Living with parents – Christiana Sasa

 

My mum and dad call me

many times a day.

we live in the

same house,

but on different floors

when I’m working,

I hate to get interrupted.

They understand me

and I, too, understand them.

still….

it often makes me

erupt in a yell,

“What’s wrong?”

“Don’t call me now please”;

but my heart sinks,

every time I react like that.

An emptiness

bites on my nerves.

I know

One day I’ll miss getting interrupted…

 

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Christiana Sasa has been writing poetry for three years. Her work has been published in the literary magazines Poetry Life and Times, Literary Heist, Rye Whiskey Review etc. and in two E-zines called Dark Poetry Society and RavenCage. Besides poetry, she’s interested in painting, music, short films, and comedy.

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June 7, 2022June 7, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Christiana Sasa, creative, creativity, days, emotions, emptiness, floors, future, heart, home, interruptions, life, living, nerves, parents, poem, poet, Poetry, time, together, understanding, work, writing Leave a comment

Traces – Lorraine Carey

 

I have a friend

without fingerprints.

She worked in the corner shop

and the fact that her tips

lacked those delicate swirls

only came to light,

 

when takings didn’t tally

with receipts and the police

arrived to take prints.

Her innocence undisputed

and the culprit shown the door.

 

We said she was special,

unique, joked she’d make

a superb criminal,

with no evidence on door knobs,

or traces left behind,

 

tongues firmly in our cheeks

and elevated in an instant

she drifted from us

with our traceable whorls,

just ordinary girls,

nothing special.

 

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Lorraine Carey’s an Irish poet from Co. Donegal. Her work is widely published in Poetry Ireland Review, Abridged, The Rising Phoenix Review, Constellate, Orbis, Prole, Smithereens, Porridge, The High Window, The Honest Ulsterman and Poetry Birmingham among others. She has poems forthcoming in Eunoia Review and One. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has been placed and shortlisted in several competitions including Trocaire / Poetry Ireland, The Blue Nib Chapbook Competition, Listowel Writers’ Week, The Allingham Prize and was longlisted in The National Poetry Competition 2019. Her poems have been broadcast on local and national radio. Her debut collection is From Doll House Windows (Revival Press).

March 22, 2021March 22, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: creative, creativity, discovery, Donegal, fingerprints, fingers, friend, friendship, innocence, Ireland, light, Lorraine Carey, memory, ordinary, poem, Poetry, prints, shop, swirls, traces, whorls, work, writing Leave a comment

Concentration – Ben Banyard

 

It’s hard, here in orbit,

not to be able to hear

the simultaneous hum

of all those minds at work.

 

But it’s far harder to imagine

that this orb contains

all of the love and fear

for as far as eyes can see.

 

 

Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, near Bristol, UK. He’s the author of a pamphlet, Communing (Indigo Dreams, 2016) and a full collection, We Are All Lucky (Indigo Dreams, 2018). He blogs and posts mixtapes at https://benbanyard.wordpress.com.

January 13, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Ben Banyard, concentration, creative, creativity, emotions, eyes, fear, hearing, hum, imagination, love, minds, orb, orbit, poem, Poetry, Portishead, senses, sight, sound, UK, work, writing Leave a comment

Cologne – David Armand

 

It was a mirrored, wooden cabinet

hung at about eye-level so he could see

himself before he left for work

in the morning, when it was still dark out

and everyone else was asleep and warm.

 

And he kept nothing but cologne in there,

bottles and bottles of it: Brut, Old Spice,

Pierre Cardin, English Leather, Coty Musk,

Stetson, Aqua Velva, Afta, Skin Bracer,

Preferred Stock, Aspen. Cheap stuff

 

his kids gave him, or maybe he bought it

himself at the drugstore for under ten bucks

so he’d have some variety in the morning,

some choice in how he presented himself

to a world where he didn’t have many choices,

 

a world that was hard on him, and one he’d leave

far too soon: just after a meager Christmas one year

at only forty-two years old, all those cheap bottles

collecting dust now, their contents slowly evaporating

until the day comes when there’ll just be nothing left of him.

 

 

David Armand is Writer-in-Residence at Southeastern Louisiana University, where he also serves as associate editor for Louisiana Literature. In 2010, he won the George Garrett Fiction Prize for his first novel, The Pugilist’s Wife, which was published by Texas Review Press. His second novel, Harlow, was published by Texas Review Press in 2013. In 2015, David’s third novel, The Gorge, was published by Southeast Missouri State University Press, and his poetry chapbook, The Deep Woods, was published by Blue Horse Press. David’s memoir, My Mother’s House, was published in March 2016 by Texas Review Press.

January 30, 2018January 30, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bottles, choice, cologne, creative, creativity, David Armand, death, dust, ending, family, humanity, LA, loss, morning, poem, Poetry, scent, time, US, variety, work, world, writing Leave a comment

At the Museum – Claire Walker

 

For fossil hunter Mary Anning.

 

In glass cases, bigger than my childhood

home, they display the rocks of my life’s work.

Together, men caw like gulls over scraps,

applaud their knowledge and its evolutionary weight.

 

They will not, yet, accept these finds as a woman’s

will not acknowledge my days searching the tide;

days when the sky could do anything – layers

of grey and blue stacked against each other.

 

How easily we set ourselves this way:

man over woman. They call me Handmaid,

think I gather pretty shells in my bonnet

for no reason but a pleasing shape.

 

They are wrong to try and erase me –

an expert at preserving remains.

The swirls of my fingerprints are spelled out on flint,

letters chiseled in the lines of my nameless bones.

 

 

Claire Walker’s poetry has been published in magazines, anthologies and webzines including The Interpreter’s House, Prole, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Poetry Shed, and The Chronicles of Eve. She is a Reader for Three Drops Press, and Co-Editor of Atrium poetry webzine. Her first pamphlet – The Girl Who Grew Into a Crocodile – was published by V. Press in 2015, and a second – Somewhere Between Rose and Black – will follow in December 2017.

December 5, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bones, childhood, Claire Walker, colours, creative, creativity, fossil, gender, glass, history, home, humanity, knowledge, life, Mary Anning, nature, poem, Poetry, rocks, shells, tide, work, writing 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 Welder’s Song – Len Kuntz

 

This is the sound of breaking

Then melting

A sort of soldering

Smell of burnt steel lining the nostrils now

Sparks from the welder’s flame

Shooting 4^th of July bright

Landing on tennis shoes

And cracked cement

Hitting skin

 

This is the sound of love

Fierce devotion

The kind of rapt attention lovers

Show one another when they can’t say

If they’ll ever see each other again

Noticing moles and blurred scars

Seeing it all again for the first time.

 

I wished he would show me that–

The love a welder has for his torch and metal

I wished he would solder me back into a boy

If only half of one

Watching him work I wished so many things

That by the time my father finished his piece

And held it up to the light with a smile

There was nothing left to wish for

 

Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State, an editor at the online magazine Literary Orphans, and the author of I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE AND NEITHER ARE YOU, a story collection out from Unknown Press.  You can also find him at lenkuntz.blogspot.com.

June 5, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: creative, creativity, devotion, family, flame, humanity, Len Kuntz, life, love, memory, metal, past, poem, Poetry, scars, senses, skin, steel, torch, US, WA, work, writing 1 Comment