Exclusive Poetry Feature: “Womb Ache” by Elisabeth Blandford

The stork does not fly over my home.
It is empty and abandoned.
It is sticky and thick.

It is barren.

I’ve watched babies,
in their baskets,
slip from my body
into the fresh white bowl.
Pink water swirls away
in a hypnotizing whirlpool,
replaced by clear, clean water.

I press my ear to the baby blue walls,
listening to the creaking pipes
where my child swims.
Carried out like a corpse in a casket of blood.

With hands pressed to my stomach
I retreat.

The rest of the day
I listen for cries within pipes
wherever I go.

 

Elisabeth Blandford is studying English for Secondary Education at Towson University. Elisabeth’s passions include reading, writing, and teaching. When she’s not reading or writing she can be found running, rock climbing, hiking, or mountain biking.

Exclusive Poetry Feature: “The Woman Sitting Across Me On The Subway” by Angie Kang

The Woman Sitting Across Me On The Subway

is made of clay and she keeps sweating, making the entire car smell like earth and salt and

change. She unwraps her shawl and reties it around her head to keep its domical shape, but

the fibers dig into the clay and leave an imprint. I try not to stare. I think it’s brave to go out

being so pliable and raw, so blatantly unfinished and proudly in progress. It does no good to

go into the kiln before you’re ready to be cremated. Dry clay dust is toxic and once inhaled

settles in your lungs in silty layers until the breath is choked out of you.

 

Angie Kang is an illustrator and writer living in Providence, Rhode Island. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Narrative, Porter House Review, Lunch Ticket, Hobart, and others. Find more of her work at www.angiekang.net, or on instagram @anqiekanq.

Exclusive Poetry Feature: “A Modest Revision for Wedding Vows” by Josh Lefkowitz

 

In sickness and in health

goes the common ceremonial refrain,

but I would add in boredom

and while doing day-to-day mundane activities.

 

In grocery shopping on Sunday mornings.

In folding the laundry side-by-side

with country music radio accompaniment.

 

I’m not saying this is me

at my most romantic.

But let’s be practical, too.

 

The average life expectancies:

76 for men, 81 for women.

(Lucky you, with those extra five years

and complete control of the TV remote).

 

Average age of marriage:

27 for women, 29 for men.

 

That means we’re staring down the collective barrel

of forty-seven to fifty-four years of matrimony.

Yes, I think a pragmatic revision seems right.

 

And isn’t that the real meat, anyhow?

It’s true: a car accident or cancerous cyst,

an unexpected hospital stay

will often breed the most tender exchanges.

 

We know how to love

when the threat of a too-soon end looms.

So why do we forget how it always looms?

 

Let’s practice love on some dumb Tuesday evening,

where everyone’s exhausted from stresses at work

and neither party has the patience for risotto.

 

Let’s love as we heat up the leftovers,

love the familiarity of our ten-year-old

chipped tableware which we swear to someday replace.

 

That you, in spite of the terrible nightly news,

continue to sort our paper from plastic

strikes me as an impossibly hope-filled act.

 

I’m serious! Of course I loved you then, when

you wore white, your hair an immaculate bouquet.

 

But now, decades later – remembering

how temporal all this is – I watch you

floss your teeth for the ten-thousandth time

and my skin can still turn to gooseflesh.

 

The Parisian honeymoon’s a distant memory, and yet

I would not want to be anywhere other than here:

you putting on your nighttime t-shirt,

the one with the Rolling Stones logo

and a little hole in the shoulder material

through which your skin beneath shines.

Sometimes, I still can’t believe that I get you

to have, and – come here – to hold.

 

Josh Lefkowitz was born and raised in the suburbs of metro Detroit. His poems and essays have been widely published online and in print, including in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Washington Square Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, The Millions, The Rumpus, and many other places, including journals in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Hong Kong. This is his third publication with Grub Street.

Exclusive Poetry Feature: “Baby Boomers (False Flags)” by Scott Laudati

Saturday night and London blows up.

France takes a bye this week.

New Jersey sleeps tight

and I tell my father

it’s only a matter of time

before

a taco truck with Haliburton stamps

runs down a few Chinese tourists

and a white girl from Indiana.

They’ve done it before

I say –

they print money

and detonate explosives

from the ground floor up.

Put your hand to your heart

and thank god for Walmart.

Is that Him out there?

No.

It’s another talking point to get

your kids on your knees

so when your head rolls

into their laps

your sacrifice

will have some meaning,

and you won’t look like the other fools of history

who died for nothing.

 

The trumpet sounds over a

misty DC morning.

A frozen yogurt stand

hands out extra sprinkles.

The kids lick up icing

while the buildings fall down.

But they didn’t see any planes

in the sky.

It was just like last time.

The parents burned their books

and checked themselves into camps

and smiled at the barbed wire

and said, “It won’t happen here.”

 

Scott Laudati is the author of Hawaiian Shirts In The Electric Chair REDUX (Cephalo Press). Visit him on social media @ScottLaudati

Exclusive Poetry Feature: “Dinah” by Millie Tullis

 

…….And he took her, and lay with her, and humbled her. (Genesis 34:2)

 

daddy knew right away

sat me down and said

is this a good boy

 

it hurt to sit

i am thirteen

i am crying

 

am i crying

if i start

i can’t stop

 

daddy said

they’re good people

momma put on her hat

 

followed him out

good people

we are

 

………..my best friend home

………..sick that day

………..i walked the short cut

 

………………..it was a new dress

………………..pretty as a picture too 

………………..much pink in the trees

 

momma says 

i’m getting married 

i can’t go to school

 

for the baby i gotta 

rework some old things 

stitch up some new things

 

the small white socks

i make with one

long thread

 

………………..my brothers are angry

………………..at him comin

………………..to sunday dinner 

 

………………..daddy won’t 

………………..let them get

………………..a word in

 

………..someone don’t

………..come home 

………..that night

 

Millie Tullis is an MFA poetry candidate at George Mason University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Sugar House Review, Rock & Sling, Cimarron Review, Ninth Letter, Juked, and elsewhere. She serves as the Assistant Editor for Best of the Net and Poetry Editor and Social Media Manager for Phoebe. She also reads for Poetry Daily. You can find her on twitter @millie_tullis.

Poetry Feature: “Days of 1985” by Ellen Kombiyil

 

 

“Oh the body! The delight and am I / normal?”

—from The Lost Pages of Anne Sexton1

 

We who pretended to lie down at parties 

with lovers on vinyl couches or wished

we didn’t but wouldn’t admit it, licking

salt from necks, bass leaping with our breath, or was it

expanding/escaping inside us, black light’s

purple stripes transforming eyes/teeth into green 

glowing beings, separate, alive, our faces

into negatives, cried. If we did it (we did it)

to feel for a moment if not loved then

wanted: A boy jammed his tongue in my mouth

because the Coke bottle chose me when it spun,

which was my first kiss. I didn’t ask questions.

Or I fielded Ouija board guesses Yes/No/

………Good-bye. Or I walked into that closet,

willingly let them lock it. O, my wasted 

adolescence! Assessing vertical stripes 

on swimsuits as a function of decreased 

belly fat, obsessed with how thighs pooled 

when I sat, how absent thigh gap leads to ruin.

I dieted on Cheez Balls (one every 55 

minutes, dissolved on the tongue in a pool

of melted butter). Or I teased my hair

to make my face look slimmer. Ruin, from 

the Latin ruere, “to fall” as in fall 

headlong or with a crash. We were always 

falling laughing collapsing unable to stand 

our bodies pulsing with want.

 

 1. The book quoted is fictional, wished into existence, as is the quote.

 

Ellen Kombiyil is the author of Histories of the Future Perfect (2015), and a micro-chapbook Avalanche Tunnel (2016). Publications: New Ohio Review, Nimrod, North American Review, and Ploughshares. Awards: Mary M. Fay Poetry Award from Hunter College; Academy of American Poets college prize; Nancy Dean Medieval Prize.

Poetry Feature: “Chronicles” by Isaiah Brown

Junk’d up on adrenaline.

Nobody could tell you anything.

 

I was grateful enough to move

to your hometown, let alone 

become your friend. 

Isn’t that the Taylor kid? I heard the 

Police searched his house for six hours.

Nobody was ready to see what your

home looked like though. 

 

How you rescued 

a dog from the neglect of its drug-

dealing owners.

Nonetheless you were from the wrong

side of the tracks, yet cut so different

from everyone else.

 

You split the community in half.

Modern day robin hood, only you could do that.

 

One end of the spectrum left in 

grief of a young genuine life taken too soon.

Others commemorated the death 

of a bandit.

Almost like they saw the end of an era, 

understanding that your dirt bike was never

to be heard in Adamstown again.

 

You and that bike.

The loss didn’t hit me until it was too late.

I realized I didn’t hear that rust bucket of a machine

ripping down its iconic strip outside my window

anymore. Suddenly your crew made less and

less appearances throughout the town.

 

I never finished the cigarette you offered during our first encounter.

I only took it so you and your friends wouldn’t think I’m square.

 

At first, I thought it was cool, that

my peers recognized me as part of your legend.

It was a handful of times we even hung out.

I feel so stupid now! To think a legacy 

could fill the void of a fallen soldier. 

Now all I am left with is a memorial card, and 

posts of your life depicted through Facebook.

Poetry Feature: “New Friends” by Scott Laudati

We saw the end of the sun some time ago

and I thought about California

and the palm trees that were still eating

and the girls in the sand 

and their hair in the wind

and how it didn’t matter to me anymore 

where the lightning bugs went

once the days cooled off,

or why old men never died like outlaws

if it’s what we all want.

Born alone.

Legacy always in question.

Life has a way of herding the useless together,

drafting us into a showdown 

that began

long before the dead had to 

explain their worth.

Bellies up.

No closure.

No kind words left behind 

for the kids.

We forgot a long time ago that

the world will keep rolling over

like it always has.

So we laugh at the snoring dogs 

shaking their jaws 

and running in place,

but now I wonder:

why are they the only ones 

who sleep deeply enough 

to dream?

 

I’d been locked up at my 

girlfriend’s parents’ house for a week

and all anyone could talk about

was a skunk that lived in the woods.

And every night I’d go outside

and stare into the trees

but I never saw anything.

The sun dropped,

the geese flew south,

and just as I was about to give up 

for the last time

a little skunk crawled out from 

under the shed.

I jumped up and waved at him 

and he looked back as friendly 

as any fat and free thing

and neither of us did much more

than that.

But then my girlfriend came 

out and screamed.

The skunk looked back like I’d 

betrayed him,

and as I watched his tail go up

I felt like I’d broken our bond too. 

I knew my girlfriend would get mad if 

I said it was her fault

so I cursed at the skunk

cursed at the trees

cursed my name

(never going for the one who deserved it),

hating everyone and everything

in this whole stupid world. 

 

Her mother made lasagna that night.

I left a plate out by the backdoor. 

 

Scott Laudati is the author of Camp Winapooka (Bone Machine, Inc.). Visit him on instagram @scottlaudati

Poetry Feature: At the Library by Josh Lefkowitz

Back at the library, trying to write

an interesting poem about ancient Greeks

 

but some little girl won’t shut up about horses

and the two librarians are being too Minnesota-nice.

 

They had six different words for love, those Greeks:

Eros, Philia, Ludus, Agape, Pragma and Philautia.

 

“DO YOU HAVE ANY BOOKS ABOUT HORSES?!”

 

Eros, of course, is the most well-known:

Passion, driven by desire.

 

“WHAT ABOUT MOVIES ABOUT HORSES?!”

 

And Pragma, I think, is a worthy aim –

developed over time, as a river carves rock.

 

“ARE THERE ANY AUDIO BOOKS ABOUT HORSES?!”

 

Y’know, I’m really trying to practice Agape here –

love for everyone, including annoying little girls –

 

but I’m also pursuing Philautia – self-care –

and that means writing, and that needs quiet.

 

“MOM! MOM! MOM! WHERE ARE YOU MOM?!”

 

Her mother – not deaf, just regretting her life –

hides in the stacks and swipes through her phone.

 

Back to the ancient Greek shelves I go,

this time not for love, but Euripides.

 

There’s some good ideas in here, I say,

interrupting the mother-phone session, handing her a play:

 

Medea.

His Mother Smells Like Hairspray by Megan Clark

Just because she 
chose
to go drinking
instead of tucking you in 
each night 
does not mean
you're unworthy of love,

and the fact
your most prominent
memory
is her AquaNet lingering
near the foyer bathroom
tells me that you'll know 
how to be better.

Megan Clark graduated from Towson University in 2018 with her degree in English (creative writing concentration). She lives in Harford County with her soon-to-be husband and their Jack Russell Terrier, Rudy.