How I love – Joe Albanese

 

From your hope is how I hear you

Through your unabashed scars is how I feel you

 

Between each thought I always see you

And it’s in your flowing that I know you

 

The sacred and magic are born from you

For simple being, the world should thank you

 

In crowded streets I may have lost you

But with heart-star lantern, I’ll search for you

 

Although ghosts may sometimes haunt you

It’s because who wouldn’t live beside you?

 

From your laughter I cannot save you

But in tears I’d never have you

 

If it’s in the sunlight that I want you

Then it’s in its shadows I am with you

 

If all our lives I never reach you

Then let these words be how I love you.

 

 

Joe Albanese is a writer from New Jersey. His work can be found in publications across the U.S. and in ten other countries. Joe’s novel, Caina (Mockingbird Lane Press), and his novella, Smash and Grab (Books to Go Now), were both published in 2018.

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October 25, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: creative, creativity, ghosts, hope, Joe Albanese, lantern, laughter, light, lives, love, magic, NJ, poem, Poetry, scars, senses, shadows, tears, thoughts, US, words, world, writing Leave a comment

The Phone Call – Emily Harrison

 

Hurt slips down

cheek and curve,

wet tracks into mouth, and

just stop crying.

 

The walls drop away but I stay sentient –

for now.

 

Frame hiccups,

hook and dip,

seizes split lip,

bite down on cut tissue –

bloody wine

and

just stop crying.

 

I can sink lower, though,

and melt into the sticky floor.

 

The rest, purple,

blooming and bruising,

clasp a hand,

itch it back, but escaping

again, oozing

tripping all over itself, and

still

crying.

 

Wilt across the linoleum floor,

but sick peace now,

no more,

no more,

no more.

 

 

A young writer from North Yorkshire, Emily has recently discovered that she actually likes creative writing, despite everything she may have previously said. Quite likely to be found in a local cafe drinking four cups of tea and procrastinating about her work, (someone feed her please), she can also be found on Twitter @emily__harrison. She apologises in advance for her tweets.

June 21, 2018June 21, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: blooming, bruising, cheek, creative, creativity, crying, Emily Harrison, escape, floor, hand, hurt, itch, lip, North Yorkshire, peace, poem, Poetry, tears, tissue, UK, walls, wine, writing 1 Comment

I have yet to attend a funeral where it didn’t rain – John Grey

 

You were buried near twilight

and as the moon went missing

behind a combination of clouds,

and oncoming night methodically

devoured the shine, it was up to

your tombstone to illuminate

its surrounds, sprout grass and

wildflowers, as sky splashed,

on your new forecourt, star-sized tears

in the shape of rain, each one plopping

into the last, and your shadow,

having rid itself of you, found, beyond

death, new life as a black umbrella.

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Nebo, Euphony and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.

June 7, 2018June 7, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Australia, burial, clouds, creative, creativity, death, John Grey, life, moon, nature, night, poem, Poetry, rain, shadow, sky, tears, twilight, umbrella, US, weather, wildflowers, writing 1 Comment

Distracting photograph – Kieran Egan

 

Pensive, looking sideways, unfocused eyes,

perhaps wondering about her future.

 

Now flight-phobic, terrified of takeoffs.

To ease her anxieties I had suggested 

we bring and talk about photographs of ourselves, 

at ages five, and ten, fifteen, and twenty.

 

We examined the pensive ten-year-old girl looking sideways.

The woman she had become started to reminisce 

about her family, her school,

and what the girl in the photograph most cared about.

 

It was just a few minutes’ distraction, to ease her fears,

neither of us anticipated the flood of sobbing tears.

 

 

Kieran Egan lives in Vancouver, Canada. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Quills (Canada), Literary Review of Canada, Dalhousie Review (Canada), High Window (UK), Orbis (UK), Raintown Review (USA), Envoi (UK), Shot Glass Journal (USA), Qwerty (Canada), Snapdragon (USA), The Antigonish Review (Canada), Acumen (UK), Canadian Quarterly and The Interpreter’s House (UK); also shortlisted for the John W. Bilsland Literary Award, 2017 and for the TLS Mick Imlah prize 2017.

February 19, 2018February 19, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: anxiety, Canada, childhood, creative, creativity, distraction, emotion, eyes, family, fear, flight, future, humanity, Kieran Egan, memory, past, photographs, poem, Poetry, school, tears, writing, youth Leave a comment

Eustace – Sandra Arnold

 

The shock of seeing Eustace in the charity shop window almost rattled Miranda out of her skin. She’d never believed her parents’ insistence that they hadn’t got rid of him. But twenty years later there he was. Eustace as he’d looked at the edge of the sea, watching her father tip grandpa’s ashes into the waves. Watching her father’s tears as the arc of grey grit hit the water. Listening to tales of grandpa’s fishing days; how he’d taught generations of boys to swim and fish and sail; how he was the best of men. While her cousins watched bits of crushed bone drift away on the tide, Miranda watched the boy. His white curls haloed around his head like the seeds of a dandelion clock before they’re blown away by the wind. She asked him who he was. “Eustace,” he said.

The psychiatrist suggested art therapy as a way to unlock whatever had caused Miranda’s mutism. However, he added, as several of her cousins exhibited the same symptoms there was probably a genetic component.

While Miranda painted Eustace he told her he knew why all the girls in her family were mute. She didn’t go back to art therapy. Instead she talked to Eustace.

The psychiatrist reassured Miranda’s parents that imaginary companions were common in solitary children, and it was simply coincidence that the boy in Miranda’s painting resembled her grandpa’s brother who’d drowned as a child, and when Miranda started socialising with real children the imaginary one would disappear. He did. And so did the painting.

“Nice painting, eh?’ said the charity shop owner.

She nodded. “I’ll take it.”

She’d show her cousins. She’d tell them about Eustace. She’d tell them everything.

 

Sandra Arnold lives in New Zealand. She is a novelist, essayist, short story and flash-fiction writer with a PhD in Creative Writing from CQ University, Australia. Her work has been widely published and anthologised in New Zealand and internationally and has won several awards. Her flash fiction appears in numerous journals including The Airgonaut, Spelk, Jellyfish Review, Flash Frontier, Blue Fifth Review and was selected for the UK 2017 National Flash Fiction Day international anthology, Sleep is a beautiful colour. Learn more at http://authors.org.nz/author/sandraarnold.

July 27, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, ProseTags: art, ashes, childhood, companion, cousins, elements, family, fiction, flash, imagination, memory, nature, New Zealand, NZ, painting, past, Sandra Arnold, sea, short, story, tears, water, youth Leave a comment

The loom of life – Ann Christine Tabaka

 

The tapestry of life is said to be woven in tears.

First the bobbin is wound tightly with love. 

Then the shuttle weaves through the fears.

The warp holds the tension below and above. 

Winding through fleeting days months and years.

Each bright colored thread intertwining thereof. 

Nimble fingers working as the timeline nears.

The final results we must not lose sight of.

As the resplendent design of the master appears.

 

Ann Christine Tabaka was born and lives in Delaware. She is a published poet, an artist, a chemist, and a personal trainer. She loves gardening, cooking, and the ocean. Chris lives with her husband and two cats. Her poems have been published in numerous national and international poetry journals, reviews, and anthologies.

June 17, 2017June 17, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Ann Christine Tabaka, art, beauty, change, colours, creative, creativity, DE, design, fear, humanity, life, loom, love, poem, Poetry, sight, tapestry, tears, time, US, work, writing 1 Comment

The Bedside Book of Renewal – Glen Armstrong

 

This is the story of joy and color.

_

The mystery girl’s heart

where shines a strange

history,

where tears stain latex.

–

The blurb on the back promises:

so real that you’ll feel

it on your skin.

It tells the truth more often

than you’d think.

–

She is completely eyes and hands.

–

While others speak in tongues

at the riverfront,

–

their divine proclamations

peppered with otherworldly

curses,

–

she looks at the moon

and we all forget

–

the seemingly endless moons

leading up to this moment.

–

Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three recent chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Picaroon Poetry and Cream City Review.

May 21, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: body, colour, creative, creativity, curses, emotion, eyes, feelings, Glen Armstrong, heart, humanity, joy, MI, moment, moon, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, tears, truth, US, writing Leave a comment

Prophetess in the Wrong Time – Mark J. Mitchell

 

“Horrendas canit ambages.”

“She chants her dread enigmas.”

—Virgil

Aeneid VI, 99

 

Salt monks chant—as quiet as time—

Stone voices inhabit old stones.

She stares through waxed smoke at a bowl

of small words from lost tongues. Tears bind

them into riddles that define

the rite. She knows she must not eat

them. Her hands ripple. She repeats

the chant. Words melt like smoke, like fire.

Stirring in sheets her high school choir

breaks her to wake. The dream’s complete.

 

Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty five years, as well as the anthologies Good Poems, American Places, Hunger Enough, Retail Woes and Line Drives. It has also been nominated for both Pushcart Prizes and The Best of the Net. He is the author of two full-length collections, Lent 1999 (Leaf Garden Press) and Soren Kierkegaard Witnesses an Execution (Local Gems) as well as two chapbooks, Three Visitors (Negative Capability Press) and Artifacts and Relics, (Folded Word). His novel, Knight Prisoner, is available from Vagabondage Press and a new novel is forthcoming: The Magic War (Loose Leaves Publishing). He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and activist Joan Juster where he makes a living showing people pretty things in his city.

April 19, 2017April 19, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: chant, creativity, dream, elements, fire, hands, humanity, Mark J. Mitchell, nature, poem, Poetry, puzzle, riddles, rite, salt, smoke, stones, tears, time, US, voices, words, writing Leave a comment

Sid and Cassie – Maria Sledmere

 

If you told me, aged sixteen,

I’d be alone on a hilltop, sipping vodka

from a water pistol borrowed off my brother,

I’d have said, wow, cool. 

 

If you told me then, that in a bedsit

I’d be gold-toned, honing sapphic desire in my underwear,

poking slugs around a fish tank

and naming them in lieu of past lovers,

I’d have said, lovely. 

 

If you told me he’d write me a letter

with real imprints of tears in the ink,

I’d have opened my glossy lips

and laughed with careless teeth.

 

If you told me I’d end up

gazing down at the boats on the Brooklyn Bridge,

I’d have wondered how I ever felt

at all before this.

 

In the hospital garden once I sat

in my straw hat, with pin-curls and a mugful of gin

and he would come to kiss me

in his mismatched pyjamas, but I

 

was half-dreaming – I said I would love him forever

and for a while I meant it. I thought

the pink mist would surround me again;

I thought he would eat my chips

and in the darkness we would twist

as clumsy as those slugs,

 

like the day in the ambulance

when everything was bright and plastic and blue;

almost forgotten, the world not turning,

yet everything lovely,

lovely as you.

 

In the mirror I splash my face with glitter and lightning.

Maybe he has that hand-knitted hat

still full of my stardust, the nicotine traces;

I miss him, totally, but you know

it’s only the boats that go places.

 
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.

 

January 17, 2017February 6, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: change, creativity, dreams, growth, humanity, ink, life, love, Maria Sledmere, memory, mist, past, poem, Poetry, reflection, relationship, Scotland, stardust, tears, travel, UK, world, writing Leave a comment