do i dare?
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When I dream of Paris, the sky is filled with expatriate desires. Desires that meld and flow like Dali landscapes across the horizon. I walk briskly along the Champs Elysees, stopping only to drink coffee at a small café near the river's edge. I must drink quickly, because expatriate desires don't linger long when you live in small-town North Carolina. A place where Dali is better known as the…
Philip Barnes looked upon his class fondly, for they were pure, untouched, and unmired by society. As he sat down, his focus was inherently on Shirley Riggs, his newest little angel in the class. “Honey, I know it's always rough on your first day but I promise you will fit right in, okay, so just try to relax sweetheart.” The little blonde-haired girl just clung to her teddy bear lost within a…
I keep thinking about the time in high school when you drew me a map of the city, I still have it somewhere. It was so easy to get lost in a place where all the trees look the same. And now every time I see a missing person's poster stapled to a pole, all I can think is that could have been me. Missing, disappeared. But there are no posters for people who just never came back from vacation, from…
at a certain point: a fulcrum – a life is lived and life then continues to be lived. -- DS Maolalai has been described by one editor as "a cosmopolitan poet" and another as "prolific, bordering on incontinent". His work has been nominated thirteen times for BOTN, ten for the Pushcart and once for the Forward Prize, and released in three collections; "Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden"…
The swimming lessons I never took taught me a healthy fear of water, which only quenched my distrust of the land further, forcing me to dive into the cheapest whisky. Saturday nights trapped in a bottle like a ship that couldn't float, nor sink, and as easy as glass is to break, I was always scared of seeing my own blood. Now, red is my favourite colour and winter where I'm most comfortable:…
My nightmare-man comes SO LOUD; he comes often, bores me and collects my wrist cuts- oh he cuts, he cuts, HE CUTS Promises me I’m in the black book, he checks, ha! Yes! Top ten mind-fuckable sluts! Cold cuts; licks his knife and hands me his double tongue I say, ‘Oh baby, JUST BREATHE’ as I rip out his dreamy lung. Can’t gaslight a FiRestARTeR, dragon up my sleeve Now he can’t wake up ‘cause my…
It was a rain swept afternoon, Where a sudden downpour creates a white noise, As if the programme you were engrossed in Has come to an abrupt end A thick and streaky Kurosawa rain, Drumming against the windows, The black and white contrasting with the grey. Consigning myself to doing nothing, Whiling away to wait out, Consoled by the external aggravation Pelting the pavements with applause, While…
here comes the rain the hollow ache of an upcoming dystopian winter hope was slain on the side of the yellow brick road any fool could see it coming bleeding hearts are never meant to last long eventually, we harden become these brash bastards unraveling whatever the fuck progress was ever deemed to be eventually, that will become a society that eats itself in the distance caligula is laughing…
The fortune teller’s tent was next to the tent that had a pickled 3-legged baby in a jar. The fortune teller was middle-aged and swarthy and wore an extravagance of color like a Gypsy. She held my paw. I was in seventh grade and had yet to grow hands. “You will be a big success,” she said after a too quick I thought look at my palm. “But late in life.” -- Wayne F. Burke's poetry and prose has been…
What wrings into drain never goes away. I scrub orange-brown walls, my fingernails scrunched with other people’s food. This memory collecting– another dip in a murky red bucket. -- James Croal Jackson is a Filipino-American poet working in film production. His latest chapbook is A God You Believed In (Pinhole Poetry, 2023). Recent poems are in ITERANT, Stirring , and The Indianapolis Review . He…
