It’s summer.
Heat swelters outside
Breezes blow through trees
Children play in pools
Drip.
A tear drops onto the floor.
Each tear steals a little of your life.
Trickling down your cheeks, running into your mouth
Dripping onto the floor.
You’re helpless now.
You’re alone
It seems your entire being is sucked out
You’re left drowning in midair.
And it’s summer
At that exact moment, mere feet from you
You stand.
You’re staring at yourself through a portal of memory
And you realize you had it best then
Then it was a summer you could enjoy
And a single tear steals its way down your cheek.
He’s leaving.
He was everything.
And now he’s leaving you
Your daughter stays
But he’s gone now.
And it’s summer
June, July, August.
Months pass, years even and it is summer yet again
Heat beats down on your brow
Sweat mingles with blood
It’s not yours, but it covers you
It’s hers.
The product of your own flesh and blood
Your daughter
She stares up at the sky
A drunken act, and she’s gone
Your tears come now
But they’re worse than before
Now they’re accompanied by screams
Screams at the sky
And it’s summer,
Free, beautiful summer
Now you sit
You’re in the sun
The doctors say it’s only a matter of time now
They say there’s nothing to be done
Except wait
So you do
You call your sister
You talk until your words are gone
Then you cry until your eyes are dry
Then you hang up
And sit there
Staring
And then you stop staring.
Your eyes close
It’s quiet
A breeze brushes your cheek
A bird sings your serenade
The smell of fresh-baked bread tickles your nostrils
And it’s summer.

~Kaleb Yaeger

Two emeralds
in this bowl
of stones

kissing
beauty marks
only they know.

Stars,
little gold nails
scratching skin.

Moon,
whites of eyes
and
curling toes.

Heartstrings
will be cut
tomorrow,
but –

silk sheets
feel better
with no clothes.

 

Caleigh Wesmer

Ponce de Leon sought the Fountain of Youth
upon the Isle of Bimini, but instead
he ran aground in Florida
and founded St. Augustine. Ever since then,
people have flocked south,
as if those waters bubble up from the Everglades,
or perhaps the dank recesses
of a central Floridian swamp – where cypress stand
a stoic watch, arms outstretched
and roots exposed like legs poised to dance
with demons driving men to drink
without fathoming their thirst for an impossible elixir,
or chemicals churning in an I.V. drip.
Such youth is stale. Like a cracker left out of the box.
Yet south they still go, as if word of this fountain
were only now trickling out
to hospitals,
to clinics,
and gated retirement blocks:
promises clutched in gnarled fists,
orthopedic shoes shuffling to a doctor’s didactic chant.
But the aqua vitae they seek
could never be extracted from a marshy bed,
or by metaphorically delving
the depths of an ailing heart.
Instead, distill legend from bitter truth:
And to this essence apply alchemical flame;
close eyes, conjure Caribbean thoughts,
then sprinkle these ashes
upon a moistened tongue.

~Bryan Hall

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:”
Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing
isn’t hard

Been losing for so long

Places and names
dissolve
at a flustered turn

But with people
I’m the master

Because I’ve practiced
losing people
farther, faster
regardless of city
or continent

Though it’s never been hard

Born with talent
I’ve honed the skill
of never couching intention
with proper expression

If a scab forms
I pick it clean

Consistency is key

Never had to worry
about corpses thought buried

But the problem is
even though I’ve mastered
the art of losing
every time I put it into practice
it sure does feel
(Damn it!)
like disaster

~Bryan Hall

Smoke. Dissonance. The floor with a heartbeat.

[Then_____A_____flat line].

No mountain peaks here. Only a single postcard
and girls with too much skin. I hid your love in
my backpack because you call it Pandora
or Diaspora or something Joseph Campbell once
underlined in a book. And you said:
God           crawls       in trees
and writes in sunset-colored leaves,  so
you moved to Arizona so you could
burn your hands in the desert writing
[sad things] in the sand.  But the fishhooks in my
door keep me from
following you, and that
backpack I left on a downtown sidewalk named me
[a terrorist], anyway. I heard it was a massacre.
Broken hearts painted all over the left turn lane on
Main Street. The organ, not the geometry.  And
when Edgar Allen Poe sent a      s o u n d-w a v e  up
your arm, you said you understood why  I could
always taste the color red. That’s when you started
painting monochromatic. When a  stranger’s face
found herself staring out of your wall. The owner of
the heartbeat in the  carpet. The breather of the
smoke in the air.  They say you draw the curtains
when the sun rises so her eyes never dry out. I say
you always loved  the blind more than the deaf.
Lovecraft believes  monsters hide in caves. Clearly he
was all about  the Craft.
I’m all about the way you say my name eight

states away under the stare of another woman’s face.
You sewed your pinkie to your ring finger and said you
couldn’t make any more promises. You never made
anything but [music] to begin with.
Dissonance.
I like
acoustic guitars and Vivaldi. You like sonic warfare and
things that bleed. But it was only when you said carving
love into trees was blasphemy when I finally realized,  after
all of this,      [we were never even meant to be].

~Kayla Grose

spent walking beige corridors
in shoes without laces.
Eating soggy slices of pizza
after picking off the meat.
Six days of malice
only hand I was willing to hold.

A week of greeting cards.
I read “Get well soon.”
in twenty different handwritings
and voices.
Twenty times absent of emotion;
flavorless words.

Six days with an itchy blue hospital blanket
that made me scratch throughout the night.
Five visits from family,
but not my brother’s children.
They aren’t old enough to know
that sometimes I want to leave and not come back.

Seven separate times my mother was too afraid
to release my hand,
six instances of family
saying “it’ll get better” and to “just hang in there”
but do they really know?
Can they know?

A week of intensive therapy
the doctor scribbling down notes on a pad
that I will never get to see.
Then group therapy,
school work,
more groups, lunch.

Six days in a bird cage
they finally let me out.
With my wings clipped
and no song left for me to sing.

~Thomas Dunn

mouthguard.

i grind teeth
in my sleep.
she says
from stress—
i say from
watching
carwrecks
in passenger
seats.
she says i
still need a
mouthguard.

 

autumn.

rain falls.
leaves change.
people shift.
flings end.
love begins.
autumn settles in.

 

funeral.

we drove for miles.
for a blue dress
& makeup.
the pastor preached promise
but i lied awake
& stared at the white ceiling

 

bathtubs.

miss you
like i miss sitting in
bathtubs of peroxide
to treat a bloody foot.
miss you
like i miss fear
having a door open
& lights on.

 

teenage runaway.

life is short.
thought about running
to become stow away
that sleeps in dugouts,
travels the state &
comes back with stories to tell

~Thomas Dunn

Out of ink, out of time,

out of sight, out of mind.

Out of hope, out of grace,

out of spite, out of faith.

 

Out of gas, out of trust,

out of money, out of lust.

Out of clothes, out of fears

out of socks, out of tears.

 

Out of jokes, out of laughter,

out of happily ever after.

Out of milk, out of lies,

out of bra, out of size.

 

Out of pity, out of joy,

out of loosely acting coy.

Out of credit, out of dress,

out of house, out of mess.

 

Out of signs, out of rage,

out of courage, out of age.

Out of color, out of juice,

out of ever acting loose.

 

Out of ignorance, out of bliss,

out of nectar, out of kiss.

Out of context, out of hair,

out of acting like you care.

 

Out of error, out of trials,

out of humor, out of miles.

Out of fiddle, out of fine,

out of drugs, out of line.

 

Out of film, out of fate,

out of love, out of hate.

Out of chance, out of luck,

out of ever giving a fuck.

 

Out of rhythm, out of booze,

out of things that I could choose.

Out of shape, out of fat,

out of this, out of that.

 

Out of fun, out of night,

out of candles, out of light,

running low on things to rhyme,

I wrote you out of me on time.

~Sarah Carlisle