December 2009
34 posts
announcement
Well, folks, today was the last day of reader submission posts! We had a great bunch of poems over the past month and a half or so. Thanks to everyone who sent something in!
I don’t know when exactly but I think I’ll do another month of this sometime over the next year.
I hope you all have a happy and safe New Year!
2 tags
At Two..., Brian Fish
I will say no when I mean yes,
I will say no when I mean no.
When you answer the phone,
I will spit out my water and play in it.
When you write an email I will demand to be on your lap.
Oh, and trust me everything tastes better when it comes from your plate.
At two I will be contrary just because I can…
Yet at two,
I will learn to dance, Even when people are looking.
I will sing...
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night lights and whispers, Takeki Ishihara
the vicarious voice of whispering wrongs.
right angles of encoded language:
her language.
transliteration of time.
topographical lines of touch.
drawn through the sound of frequencies divided.
borders marked by silence:
unanswered phone calls.
deleted voicemail messages.
ignoring auditory hallucinations.
intermixed personas of mythological beasts.
headless mannequins reciting prayer....
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Whiter teeth in fourteen days
, Kathleen McLeod
Don’t let me collect these stars for you, sweetness and light fades and I will be left with decorations
to remind me forever
and even if I stay up counting
stars
there won’t be enough
for extra strength or sweet relief
like chewing gum
for
this
addiction
-http://kathleenjoy.tumblr.com
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Untitled (Sept 24), Chris Vivion (for 12/27)
On certain days
She’d think about being
Something immediately useful.
A carpenter or welder.
Imagining a day uninterrupted
By droning secretaries,
Unwieldy meetings with boring men.
Cold denim. Woodchips.
Metal filings. Lunchboxes.
Sparks showering her feet.
And a quick ride home
In the back of a truck,
Exchanging side streets
For subway cars.
-http://blog.herenotthere.com
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Taut, Kerry Cox
feel the blood of
october, orange veins, trees
shudder and fear and
fearlessness battle like
babies
for air
all this premature preening
like white hearts in snow, invisible avenues the
dead drew with their empty
walking souls
we are masks, skin and bone and muscle
fleeing blue, too much alike in
what’s undernearth, too many old things
in the attic
now there are songs, you stood for...
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Midnight Snack, M. Looze (for 12/22)
My stomach grumbles with
a midnight thunder, a roar
to wake the neighbors.
I’m hungry. Pit-pat
to the kitchen. But I’m not
hungry for food,
I’m craving someone I knew.
I’m hungry for the voice of your
body,
a noise to fill in the empty
echo behind me.
I’m hungry for the muscle of your
speech,
the tongue you filled my
mouth with.
I’m hungry for the smooth of your
skin,
the moon you...
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Fifth Dimension, C. T. Vale
With you I find myself
In a state of newfound consciousness
Which heightens every bit of my existence
A single breath and my lungs fill with courage
Taking in the essence of a soothing spirit
My eyes, focused on tangible truth,
Refuse to blink
There is an unknown color all around
My ears catch the faintest sounds
Your heartbeat, like a metronome in your chest,
Conducts sonic waves of...
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Because You Seep Into Me, Elaina Rider (for 12/18)
Because you seep into me
Groundwater, between all the particles
That compose me
Because of the vacuum of Wanting and
The gravity of Hoping
It takes a little time
Forgive me
For reality to seep back in
To stay very still and meditate on
What This is and is not
I know your words like verse
Your smell stays with me
I’ve learned the minutiae of you:
Eyelashes, pores, line of jaw...
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The Sweetest Sin, Liv.S
The rain it falls without a care
catching you and I quite unaware.
Ever so softly and delicately light,
twinkling on our skin it’s pure delight.
From the sun it is a pleasant relief
but we run to some shelter, leaves under bare feet.
Beneath a canopy of branches, hiding from the weather
you and I huddle close, put our heads together.
I can feel you there, the beat in your chest...
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sonny liston, Zach Yanowitz (for 12/17)
soft light settled on the cotton field
dawn-dusting his skinny frame and
sonny liston snuck out of arkansas
beaten and bruised
left jab like a howitzer,
a caveat hanging in the air almost
snake-like, waiting to collide to
smash atoms to make sparks to
show his dad he’d made it out alive
and sonny liston won his belt
pour back the drinks and cash-cough for laughs
when the police saw that...
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Playground Aggrevation, Timur "SKhUL" Boskailo
I dug out spiders, roughly
from the sand, a parcel
underneath the playground’s
lands, in the sunbathed
mathematic
material tragic,
still unaware of the drain
that filters pain
becoming manic,
witnessing deliberately wasted
dead red foxes,
sending signals of heaven
from the bottom of
sewer pipes
the light
shining from inside
speaks of magic, sparkle dust
mimicking
life, it too was...
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Golden Lies, U'Llynda De Chiera (for 12/16)
These scenes are more than I can bear sometimes
Everyday more and more, the world is changing
So many struggle just to live their lives
While beautiful creatures live golden lies
The man takes half of what you make
Its so hard to get ahead in this life today
Waiting for the day when we all get a share
We all need a fair chance to make it here
Stop rewarding those fake human beings
We need...
2 tags
Interim, A.G.D.
You’ll take off your wrist-watch
before you lie beside me.
Just to lie.
Is that necessary?
Its like a token with
subconscious neglect
before you leave
me for long periods of time.
It sits near me
with little presence felt
and
ticks away
building up time quietly
and I’ll notice it early on
or just before you come back,
depends on my luck.
The face of it covers my wrist,
and it’ll...
2 tags
Milwaukee, Adam Serwa (for 12/15)
Tension is running high
All I can see behind close eyelids are your lips pressing against hers
And two sets of hips to match two sets of lips grinding into each other
And in my mind her friend is not in bed with me
Fiddling with the equipment under the covers
No instead I am alone, and all these hazel eyes, the ones you told me were striking green, the first sign you would make me doubt...
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Sunflowers, Hannah Baartmans
Conversations with children,
Uncomplicated laughter.
No hidden motives,
It’s not as simple hereafter,
They’re just on the cusp,
Of sarcasm,
I dare not tell them that.
Stay dramatic,
Uninhibited,
So small that sunflowers,
Could shield you.
Stay that way.
Stay.
-http://hannahrachelpoetry.tumblr.com
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Old Haunts, Jacob Huffman (for 12/9)
I’m returning back to these old haunts
And the ghosts remember me.
In all their rusting chains they wrap me up,
They just won’t let me be
When they tie me up, they tie me tight
Then they all start yelling things;
“Your head’s the only place these streets aren’t dead,
And it’s not worth the trouble it brings.”
If I had the key or knew how to pick
The locks off all their shackles,
I tell...
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The Causes of Behavior, Michael Kindt
Later it would become practical if we are asked why
But where are these feelings and states of mind?
We simply make sure that no other food is available
As one neurologist recently put it
The study of literature, art, and music
From infancy to maturity
Changes occurring in time
The systematic neglect of useful information
Is, of course, nothing new
It is so easy to observe feelings and...
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Washing, Elliot Poole (for 12/8)
Our sister wore popsicle stick weaves.
The gold she spun was cruel and laced with autumn crumbs
but you remember how her face still was
and crippled then;
how her sails were made of black sheep skin
as razor blood rusted boats bore her gone.
Our dad’s hair would snare on jagged edges,
and he’d forcefeed us tumbleweeds
and sea salt cereal
while the seeds of ghosts ethereal...
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The blur between fingers, Cassandra Warren
He buries his face into my hair and inhales.
If I live anywhere in his body,
I live in his lungs. There are better organs
I’m sure, but it’s warm here too,
and most of the sound stays away.
Sometimes in the middle of the night,
I wake up to feel my spine against the wall.
I don’t mean to make this all about bodies
but we are the sort of people whose faith is
Tangibility,...
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Untitled, Vanessa Cano (for 12/7)
The afternoon we went to bed
and my hair stuck to my lips
you kept kissing me anyway.
I said, “Don’t you care that your legs get stuck?”
but you just kept kissing
and twisting the sheets.
So I made lace out of the web
and tied you in knots.
-http://donotgogentle.tumblr.com/
announcement
Over the next few days I’ll be making up for the missed posts from the past week or so. “Make up” posts will have a subject line like this:
Title, Author (date it would have been posted if I weren’t a scatterbrain when I have finals)
There will be two posts per day—one “make up” and one for that day—until I’ve made them all up (there are 7...
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Reservations, Jenna Fletcher
Across the table,
in lands untold,
you stare back at me
from above the lip of your water glass.
Cold.
Three feet, but infinite distance lays between us;
a mass of oak,
and it’s grains attempting to fill the space.
Feiging interest,
I explore jungles with my fork,
examining the bottom of my bowl,
attempting—
hoping—
to find a rabbithole in which to lose myself....
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Stubborn, Joe Ondrak
Stubborn
Headbutting a wall burns 150 calories an hour.
My head’s thin now, but the wallpaper might need changing,
It’s not my fault though; this… thing is awkward,
Some strange, mechanical newborn colt stuck in front of me.
Mechanical, but not cogs, chains and gears.
Just wires. And pixels.
Trying – desperate – to walk. Not for my sake, mind.
This seems remedial, not really necessary and...
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My Ex-Husband's Second Wife, Lindsey Jones
He thinks you didn’t notice,
but I made certain that you saw me.
Your sweet, plain face.
The face of a woman who would have his children,
do the laundry, bend over the bed
with a nervous laugh and ask,
“Why are we doing this?”
then cry in the bathroom.
I met your eyes and my smile
said Where is your God
Coy kitten, what I wouldn’t give
to run my fingers up your...
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When I See You, Kaylee Wolfe
When I see you,
There is nothing but my aunt’s kitchen
When I was a child
And the corner hutch upon which was displayed
A collection of butterflies
Lovingly placed by some well-meaning, wayward hand:
A relative of mine
Whose name I never knew.
When I see you,
And think of the way things used to be,
I am small again.
Standing on my toes
To peer at the butterflies
And wonder at days...
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SUDDEN MANHATTAN, Meaghan O'Connell
“You should be in love,” he tells me
We look at each other
always
with guilt
and turn away.
(What revelations I suffer at your hands).
Every time I cross the street I glance sidelong into traffic hoping you are in all of the cars.
And for days
after people say hello
Behind me on the sidewalk
And my heart stops.
I brighten
the way only a man
who loved me
would recognize
I turn...
announcement
The lack of posts recently can be attributed to two things:
1. finalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinalsfinals
2. I am running low on reader submitted poetry! Please don’t make me resort to posting a whole bunch of my own stuff for the rest of the month!
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drunken nights., Aaron Robertson
The cigarette scars;
the memories lost to night;
the laughter and moan
from a bile purge;
the marking from a fall
that ripped my skin
and left me alone
in thorns.
the kisses and sips,
conversations and fights.
each burning shot
each soothing swallow;
the unknown scars
and markings and
burns.
the tales from
which i do not
remember the
night before....
2 tags
an old man reading the newspaper and smoking on a...
I am still young. Usually
people don’t notice my awkward walk
or hesitant stories so long as I
hold my drink the right way or
stand tall enough.
I’m not very tall so that
is just another lie.
I try to find old things to distract myself
from my age, which is still suffixed
with “teen.” Tall buildings made
entirely of brick surrounded by men
who wear leather jacket older than I am
and...
2 tags
Front doors, Back doors, Soren Rehn
Yawning our way through the morning shift,
Jimmy prepared coffee
For the rush of editors
And finance men. But
Hard times left us with
“Payday ain’t comin’ again”.
The road extends a way of sorting out why
He could short us like that.
House and trees
Whipping by
As miles become miles behind
And somewhere along
Bobby’s old cap
Was taken by the wind
As...
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Untitled, Shauna
if there is one thing that i am, i am books. i am
ink, gushing black out of aisles of time, i am ache, brushing
past protagonists in purple and girls spun from gold.
i am tall and heavy, standing in grasses so thick light never
touches the dirt; i am a couch on rainy sunday, springs
sticking out and reaching for freedom from musty confines.
if there is one thing that i am, i am heart. i...
2 tags
The Widower Speaks, Kate Horowitz
Appoint not the silence
as thy messenger:
One cannot predict
how much it will say.
-http://thingswrittendown.blogspot.com/
2 tags
dec 08, Brittany Jones
You don’t have to say you love me..
Say, “I’ve noticed darling,
I can’t breathe if you’re not around.
And I’m going to try and make this forever
But, I know there are no guarantees.
And I’m not sure we’ll always understand each other
But, you’ll always be
The first person I look for when I enter a room
And I’ll always want to share my coffee with you
And I promise to keep your name safe...