Three Poems, Three Stanzas Each

 By Jem Ashton

Good Bird

Tangled between lines

I say to myself good bird

What was meant to be girl

almost became boy

blurred 

and was bird instead

For my dentist, I am so

Sweet candy

you say I’m good

You can see I’m flossing

and indeed that’s what this is

Flossing for you

and I will not stop my flossing

For the job you want

Dressed

alone in my apartment

Straight up and down

chest to thighs, flat

What do you want to be

        and I wish I could say dentist

Children Passing Time

By Jem Morgenstern

Pebbles on the windows

Her eyes catch children

who bedevil haggard widows

A voice like sour grass

pointed, green

wincing bitterness

A face like cottage cheese

spotted by rot

slipping off bones with ease

The hag watches closer

now sat on the porch

in light, even grosser

We stare

at her ragged hair

cracked wooden chair

We wait

for the day

she goes away

Green River Autumn

By Jem Morgenstern


Roaches settle under milkweed patterned floors
Summer sets on churning bodies, wilting  
  daisies nestle on garden stones
Wooden homes along dirt roads, stretching 
  only from the one-eyed man's home 
  to the farthest point his eye spies

Quiet folk keen on speaking with pointed eyes
   and locking their doors before the gloam
To the well, they do not send their children fetching
   or else the beast will chew their bones
Passerbys' screams keep mother from her quilting
   and the locks stay on the doors

A Poem About Cement and Me

By Jem Morgenstern

The cement
has more personality than I do
because its history is vocalized

It's strong and present
the water stains
the cracks
the gum

Mine is internal

It's swallowed and drowning
in my stomach
the intestines
the cracks
the crevices

I hoard my words
as if they're more valuable
inside of me
than outside
to be eaten by the people
who are hungry
for my words
and my presence

Thought Addiction

Thought Addiction
By Lei

I like you in the folds of my brain

I like you lingering in last night’s sleeplessness

where you feel like a disconcerting dream

 I cannot quite shake off

I like you wandering through my lucidity

weaving in and out of the sanity

 I pretend to maintain

I like you where you are

just far enough away

 for me to sometimes forget you exist

I like you hiding in my memory

& then suddenly attacking the forefront of my brain

 with some arbitrary moment in our past interactions

  usually one I spent ninety percent of in my mind

   worrying you were criticizing every bit of me

    or imagining some extended version

     of our current conversation

      and then replaying the moment

       on an endless loop

        in the ensuing days

         like the favorite song

          I can’t get enough of

I like you popping up

cropping out reality

 as I try to focus

  on anything else

   anything that’s

     not you

I like you even in my angry realization

that you’re not who my mind tells me you are

 no matter how often I want you to be

I like you slipping

trickling

 falling sweetly into place

  never into my arms

   always into my mind

I like you as you are:

my very own idea

 the one that never

  fails to make me

   smile

Human Intentions (and other unknown luxuries)

human intentions (and other unknown luxuries)

by leiani brown

why’d you tell me you two were close?

why’d you say you missed me and hated the distance between us? why’d you say you were out of money, then splurge it on a trip up the coast with people who were not me?

why’d you ask me how to make your friends like your wife?

why do you look at me like you could eat me, like there’s a hate bubbling just beneath those eyes and it’s no secret?

why’d you tell me you deleted the one person i care about most?

why’d you laugh when i told you he died?

why’d you tell me it was gonna be okay? why’d you tell me i didn’t have to sit by you, like you were some kind of burden, some pity acquaintance?

why’d you tell me you were institutionalized? why’d you say it like that?

why’d you try to take your life? didn’t you know it’d break their heart?

why’d you tell me you liked boys? why’d you scream it in a confined space on the night that was supposed to be someone’s utter bliss?

why’d you tell me you loved it? why’d you ask me to do it again, with just you?

why’d you assume you’d be so replaceable?

why’d you ask me to go with you?

why’d you keep it a secret? how could you ask me not to talk, to suppress the truth that was ripping apart your body? couldn’t you see i was already silent?

why do you share with me your life, in ten second vids? did you ever want to really know me? did you give it up after just two tries?

why’d you tell the world i was your happiest memory? then look at her like that?

why’d you ask me to open up? and pretend to understand my silence? then shout at me for volume, in front of all of them? then go on laughing, like you couldn’t see me?

why’d you thunder with applause?

why’d you take those pictures?

why’d you tell me not to trip?

why’d you teach me how to hit? why’d you tell me i could win? why’d you invest in me?

why’d you wait until i spoke first?

why’d you stop replying?

why’d you stop replying?

why'd you stop replying?

the answers are a luxury

my own confused human jumble

will likely never claim

and your intentions are yours i know

but wondering will always belong to me

fall disillusion

fall disillusion

by lei

dethroned of all naiveté

stripped of warm preconceptions:

a premonition of harsh winter winds

winding their way,

weaving into me

—soft whispers of tomorrow’s gusts.

i hear their stories

watch their lives unfold

try to convince myself i’ll get there one day

but tonight,

in cold autumn waves

i realize i will wear the title of youngest

til the holes in the soles of my shoes

are no longer the negative spaces

but the overall -ness.

To the Fishbowl, Again

By Leiani Brown

yeah

i told you i'd try

not because i will

but because i have learned how to please

how to shut people up, out

i live in a replica fish bowl

where i am surrounded by alien clone fish

i've met their doppelgängers

and learned to hate them each

one by one

then left my fish bowl home

to meet their doubles

and learn hate

all over again

and it's funny when you think if you think if you dare if thinking is your thing if you don't fear

pain

it's funny,

i succumbed to this naive belief--

its clutches so cowardly beautiful

--that running by flying

away meant newness

newness in the smell of wind

newness in the shape of trees

newness in the people that people my dreams and people my inside and people i wish

i was

but even paradise has its parasites

complete with plastered smiles  

pity--shot out from every angle

side glances and ulterior messages,

dripping in its dense gooeyness that shouldn't but does make me feel like nothing

until all i am is a pile of the stuff--

and nothing i or you can do will make your kindness

not taste forced

"congratulations you changed the scenery

emptying pockets and filling expectations in the process

only to realize nowhere is new enough

to make people not people you know

to make hate not the spoiled result of you trying to love them

to make opening up not feel like a chasm awaiting daggers

to make you

not you"

i mumble this

in my skin every time i walk away

leaving you believing you've somehow helped

and you have

you've given me practice to learn how to please

how to shut people up

and out,

how to shut people out.

because i don't even like fish,