can share our story 

I never thought that we would lay in the starch-white sheets tucked into the sides of a gurney As I moved the wires that tangle against your throat so that they are spread out over my chest, I rested my lips against your Adam's apple 

Holding onto your fragile blue-tinted pale skin as I repeat our secret over and over again I love you, I love you, my dear 

Even as the sun overtakes, the moon and the stars fall to the earth and turn into flowers that bloom. 

Even when the water pulls back into the sea, and the thunderstorms awaken the rainbow's destiny. I love you until my heart can’t beat, and even after that, I’ll love you until life itself disappears from reality 

I am not a writer 

But I’ll write your story until all the ink on earth bleeds onto a page 

And even then, I don’t think I could find an end 

So I guess I’ll just- 

To Feel Something

Sweat drips down my bare chest 

Drowning my mint green cotton sheets with chocolate milk that pours out of every open pore Until it slides off the side of the bed frame, leaving a pitter-patter that overshadows my heartbeat In a way that makes me wonder if I’m alive anymore 

My rib cage pinned against my moist skin 

Rising high against the sunken design of a hollow stomach 

Mumbling the hymns of a ransacked sand dust, wooden pantry 

Hiding the family of three blind mice who stole my eyes to replace their sight before claiming it as dumb luck, while their paws are painted with my blood 

My tongue pulls backwards to warm my throat with a thick glob of spit 

Causing the center of my being to rebel in a quake that rattles the axis of my frame Sending a wave that viciously vibrates while my soul shatters under its weight Folding my bones in an origami fetal shape 

I tuck the sides of my pillow cheeks to bed in the palm of my hands 

Whispering a prayer that I’m afraid to speak freely 

As the light orange rays of the sun slowly crawl up my back 

Stringing together syllables that slipped through the cracks- hanging down my spine before disappearing as my breath escapes me 

The paint-chipped yellow walls cry out, echoing the pleads of someone who once roamed wildly Zig-zagging through electric green grass as it flows in a breeze against the base of her knees Nurturing the flesh left exposed on her shoulder blades with God's gaze 

Bouncing on the trampoline of vivacious joy that gave others cause to believe 

Now, her frame stays bent in an empty room 

As her cries replaster the holes in the wall 

With the misty scent of a human trying 

Shaking the dice with the hope of snake eyes 

Just so someone can hear her hissing- 

“Lord, please let me feel something”

Kache' Attyana Mumford is a poet, actor and creative arts therapist.