Journal

Salt III:  Breathe

The first time we smell the air we wail and cry.
— King Lear

For a long time afterwards
I’d catch myself holding
my breath. That is to say
stop myself
from inhaling the air
now filled with war’s afterbirth: blood / dust / & salt.
‌                In primary school, we learned that
humans inhale oxygen & exhale
carbon dioxide — waste.
The air, then, must be filled
with the dead’s last breath.

Last night, I dreamt that I was
a dying fish caught
in the dregs of the Benue River.
On its banks, bony men
with oil skin packed salt mixed
with saliva onto their wounds
then howled. The air, thick
& grief-stricken,
wormed its way to where I lay.
Waste.

.chisaraokwu. is an American Nigerian poet & healthcare futurist.  A lover of fantasy fiction and mythology, she splits her time between the US and southern Italy.

I Want To Live My Life in a Rothko Painting

—Written to Franz Joseph Haydn’s Quartet in B-flat Major,
   Op. 76, No. 4 “Sunrise”

like ocher, settling lightly upon brown earth
seeded with light, like aquamarine blue
sinking into a sea of violet.

I will live in an orange house with a yellow roof
and peach trees growing in the orchard—hang
my red slip on a clothesline at twilight.

I will lick rectangles of color papering my walls,
layers of tangerine and sweet vanilla—burn
my throat on strips of alizarin red.

I will drink from a black cup that never empties,
sit in front of a fire and breathe in the coal-gray
scent of charcoal as flames burn through it.

I will slip inside the caress of a beige blanket,
curl up on saffron pillows, and dream of yellow
perfume bottles holding no fragrance.

Inside the Rothko painting, I will listen
to maroon walls sing beneath the blackest
windows while I watch the sun set
behind my two-dimensional life.

Margaret Chula’s eight collections of poetry include, most recently, Daffodils at Twilight. She has served as Poet Laureate for Friends of Chamber Music and as President of the Tanka Society of America. Living in Kyoto for twelve years, she now makes her home in Portland. Visit her at margaretchula.com

Chibaiskweda

I talk more to my father now that he’s gone, perhaps
because now I can get a complete thought out, aloud, without fear
of interruption or condemnation. In those last days, he was a shadow
of what he had been in my childhood, but still
his dry, brittle husk still held
so much power over me the words I should have said
stopped stillborn inside me.

These days, we talk about everything—the weather, my job
politics, religion. I ask him about my family, if they look at me
the same way I used to look at him, hulking angry in his favorite chair
a trap to be avoided, to run past on tiptoes, and only when necessary
if there was anything
he wished he had done different
if I am turning into him.

Holly Day’s poetry has recently appeared in The Cape Rock, New Ohio Review, and Gargoyle. Her newest poetry collections are A Perfect Day for Semaphore (Finishing Line Press), In This Place, She Is Her Own (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), A Wall to Protect Your Eyes (Pski’s Porch Publishing), I’m in a Place Where Reason Went Missing (Main Street Rag), and The Yellow Dot of a Daisy (Alien Buddha Press).

Bull Rider

My drug friends gave me reasons to wear
the cow outfit, not a farm beast, but one
of myth, after the mother of all energy drinks
and donations from a local arts foundation.
Later, some tater-tots with the kids
at some effervescent birthday party.

These things are like green pants,
the memory jogs nothing that would
replenish the drinks. Forever is a bullet
full of surprises, milestones every decade
the dream chugs on. It’s early morning, son,
the nightmare cake has almost worn off.

 

Salvatore Difalco has authored Black Rabbit & Other Stories, The Mountie at Niagara Falls, and Mean Season. He has co-authored Particle and Wave:  A Mansfield Omnibus of Electro-Magnetic Fiction. His short stories, essays, book reviews, and poker columns have appeared in publications across Canada and the United States. Difalco, a frequent resident of Sicily, currently resides in Toronto, Canada.

As Realists

Our style has the shelf-life
of dark-yellow bananas
it reeks of end
but I swallow
you clawing my back
from the quiet years,
how Stonehenge our foundation
goes, the way your look
silences rooms.

Once we were little
more than children
in the town of our births,
talking up future,
kissing in a way
that everyone                                                    
would see.

Erric Emerson is a founding member and former poetry editor of Duende literary journal. His work has appeared in Visitant, Crabfat, Beautiful Losers, Hungry Chimera, and a number of other volumes, zines, and anthologies. Emerson resides in Philadelphia, PA. His first book, Counting Days, is available on Amazon. His published work can be found at erricemersonpoems.com.