By Philip Malazarte
Sweet Dreams
By Joachim Gibson
One morning I was dreaming some sweet times.
In my sweet dreams the light was so sunny
yet when i’m dreaming the sun never shines.
I was dreaming, and you were there honey.
In your eyes when I looked, shined back a world,
its indigo warmth, its vastness of sage!
Their elegance as you danced and you twirled,
among the clovers where there was no stage.
Words weren’t spoken and we could hear the birds,
we spoke with what our warm hearts desired.
So when we held hands my heart split in thirds.
Oh this sweet touch! My love for you was wired.
Then my sweet times danced off with the alarm.
My dream! Oh vastness of sage and its charm!
Hilltop Sonnet
By Joachim Gibson
I saw you stand in silence with the breeze.
As swaying clovers kissed you with feeling,
the swaying trees danced, you fell to your knees.
You held your sunset…Your heart was healing.
Your love revealing, and your hate ceasing.
Your knowledge can't explain what love can be,
your peace expanding, your thoughts decreasing.
You…Usually trapped can now be free.
Free from standards, judgment, society.
Free from the world of utter mistreating,
and the haunting curse of anxiety.
So stand and walk as you eat a sweeting.
I want you to remember this sweet time
when my most important lesson…was rhyme.
The Storm
By Isabella Wilfong
The words, they drown beneath my tongue.
My mind, it races with twists and turns— less like a competition and more akin to a tropical storm.
Even the salty wisps of the booming thunder pour down my soft cheeks; my eyes—they sting for the wind is too strong .
The storm was once a soothing shore of cheerful green and a strong but caressing blue, cerulean, even.
My feet, caked in muddy sand, I struggle to move before the sea—now blacker than night—and it’s crashing, crushing waves reach me.
The green, now a sodden grey, quite reminds me of cigarette ash, only weakly holds its ground as the winds pull them from their stems.
They cry.
I cry.
We can stand no longer.
And I sink to my knees.
The ocean, so ice cold against my bare skin and breasts, she eats.
It stings like pins and needles, poking at my every worry, writing in between the paranoia and maggots under my scarred flesh.
The green, vivid now, like Spring on the sunniest day—she tells me now to prepare for tomorrow and rest. Your future self will thank you.
“My First Tattoo”
By: Jazmine Curley
Glancing down I see a shape I will love,
I look to my significant other.
There is no going back, only above
With the love of my life and my mother.
The silver needle making my arm numb,
His concentration, everything, so planned.
Near over, waiting for relief to come
Pain shoots down my arm, I’m holding a hand.
Dancing on my forearm creating curves,
The needle producing swirl after swirl,
No longer able to feel those gone nerves.
Scary world and just a scared little girl.
Looking down to see my mushroom tattoo
Now, all that I know has become anew.
Remembrance
By Joachim Gibson
What is the futile longing,
felt when I see you across the rubicon?
And what will's me to wish?
Though this tedious tide bears no joy
I am caught in its love with sorrow.
And my body produced so many tears,
for this thing we once had.
Yet I still smile seeing the flowers sway on the hilltop.
And I still smile when I feel the colts winter coat,
And I still smile to see the stallions spooked
by a squirrel in the brush.
And when I hike to see the sunset,
I know you are taking its picture,
like the bumblebee on the bluebells.
Bug Trapper
by Riley Medina
Man of the house
Keeps the knives so sharp
It cuts just to wash them
Keeps the spiders
On eight sets of toes
Fearing white pinch of death
To be flicked to their burial
In distaste and porcelain.
Man the house.
Walk blind into that darkness
Which feeds strange sounds
Stray horrors
The wind, whipping Night
sits and shivers.
Man,
Your shape is held by our mattress.
But man,
It does not fit.
At night I am palmed water
It’s the way I’ve learned to love a moth
To kiss with only fingertips.
The way I’ve taken to the glint of a pocketknife
For skinning apples
And sagging the belt loops of blue jeans.
It is the way
Our shadowy stranger
Always takes the shape of you
Man,
When I stalk the enemy on my very toes
our silent race to the kitchen light.
Man of the house
Raws his knuckles
Scrubbing moms kisses
From a mug
And I wonder
If she always talked when she dreamed.
Who sleeps in two beds,
And keeps the toothed at bay?
Man,
I can not let myself love you.
Man,
It thrills to wear your shoes.
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