Peach Pit – Kara Goughnour

 

The thunder was growling

like any defenseless thing

and the birds flew in circles

over our heads. Everything

was tired; the branches lied

vine-like over the rain-slick

street like lost shoelaces

inching back into pairs,

and we bent our boredom

to the back burner in origami

folds. The whole store sat unnoticed

which, to the lot of us, led

to a collective unrest.

I tucked the worn rags into water

and you, with your names

I’ll forget easily when it’s time,

cleared the mold off

of every peach. These days,

in my monotony,

I am a thing capable of rotting,

scared or stoned, a still-stemmed

stone fruit already molding,

before the bird wings catch

in the fence snares, before

the stars yelp back to life,

before anyone can taste it,

before anyone would care.

 

 

Kara Goughnour is a writer and documentarian living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They are the author of “Mixed Tapes,” forthcoming in the Ghost City Press Summer 2019 Micro-Chap Series. They are the recipient of the 2018 Gerald Stern Poetry Award, and have work published or forthcoming in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Third Point Press, and over forty others. Follow them on Twitter and Instagram @kara_goughnour or read their collected and exclusive works at karagoughnour.com.

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October 27, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: birds, creative, creativity, elements, fruit, Kara Goughnour, life, names, nature, PA, peaches, poem, Poetry, rags, rot, senses, stars, taste, thunder, US, water, wings, writing Leave a comment

Breathless – Bojana Stojcic

 

A storm was raging

that afternoon.

He stopped

to breathe with me.

 

It’s starting

to thunder.

I’m learning

to breathe on my own.

 

 

Bojana Stojcic is a teacher from Serbia, living in Germany. Her poems and flash pieces have been published or are forthcoming in Rust + Moth, Anti-Heroin Chic, Down in the Dirt, Mojave Heart Review, Dodging the Rain, The Opiate, The Stray Branch, Tuck magazine, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Nightingale & Sparrow and Visual Verse. She blogs regularly at Coffee and Confessions to Go.

July 28, 2019July 28, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: afternoon, beginning, Bojana Stojcic, breath, change, creative, creativity, elements, Germany, learning, nature, poem, Poetry, rage, rain, relationship, Serbia, stop, storm, thunder, time, weather, writing 16 Comments

Losing interest in the sound of petrichor – Kate Garrett

 

and the scent of the thunder;

you’ll tell me it’s ozone broken by forked

lightning, but thunder has a smell

of its own:

heavy and green, pregnant with wildflowers.

 

The clouds pressed through our roof,

drowning a protestant sun; it was one

of those evenings I wished for a bee sting

one of those evenings when heat rises

and I am overly alive, when I’m breathing

in too much summer to stem the panic.

 

And the weight of your body

on mine did nothing

and the restless sweat escaping

my pores did not cool me down—

 

but when night fell, the owls sheltered

from the hot rain in graveyard trees

and I wandered beneath their calls

to calm the tremors.

 

Kate Garrett is a writer, mother, editor, wife, history buff, and amateur folklorist. Her work is published here and there online and in print, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her most recent books are The Density of Salt (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2016) – which was longlisted for best pamphlet in the 2016 Saboteur Awards – and Deadly, Delicate (Picaroon Poetry, 2016). Her next pamphlet, You’ve never seen a doomsday like it, will be published in 2017 by Indigo Dreams. Kate lives in Sheffield with her husband, four children, and a cat named Mimi.

January 31, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: calm, change, creativity, fauna, flora, humanity, Kate Garrett, lightning, nature, night, petrichor, poem, Poetry, rain, storm, summer, thunder, UK, weather, wildflowers, writing Leave a comment