The Moon’s surface – Bojana Stojcic

 

My face is the side

the Earth always sees

 

It knows not this body

battered by collisions nor

 

this heart whose craters are

hundreds of meters deep

 

a testament to the

bombardments it has suffered

 

 

Bojana Stojcic is a teacher from Serbia, living in Germany. Her poems and flash pieces have been published in Rust + Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, Barren Magazine, Spelk, XRAY, The Opiate, and elsewhere. She blogs at Coffee and Confessions to Go and is currently working on a collection of flash fiction/prose poetry.

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March 23, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: body, Bojana Stojcic, bombardments, collision, craters, creative, creativity, earth, face, Germany, heart, knowledge, meters, moon, poem, Poetry, Serbia, side, sight, suffering, surface, testament, writing 19 Comments

Comparing Scars – James Diaz

 

the apple did fall far from the tree

and went out into the dark

with almost no light

inside

 

some places are all haunting

nothing else matters

but that you leave there shaken

 

when I was younger

I had an impossible dream

that I could grow old

and not be happy

but still be in the world

 

living in a place no one could find

I wouldn’t have needed much

a chair, a table, a bowl, a spoon

a front door

a few years of silence

of forgetting.

 

James Diaz is the founding editor of the literary arts & music journal Anti-Heroin Chic. His work has appeared most recently in HIV Here & Now, Foliate Oak, Chronogram, and Cheap Pop Lit. His first book of poems, This Someone I Call Stranger, is forthcoming from Indolent Books (2017.)

April 18, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: age, apple, creative, creativity, dark, dream, forgetting, James Diaz, life, light, memory, pain, past, poem, Poetry, scars, silence, suffering, unhappiness, US, world, writing, youth Leave a comment

Choking – Jonathan Butcher

 

I remember you in the school

dinner room, choking on the

corned beef sandwiches that

the dinner ladies forced down

your throat; waste held no

relevance between those walls.

 

I remember you sat alone at break

times, hands and stones slapped

across your face like whiplashes,

for an injustice you were far from

capable of committing.

 

And you walked home, your head bowed,

through those orange bricked streets

that framed our morning walks, alongside

the neglected grass verges like miniature

jungles we never dared to enter.

 

Those doors opened once again, before

the sun set behind the grey roofs and dust

like trees, you stand and stare once more

in that hallway mirror that hangs rusted,

and only slightly cracked.

 

Jonathan Butcher is a poet based in Sheffield, England. He has had poetry appear in various print and online journals including Ink, Sweat and Tears, Elbow Room, Your One Phone Call, Mad Swirl, The Transnational and others. His second chapbook ‘Broken Slates’ was published by Flutter Press.

April 11, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: childhood, creative, creativity, England, home, humanity, Jonathan Butcher, memory, mirror, nature, pain, past, poem, Poetry, school, Sheffield, streets, suffering, sun, UK, writing, Yorkshire, youth Leave a comment

Fire – John Grey

 

I touched fire when two

and I’ve not forgotten.

I was burnt, bubbled, red,

darkened, and the flame

burned so pretty too.

 

I glanced longingly

at the liquid in dark bottles

but my mother snatched

them away.

Likewise the taunting

sharp edge of a knife.

And the patio railing

that invited me to climb.

 

But with fire

she was not quick enough.

I learned that lesson

the hard way.

You can suffer in your hand

what your heart endures.

You can shriek

a kind of glory

until the salving butter comes.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. His work has recently been published in New Plains Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review, and is upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia College Literary Review and Spoon River Poetry Review.

February 8, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Australia, burn, childhood, creative, creativity, danger, fire, flame, hand, heart, John Grey, lesson, memory, mistake, pain, past, poem, Poetry, suffering, US, writing, youth Leave a comment

Winning the tombola – Maria Sledmere

 

She turned the package over in her fingers. Silken, purple, properly gift-wrapped. The thought of what might lie inside glazed over her mind like the sweetening glow of a bar of milk chocolate, crunched alone on a cold evening.

She had a full hour to herself, before they returned. This kitchen, the room of her life, seemed transformed before her. The bread bin was open, the fridge was bursting with its hoard of treasures. She didn’t need to touch anything, though it was seductive, to think of the carrots neatly lined up like pens in a stationer’s, the orange juice, the dark bitter rye bread, the drawers chockfull of hazelnuts and brazils and the luxurious sugared lemons they’d bought for the festive season.

Earlier, he’d pinned her against the mahogany wardrobe.

“Do it like this,” he whispered. She remembers such words like a litany.

There were seven words to be said for the lottery. The old women tittered at the sight of her skirt, the hole in her tights. It was an unfair judgment; she had done nothing but turn up, as was her right. Seven words to be said. The music was harsh and synthy; dissonant, like the music they play in a mall, only slowed down to a creepy, molluscan crawl.

He poured dark muscovado sugar on her tongue, lovingly. He put his finger in her mouth, swirled it around, till the coarse stuff got sticky and wet and dissolved. It was as if he had drained the juice of her blood and here she was, dried and rasping. Come.

He used to scrunch her hair in his palms, and later it would lie a certain way against her neck, limp and curled, the filaments crushed.

He had been a jazz musician once. He had played the saxophone in her sleep, the shrill buzz of those notes swivelling through the staves of her veins, twisting her organs to a new truth.

The old women drew papers from a golden box. The one with an amethyst scarf waved a number, triumphantly, as if declaring the birth of an age.

“That’s me!” she had shrieked, leaping from her seat. Their eyes had been upon her, and maybe for a moment she had felt ashamed. Still, it didn’t last. The parcel was duly handed over; she treated herself to a taxi home.

What was the use in waiting? She had dallied long enough.

The ribbons fell apart in her fingers. Her heart backflipped, a ballerina. So this was the promise?

What she saw made her vomit.

 

Maria Sledmere is currently studying for an MLitt in Modernities at the University of Glasgow, and is otherwise an assistant editor for SPAMzine and part-time restaurant supervisor, a job which provides her with many ideas for strange stories. She regularly writes music reviews for RaveChild Glasgow and has had work recently accepted by publications including From Glasgow to Saturn, DataBleed, Robida and Germ Magazine.  When not obsessing over the literature of Tom McCarthy she may be found painting, making mixtapes or writing about everything from Dark Ecology, Derrida to Lana Del Rey at http://musingsbymaria.wordpress.com.

February 6, 2017February 6, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, Prose, UncategorizedTags: chance, cold, evening, feelings, fiction, flash, food, home, humanity, kitchen, life, luck, Maria Sledmere, music, pain, promise, relationship, sadness, Scotland, story, suffering, UK, writing Leave a comment

The Day After – Nancy Iannucci

 

A tremor & a shift,

Kerouac’s Desolation Pops dropped

to my feet by the jolt.

 

Black tea dyed crescents on the envelope,

tsunamis rushed ashore. My heart

raced & read, reread & raced through

 

your words with a flux capacitor.

Your letter came today, but

we gathered yesterday

 

by the flowers during

your calling hours. I thought

you never responded.

 

Nancy Iannucci is a historian who teaches history and lives poetry in Troy, NY. Her work is published/forthcoming in numerous publications including Bop Dead City, Allegro Poetry Magazine, Star 82 Review (*82), Gargoyle, Amaryllis, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, Poetry Breakfast, Rose Red Review, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Picaroon Poetry, and her poem “Howling” won one of Yellow Chair Review’s Rock the Chair Challenges.

February 2, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: creative, creativity, crescents, feelings, flowers, heart, humanity, letter, life, loss, love, Nancy Iannucci, NY, pain, poem, Poetry, sadness, suffering, tremor, tsunamis, US, writing Leave a comment

The beauty of you – Francesca Leone

 

I have really tried so hard,

 

wrote about everything

(but mostly nothing) and kept

my mouth shut.

 

I got very close to true emotion

once or twice.

A good line on a man,

the ocean,

even a rhyme.

 

Lately I am face to face with the reality

of losing you

and losing my hunger for this.

I was a better writer when you hurt me.

Whatever I do to myself or let anyone else do to me

cannot come even close

to the beauty

of you twisting the knife in me.

 

There was something truly poetic in the way

you wrecked me. Every time like I didn’t expect it

or sign up for it willingly.

 

But I’ve always been fucking good at sorrow.

 

Now you’re back into my poems

and of course I put my faith in this magic again.

 

Draped in blue,

still imagining that one day I’ll get to have a conversation with you

 

tell you to please ruin me forever

for eternal glory.

 

Francesca Leone is a 24-year-old living in Rome, Italy. She writes in English at https://frellification.wordpress.com. She is currently writing a fantasy novel, but poetry remains her first love.

 

January 21, 2017February 25, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: beauty, creativity, emotion, feelings, Francesca Leone, humanity, hunger, hurt, Italy, memory, ocean, pain, poem, Poetry, relationship, rhyme, sadness, sorrow, suffering, unhappiness, writing Leave a comment

Harriet – Lydia Allison

 

I found him in a place

with an endless ringing

like the noise of an alarm clock

his body hot as blankets

 

a bad place

with gaps in the walls that let in a light

smoke and I couldn’t see his face

 

skin touched my skin

it changed

I found you in a different place

and now have two names

and two monograms to prove it

two mistakes

 

Lydia Allison is a Sheffield-born poet whose current writing stems from a love of weddings and wonky romances. She is a member of Writing Squad 8 and has appeared a number of times both online and in print, including two of Pankhearst’s Slim Volumes (This Body I Live In and No Love Lost). She enjoys a range of modern and contemporary writers, particularly female American poets. Her other favourite things in life are the Yorkshire countryside and cake for breakfast. Follow her on Twitter @LydiaAllison13 and find more poems, stories, and links here: lydiaallison.wordpress.com.

November 19, 2016February 25, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: change, fear, Lydia Allison, memory, pain, past, poem, Poetry, relationship, sadness, suffering, UK 1 Comment