The Agnostic's Prayer by Mark Flanigan

                 "Lord/I had such a good time and I don't

                  regret anything--/What happened to the prayer

                  that goes like that?"

                                        Franz Wright, "Kyrie"

The morning is of no concern to me

despite there being nothing more embarrassing

than a corpse. Little

dead feet, little dead hands

with no one to hold them.

So little dignity in life,

and even less in death. We

go for a swim at 7 a.m. or

play cards while the sun rises.

The morning is of no consequence to us.

Every time I flick on a light switch

a bulb burns out. Every time I

fill the soap dispenser, it overflows.

Maybe there is a lesson here.

Outside the rain falls as if angry.

Inside there is a spider in the tub

I must remove before running

water. What if we are only spiders

living precipitously by a drain? I live that way,

love that way. It’s not worth being saved

by something less kind than me. Fuck mystery,

give me joy; that is mystery enough. 

Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain: Books

are like parents, they mostly show you

how not to live. I haven’t embarrassed any

body by taking my web underground.  

stopped doing it / ralph la charity

I wanted to make a poem you could stay inside of

one that you'd say over & over, & over everywhere

you'd could & you'd would would be how it would go

one that whenever you'd keep at it you'd always be

in, circling onward inside itself & outwardly radiative

rolling like that, and feeding off resonance just that way

and by resonance I mean aloud even in the wee hours

even when making love or idling along in a pew or 

while stopped in traffic or paused above the abyss

the old joke about sliding down a bannister of Light

one that'd end precisely when you stopped doing it

Cassette Tape by Nick Barrows

If I could annunciate

had better diction

I could be eating M&M's in space by now

but I am just a winter house spigot

gurgling to the outside

Waiting for hands

Waiting for mouths

Set to a frozen melody

to burst out

on rhythms of hiccups

rattled and rusted with green

A valve not completely closed

with drips

drips

drips

Swearing and husking these dyslexic visions

stammering on to the over growth that fouls hawked

From septic to satellite missing all the faceted things in the middle

Sounds and colors trying so hard to reach

Forms unraveling and twisted, long strands bursting from the casing

to be rolled up again by the inadequate pencil

the feeble pinky

Muted

Fearful

Misspoken

Drawled tones that lose an effective resolve

like being bullied in a teen idol scene

Cracklings of the petrified misgivings shoved in a looker

or plunged into the commode 

All the mail boxes have been smashed

All the eggs thrown

No more toilet paper to javelin

For the rest of the tenure banging out cross-wired message

on garbage can keyboards atop landlord desks

riddled with trinkets and the forensics of a maniac

A pile of old lighters with no special story

They were just to light cigarettes

Untitled / Emily Gundlach

This is for you

This is for you, sitting there, right now, with words bubbling like

     lava just beneath your skin

And silence like cotton in your mouth.

This is for you, world-wounded and battled-scarred and carrying a

     weapon up your sleeve and waiting 

for someone to ask you to put it down.

This is for you, fresh faced and bright eyed, not yet experienced in

     this life and yet aching to know the 

limits of your soul – you are ready.

This is for you, thinking the best I can do today is just keep the

     needle out of my arm, the bottle from my 

lips, leave the cake in the display case and not touch that person i

     know i will hurt – you can do better.

Five years ago, I walked through the world,

With the wind blowing clean through me,

Slogging through an ocean of emptiness every day

Wind blowing clean through me, bones cold and brittle

Body just a coincidence, brain just a nuisance, existence a waiting

     game-

This is for you who have been there.

All I have to give you is my story.

Four years ago, my heart was shattered like the stain glass window

     of a cathedral

Smashed with a rock thrown with deliberate destruction

And I kept telling my mother “my chest hurts, I can’t breathe, my

     heart hurts”

She, worried mother, furrowed brow, dialed the doctor,

But I said "it’s not that heart”

This is for you, right now, who understand.

All I have to give you is my story.

All I have to show you is this light inside me.

Three years ago I found the key to a quiet space in my soul that I

     didn’t know existed

It fit perfectly in a lock I didn’t know existed

But had been trying, unconsciously, to pick for years.

Now with wavering resolution, shaky hands, uneasy eyes

I lit a match to a candle in small secret place

And ignited a bonfire

This is for you who have found a way out.

All I have to give you is my story

All I have to show you is this light inside me.

All I have learned is that the only things that separate us 

are a few inches of space and air

And I become alive when we drop the everyday act of being ok and

     reveal our raw selves

I become alive when I see the light turn on in someone else’s eyes

And I am painstakingly present and I am aware of Each. Breath.

And I become alive in the presence of the divine.

And this moment is divine.

I can tell you this.

There will be more pain.

We are all wounded by life.

And this is for you, when you are sure you have lost your way

And when you stumble in the woods and when you are lost in the

     shadows

Look for my lantern.

I have a map and I think I know the way

And I will walk with you, singing, until we find our way home.

All I have to give you is my story,

All I have to show you is this light inside me.

And this is all for you and it is all free

And all I have learned is to love something

Take chances

Be unafraid of life

This is for you.

Because now, it’s your turn.

This story is for you.

It is hope

It is a promise.

You are ready.

A Drop of Honey by Don Gaddis

“Bye, honey.”

He said it

with a casual

Southern-sugar-daddy-gentlemanly drawl.

Surely I misheard,

or he misspoke.

Honey.

My mind drifted

and pilfered back through the years,

as if rummaging through a tin

of empty candy wrappers.

Nothing.

No “Baby-doll.” 

No “Sweetie-pie.”

Just the one, platonic drop of honey,

newly planted on my cheek-ear

via random phone call;

the sonic equivalent of a reflexive kiss,

that which seldom passes

from one man to another,

even when blood

sticks the two together

amiably.

I... didn’t... know... how... to... feel,

other than embarrassed.

I had rolled around in it.

A meager drop.

Alas, my honey starved soil was human.

Either he misspoke,

or I misheard.

Or he really loved me.

Moonwalker by Jay Morris

My family always told me to be wary of those whose eyes had been

damaged from looking too longingly at the moon on cold nights

     wishing for the healing

of the bruises on their hearts battered by the institutional

     marginalization

Of a society that has consistently told them that they had no place

In the rays of the sun

They didn't know I was one

Of the moonwalkers

Of the dayfearers struck dumb by the brilliance of a star withheld

     from them

Knowing the isolation enforced from within and without when

     confronted with the

presence of majority rules put in place because the majority rules

The pulpit, the schoolyard, the business sector, the political

     parties

That we must conveniently hear about through the grapevine because

     our

Invitations conveniently get lost in the hate mail

Do you know what it's like to have your name branded in a burn book

Because you love someone who has the same pieces as you and you're

     told

Time and time again that you could never fit

The feeling of never asking for a prom date because

Best case scenario you'll end up on a pity date with the girl

      everyone thinks

Is your girlfriend anyway

Worst case scenario you'll end up with a black eye marking you as

     the boy whose

Mirrors break a little too easily when he hears the word faggot

Walking on pieces of shattered glass trying to keep the idea of self

     concept alive

Underneath the unconvincing production of heterosexual mimickry

I will never forget the day you said you were gonna kill me

When the secret pixelated out the graveyard of hastily deleted

     internet histories

And google searches

I was still your breed but somehow I wasn't born the same

This is for the boys who cry themselves to sleep at night thinking

     they

Can drain the gay away

This is for the girls whose idea of love is undermined by society's

     patriarchal

preoccupation to turn their intimacy into entertainment

Life is yours

This is your anthem

When the pulpit calls you an abomination

Life is yours

When the schoolyard bully screams sissy or dyke

Life is yours

When you feel like your floodgates are gonna overflow

Because the earthquake of your anxiety told

the tsunami of your grief to surge with more

Spirit than you thought yours could handle

Life is yours

Life is yours

Life is yours

When grasping for hope has broken your fingers

Remember that suffering is only pain that lingers

When you allow it to

When it's easier to wallow in the cesspool of your own defeat

Remember that your victory is just above the surface

Waiting for you to break it in

And claim the life that is yours

Even if it exists on the dark side of the moon

Being able to navigate the ancient depths of its craters

Will mark you as a a full-fledged moon walker

To those just beginning to find their way

Two poems by Alx Johns

 

Shapes and Spaces

I had to put together a damn puzzle

of the United States,

one state at a time.

Good thing I've traveled a bit,
read some books,

seen a map or two.

I knew Delaware was tiny and topward

Texas was the big, dumb-shaped one at the bottom

California on the left.

Rectangles in the middle,

squiggly states on the east.

See, it was one of those wooden

puzzles, the pieces of which

might stick in or to your foot

if left on the floor

which they were,

which is why I was stuck in this sudden

geography test,

the sort of which my college students can't pass.

I stalled on Mississippi, relative to Arkansas,

far away, actually from Georgia,

even more from northeast Georgia,

a smaller town, a smaller neighborhood,

a smaller house, a smaller room,

some terribly small pieces.

The more you look at, the sharper the lines.

Leaving a Town

Orioles lift from the wire

dive into dogfight swerves

as the train clacks through

the backs of heads headed somewhere

along the path to the airport.

Before you leave a town for good,

run hard through your neighborhood

waving your hands and

screaming apologies

and gratitudes

Run 'til you sweat.
Show them you knew they existed.

Show them everyone matters.

You'll return some day to your city

no longer yours:

the embryos of buildings,

skeletons of buildings,

the ghosts of buildings,

places, shapes, spaces

redefined, new lines and angles,

new streets not like

the one with the bungalow

where the woman wailed

and stamped her feet when her son

died in a stupid way

not the one with the record store and the restaurant

whose owner owned a wolf,

not like the glass highrises reflecting

the setting sun just the right hues

to make you smile and wonder.

There's no place like home.

There's no such thing as home.

Psalms of My Hands by Ginny Jones

Tortured souls I know all too well

Hell, I am one of them—

Melancholy to the core.

If you only knew the pain I’ve borne

You’d know my need to write these poems.

Yet, as it stands, so do I

With ink stained pages

These think pained sages

Chronicle my journey from despair

To joy and everywhere in between

On an eternal search for destiny

A quest that leaves me wanting—

Haunted by the memories.

These are the psalms of my hands

Testaments of broken dreams and broken hearts

Unspoken things that once captured me

‘Til I was freed by these words

These are the psalms of my hands

Mentions of redemptions from sensations

Temptations, degradations, and toxic relation-ships

From the pen to my lips

These are the psalms of my hands

Unleashed with a purpose to disperse

Dispel and compel those things back to hell

So, listen well and take it in

These are the psalms of my hands

And with open palms, I demand that you stop

Hear me, no need to fear me,

Just join me on this journey of life.

As I share what I write and narrate a story

Of hope and healing

And every feeling that led me there

Through these, the psalms of my hands.

Halo Benders by Jay Morris

We were always so musical in the way we did things

Listening to the sound of each other's heartbeats

And trying to play it back to each other in the way that felt 

     most biomechanically natural

Blowing wind through our wrists like harmonicas

Bowing our tendons like violin strings

Making music from marrow

Song from sinew

Every so often the notes would drop and fade (pianissimo)

and it was ok because the crescendo would pick it back up 

    altogether (fortissimo)

But even the best laid plans of pianos come undone

The last time the chord struck sour over the telephone pole

I knew you were tired

And I was tired too

Trying to drop life

Into suicide eyes

It all just wanted to die

Hang it self from the chain of memory

Crack its neck on the headboard

Land in a bed of mushrooms

Hoping their fungal fingers would break apart

this abomination into something useful

The mercy of mycelia

Looking for redemption in the soil

No longer in angels' wings

No longer trying to jump through halos

Because we kept bending them into prison bars

To keep each other prisoner

When the flood came we bent them into dams

Because we feared the inundation

We didn't want our banks to overflow

And spill out the eyes of the Earth

I don't want to be your Ark okay?

I don't want to be your Noah.

All I can manage is the whale that will swallow you whole.

But you are far from Jonah.

You are not divinely called, just going in the direction of 

     what feels right.

It hurt so good sometimes.

Just to know we weren't numb.

To know that you feel me.

And I feel you.

And we feel each other trying to bend our halos back into 

     compasses.

Pointing in the direction of stars.

They miss us you know?

The way we laid star crossed on the clouds keeping each other 

     warm

In their radioactive furnaces

They just hang there in the dark waiting for us to wish for 

     things to get better.

But we are so resigned so instead

they hang in the sky.

Waiting for someone's hope to turn them into a shooting star.

We aren't that different.

You, Me, the stars, and prophecies.

When it comes down to what we need most deeply.

Is our wish to be fulfilled.