Her hands are leaking into me.
Her sweetness overtaking my sour, bitter body
I can hear nothing outside the melody she speaks to me
Her tongue flips and folds
Into affirmations woven from gold
Her skin glides against my own
Skepticism fades, and soft lips sing of belief
The light dances through thick violet leaves
I am cleansed by the dip in her hip, awash in great relief
I wear her round my neck, she gleams and she shines
What once brought me such upsetting times
Fades with soft lips and amethyst eyes.
Category: Poetry
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Amethyst
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Where Will You Be When the World Ends?
A poem for you?
Well that’s easy
Because i never want to stop talking to you
“What would you do? If the world ended tomorrow?”
She is lying next to Annie, so close that it makes her head spin.
“I have a feeling the world is just fine.”
Lyla dares herself, dares to run a finger over Annie’s jaw.
Annie lets her. Seems to relish in it.
“How could you possibly know that?”
Lyla laughs softly, she’s running her fingers through Annie’s hair.
She’s savoring the way her hair smooths through them.
“Well, I don’t think I would mind so much, if the world ended, not anymore.”
Annie’s hand is gripping Lyla’s waist.
Running mesmerizing circles that could make Lyla purr.
“And why is that?”
Annie says, but she knows the answer.
She knows that there is no place Lyla would rather be.
Knows that if the world ended tomorrow, well, at least they would die in each other’s arms.
“If you know the answer, why ask the question?”
Lyla laughs with her words, entranced by the way Annie’s eyes burn.
“Maybe I want to hear you say it.”
In the enticing brown of Annie’s eyes, a challenge like no other sparkles.
“And what if saying it makes it real? What if saying it makes it all disappear?”
Annie grips Lyla closer to her, close enough that their heads touch, close enough that they can feel the others’ breath.
“You couldn’t make me disappear if you wanted to.”
Lyla laughs, and the shatters in her heart seem to melt.
She buries her face in Annie’s chest, breathes in the scent of her, lets herself feel every movement as Annie wraps her arms around Lyla.
“There is no place I’d rather be when the world ends. Nobody else I’d rather be with.”
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Is There a Word for Us?
How do I describe myself? I know there are others like me and similarly have fundamental parts of themselves hidden, such hiding being out of necessity and inability to do anything else. We hidden few know who we are, but our language, our tongue, seems not to. Oh, we’ll throw words around, sure, but what’s the use if such words fall on ears which are not tuned to their frequency. It seems as if language has left us behind, with its only words for us being ones of ridicule, if they exist at all. Somehow, words forgot us.
If only we had words, then maybe they would understand. We could speak clear mountains of who we are, not jumbled attempts of them.
Would many still not understand? Of course, but at least more would understand, and we could have the words to make them understand. We would have bridges of communication instead of having to swim across rivers. The words asserting us as things that exist merely by their presence in vocabulary.Perhaps if there was a word for us like there are words for others, I might have discovered myself sooner. Perhaps when I did, others, now wielding the word, would have the means to understand me, would have the means to not hate. Perhaps such linguistic infrastructure is part of our way forward. Perhaps.
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Optometry
Optometrist
They treated me badly at the last place
Called the regional manager and went
Karen
Sitting in the chair now, you looking into me
Inside of me
Knowing
There are similaritiesAll too clear
Yeah, when I get home
I’ll draw tiny hearts around your script
I’ll watch, fascinated by your presentation
Of the retinal imagingHow you’ll ask:
Have you ever seen the back of your eyes?
Nope!
A service tacked onto the final bill
Without permission
But, Optometrist, that’s OK
I won’t fight it (insurance has it covered)
Here today, I’ll spend all the money
New frames, new me
Charming youSo, can I stay here awhile, then? Can you take
Me in?
Marry me in the fall
Do me until the end of time
Little you, perky ass
To-die-for quips
Butterflies in my bellyI can see now, Taylor
Yeah, I canCondom wrapper under my bed.
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Things to Do With Your Breasts After Top-Surgery
by M. McDonough
Scrape out the flesh with the back of your surgeon’s knife; keep the fat.
Render it over a fire of insurance denials & medical bills.
Make votive candles for your mother.
She will light them when she does not know how to worship the body you have chosen.Blend some of it into hand balm for winter & lipstick for drag night.
Save enough to oil a gun for hunting the ones who are hunting us.
Take your old skin. Tan the hide in oak bark.
Wash it in the salt you carried for the dead who never made it this far.
Behold what was yours & what is possible under the right conditions.
Supple & bloodless.Sew the leather into coin purses.
Pass them around at the next fundraiser.Fashion them into a fanny pack which you wear over your shoulder,
across your chest.If anything is left, bury it.
Feed it to generations of flies & roots.
These are your children now.
The ones who ate from you & grew strongerWhen any part of what was you is amputated in a hospital,
it becomes the legal property of the hospital.
90% of medical waste is incinerated.You used to believe dysphoria was a furnace under your skin boiling every mirror you turned to.
When your flesh joins the bags of old blood & ruined organs thank the fire for its mercy.
It could have taken all of you.In my favorite dreams I put my bed beside my sister.
As pieces fall from me, I offer them to her.
I say this came to me but it belongs to you.
Please, let nothing here be waste.
M. McDonough is a queer trans poet from Denver Colorado, now residing in Phoenix. Their work often wrestles with questions of gender, grief, humor and tenderness. They grew up in the spoken word and poetry slam communities of Denver. M. worked as a coach for Denver Minor Disturbance for many years. Their work can be found in We Grow Anyway from Prickly Pear Press, Name and None, and Exposition Review. They miss Denver every day.around him.
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I meet you and the oceans boil.
by Sarah Rodriguez
It is the summer of all this and more:
of sea-rising romance
and heat-curdled revelry,
of humid, floral insomnia,
of peaches, dripping in both hands,
of parallel comets burning parallel skies,
a fever’s dreamless destination.Palm to forehead. Palm to cheek,
both cheeks
sunburnt, blushing,
our pink thoughts flooding over.
Each kiss: godless, inevitable.
The high holy days have passed
and we are earthbound now,
grounded, wingless
with solar ribbons around each wrist.We plant marigolds in our collarbones
and call every moon a bonfire.
It is historical because there is no history,
only myths that glow on our skin
like a cinnamon marquee
with the opening dates of the apocalypse.Here, in the sand-rubbed shade,
we sit too close together,
like mangoes in a bowl.
You tell me
love is not possessive
and I want to possess you wholly,
to hide in the hollow of your hurricane,
to gather all your shipwreck,
your wind-bruised citrus
your drifting caskets of wine
and shoot them into the sky
like a bouquet of orange blossoms
and fireworks
forming new, neon constellations
above these rising waters.
Sarah Rodriguez is a poet, educator, stage-practiced liar, bubblegum enthusiast, wine-led wanderer, failed manic pixie dream girl, Atlantic Ocean runaway, and the editor-in-chief of Punch Drunk Press. She organizes, hosts, and performs at arts events all over the Front Range. Follow her on Instagram @sarahstarlight.
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Dharma Cums
by Matt Clifford
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” -Matthew 6:5-7
The door to my room was closed I was in the dark under a blanket yet his face wasn’t in my orgasm this morning maybe I should have said oh my God once at the perfect moment. I thought about my lover. I’m coming again to the place where I started, considering eternity and not going to sleep. It is the body’s instinct to rest after output. I miss her too much so I write. I did not see the face of God in my breakfast this morning. I eat a banana on the way to work and an apple once I am there.
I did not see the face of God at work. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. I told a man he owed the IRS sixteen thousand dollars. He said he would pay it.
The door to the bathroom was locked the toilet seat was down and the lights stayed on yet his face wasn’t in my orgasm this afternoon I said oh my God once but not loud enough for anyone to hear. I thought about my lover’s fingers. I’m returning to the computer that keeps me, considering fate and yawning. It is the mind’s instinct to resist its input. I miss myself too much so I think. I did not see the face of God in myself. I have doubted my patterns.
I think I passed the face of God driving in traffic this evening the radio was loud.
The top of the bottle was open so the angel could have their share. I passed it to my lover she took a sip said oh my god we kissed. I took another and another and missed the wedding where the faces of God’s believers were. I do not trust the things they know. They know something I don’t. I knew them once and I miss them and I will never know them again. I did not see the face of God when she was talking me home because I was passed out in the backseat. We never even opened the second bottle.
I did not see the face of God in the orgasm I did not have tonight.
The door to my face was closed I was in a dream where I had done something wrong something very very wrong nobody would tell me what a normal human being would never forget doing something like that something very very wrong like that it felt like all the conditions I ever felt at once I said my God my God why have you forsaken me what have I done? I could hear God’s laughter but not see the face it was coming from.
I woke up hysterical as a baby natural in a godless vision with my mouth moving.
Matt Clifford has punk rock books and a poetry band: www.blackmarkettranslation.rocks 😉 www.mattclifford.org. Punketry is every second Tuesday at Mutiny Information Cafe.
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Fucking Flowers
by Jane Ripley
Fucking flowers in Spring.
Fucking flower patterns on dresses.I long for darkness
Noir films and Goth kids
Swaddled in black.I long for my Mother’s dark
Sense of humor
As we laugh while watching “Psycho.”I want to listen to Joy Division on vinyl.
Release my misanthropic nonparticipating self
Seal the blinds and contemplate next-to-nothing.Fuck the fucking tulips.
Hurl the hollyhocks.
Damn the daisies.
How I hate the douche bag day lilies.Let’s all pretend it’s winter
When the bulbs are in the ground.I crush the daffodils with my feet
And shred the peonies with my nails.Fuck the flowers
Fuck the flowers
All of them.
Jane Ripley graduated from Columbia College in Chicago, IL in 1993. She was a featured reader at the “Don’t Yell at Me” reading, circa 2017. Her poetry chapbook, Hot Dog Soup, is in its second printing. She lives in Lyons, CO with her cat Renegade.
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Human Resources
By Eric Raanan Fischman
Amanda is excited for her demotion. “Things are looking down” she says, smiling. I order more lollipops, and the robot responds. Everything is wearing the Universal Symbol except the employees. We have our own labels and testing: 60% water, 28% plant matter, 12% allowable contaminants. I destroy 4000mg of medicated gummies and mix them up in soil. Customers watch me like an accident.
“Is this what you want?!” I shout to the 49 cameras above me.
“Are you Recreational or Medical?” a patient asks. “We’re Metaphorical,” I say. Longhair whistles like the golden flute, Zach is slowly turning into a Key. I take my place on the bridge and reboot my station.
This whole place runs on wire magic, making oil appear out of thin air, delivering brownies by telegram. Someone returns an empty box that smells suspiciously of grape candies, and we replace it without a thought.
It’s Monday, which means it’s my Friday. The cameras still think it’s an hour ago, but they won’t show me right now. It’s not our policy to gift each other hugs, but we do so anyway. Even our shoes have SOPs to follow. Lillian’s got one foot on the front desk, one in the inventory. We are all changing faster than the regulations. Like how a few weeks ago Mechele was one person, and in 8 months she’ll be two.
It’s like, wherever we are we become ourselves. If there’s a soul in me let it break. I’ve been lucky enough, haven’t I? Charity puts our future product into fictional rooms. We have a meeting on Thursday, but I probably won’t be there. It’s Passover and I forgot to put my blood on the doorpost.
Death calls at 3AM. It’s the bad news I’ve been waiting for.
Eric Raanan Fischman is an escaped New Yorker and runaway post-orthodox Jew. He teaches at Beyond Academia Free Skool and has had work in South Broadway Ghost Society, Bombay Gin, the Boulder Weekly, and the Punch Drunk Press Anthology. He is the author of Mordy Gets Enlightened, published through The Little Door at Lunamopolis in 2017.
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a poem in which the word “fingernails” is replaced by “gender”
By Nico Wilkinson
it’s the day before i start testosterone
and i am buying press-on gender online
rose gold
blue crystal
mirror chromegenders that come off
easy
without pulling layers of me away.
that soften and fall away
under warm water.
that you can store away in a box
for another day.x
i used to get my gender done
every month
but after a lifetime of nervously picking, pulling
and biting
my gender grows in too weak
to stay long. would keep breaking under
the strain of hard work. dirty gender
always edged with soil. the women would scrutinize it
under the light, would shake their heads and tsk,
would say i should take better care
of my gender as they filed, buffed,
painted a color i would be tired of
the next day.x
finally,
i’ve i can take off in the half-light
sitting on the edge of the bed
smiling at my lover
a flirtatious suggestion of what
these hands can do
one hand with gender to raise red lines down her spine.
the other with gender to beckon smooth an ebbing tide of breath and muscle
without tearing at her soft.x
gender i can put on for a night out to match my dress.
gender i can remove when i dig in the dirt.
gender that can pick up a sewing needle.
gender that can scratch a cat behind the ears.x
i once knew someone
who collected slivers of their gender
in a jarthe world is littered with the remains
of the gender that i have pulled apart
with my teeth.x
with gender this fragile
constantly breaking, leaving
skin raw and red and achingi thought about what it would have been like
to just not have gender at allbut this world is so full of hard edges
and this body is so soft
i can only imagine
without it, it would eventually hurt
too much
to touch anything
or anyonex
i resent the idea
of gender that has so often failed me
persisting when i am dead, growing larger
while the rest of me
shrinks away into nothing.perhaps cremation
could burn my gender away.
I could be as soft as dirt.
the hard edges of my gender left
in the fire.
anything heavy as gender left behind.what would be left of me
is only what the wind could carry.
Photo by Kaitlyn Marie Mercy Nico Wilkinson is a poet, printmaker, farmer, and organizer based in Colorado Springs. They are the 2017 champion of the Capturing Fire International Queer Poetry Slam and the co-founder of Prickly Pear Printing and the founder of The
Quaill Club, a living community for queer artists working toward cooperative sustainability.
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Collected Selfies From the Puddles
By Adrian H Molina
I was at the edge of fall, asking again if we could withstand another icicle winter in the north,
sitting at the foot of an empty clawfoot tub
watching the seabirds vanish,
a thirty-year time-lapse,
laughing off your ridicule
over my use of the bath.I was swimming in a giant glowing pool
inside our turquoise studio home,
shallow aqua blue water
making up 90% offloor area,
watching curious tourists come and go
watching my movements in the water,
my teleportations outside
picking thorn-stemmed roses by the windows,
then back again inside playfully paddling like clockwork.
You returned one day, preoccupied.
I watched, stunned as you hit a switch
permanently tiling the floor where I had swam everyday.I was in the middle of an ocean unknown,
overcast and hazy, floating with all the people
looking at my compass wristwatch
watching a small continent drifting north,
sending a forty foot tidal wave our way.
I began calculating survival,
eyeing a distant rocky shore,
searching for you to escape with me.
I emerged bloody with sea thorns stuck under my feet.I was at the edge of paradise again
talking to a marvelous blonde ghost about the seabeds,
the sepia plains and stone-filled mountains we left,
overlooking the veracity of white waves
crashing into mars black rocks,
spiraling thoughts
watching aqua swirls curl into shapes unfolding,
feeling like you didn’t want to take the picture
we were offered.I woke up one day
mixing new water colors,
feeling the burnt orange summer dying
another slow beautiful demise, a waning sun
turning leaves into fire.
I started dreaming new sounds.
I started cooking new foods.
I started praising new gods.
taking new pictures of the raindrops,
slowly collecting another ocean.
Adrian H Molina is a wordsmith, time traveler, and shapeshifter, first cousin to jaguars and quetzals native to the “Americas.” He can be spotted in the portals of your imagination. He was recently featured at the Crestone Poetry Festival. He eats money in exchange for creative ideas. Everything is made up, and he knows his worth. Molina is creating new worlds. You can follow his writings and musings within the matrix on IG @MolinaWrites.
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Dualistic Tendencies
By Adrian H Molina
Bring me chocolate and herb seeds
and I will plant sunflowers in-between your aching poles
where divinity transforms into monstrosity and
back again.
Bring me royal stargazer lilies to dissolve,
mandarin marigolds to gnaw upon,
ruby red roses to hang upside down—
pretty pictures to cut up into art.
Bring me a sad story and a black heart
that I can alchemize into laughter, making
cascading chains of illusive memory pains,
silently molding fears into sand castles.
Bring me your most guarded, treasured desires.
I will walk your dehydrated imagination to the brinks of reality
where the river banks are flooded daily
with wishes from the living and the dead.
Bring me a dream to eat,
a wall to bend, a wound to lick,
a scar to dissolve, a levee to breech,
and we can lie safely together in the shadows.
I am not a piece of your puzzle. I am
not the fragmented collection of
a story you are constructing. I am
a landscape moment you can escape into.
I cannot give you everything, you say, but I can
offer enough of the moon to satiate you
until it becomes blue again. Can you truly
learn to dissolve your face?
When you look at me, do you
see circles of forever, or merely space
to play with time? Will you come to claim
your gaping hunger at its root?
Adrian H Molina is a wordsmith, time traveler, and shapeshifter, first cousin to jaguars and quetzals native to the “Americas.” He can be spotted in the portals of your imagination. He was recently featured at the Crestone Poetry Festival. He eats money in exchange for creative ideas. Everything is made up, and he knows his worth. Molina is creating new worlds. You can follow his writings and musings within the matrix on IG @MolinaWrites.