Category: Poetry

Pillars of Creation

Sam Jowett

Beat

Vast

Exhale

By:

Aptolemais – God of Order

Tapestte – Goddess of Relativity

Aromora – Godexx of Supersymmetry

Sam Jowett

3 A.M. is the Perfect Time For a Lost Lover

Hunter Blackwell

Now it’s three in the morning and you’re
not changing my mind. No matter how
many chords you learn or riffs you perfect.

Now it’s three in the morning and you’re drunk –
I can tell by the sleepy eyes and cat-screech
strumming. Let it go man; just let it go.

You told me it was me and the piano
that stole your heart, it was my
fingers flying over the keys that flew

away

with

your

heart;

and you didn’t want it back either,

not if it meant giving up my Sunday

performances, the finger snaps in tempo.

I was a fool though, let you play

my heart just like your electric,

fingers strumming with practice.

You’ve wrapped girls around your finger
before I assume, must’ve been easy for
you – just another chord progression,

another tightening of the strings
another capo placed exactly
where you needed

but nothing more than an accessory.
Boy you played me well, made my
hips swivel to the beat; you made

my foot

tap to,

the riff I hummed
making you waffles and bacon.
You said, it wasn’t working out, you didn’t
feel like I did. I trusted you, every lyric
dripping in fictitious harmony.

Hunter Blackwell

Self- Portrait as my most repeated song

Yasmine Rukia

Yasmine Rukia

THE CONSECRATION OF THE APSARASES

Sarra Culleno

Natajara rocks
to tread a measure. Gets down.
Terpsichore gyrates
and pirouettes, cuts a rug.
They trip the light fantastic.

Firestarter twists
snaking smoke mists into lungs,
yanking hearts, out, up
above the crowd’s waving hands,
bounced in buoyancy of bass.

Crowned Queen Mab’s decks spin
notes placed in algorithms.
Their calculated
designs stand our hairs on end,
lifted in heart-beat updrafts.

They are The Walrus
and midsummer’s madness in
Soltice’s bedlam.
We move to timbrels and harps.
We shall praise Their Names in dance.

We shall throw some shapes.

Sarra Culleno

A Late-Night Playroom Soirée

Lauren Aspery

Sitting
cross-legged
on the blue carpet
under the glow
of the bare yellow bulb.
Sipping water
from a tiny wine glass,
plastic,
also yellow;
small enough
for the fist
of a seven-year-old girl.

Intoxicated
between notes of melamine
and the glare
of the lime green walls.
Drunk in my make-believe kitchen,
drinking from my make-believe cup,
wine straight from the bathroom tap.

I turn to the radio and press play.
“MY TITANIC CD!” starts to spin
and, from inside the metallic soundbox,
My Heart Will Go On emerges.

I lie on the floor,
kicking the pink office chair
from underneath
so it turns
Near
and turns
Far
and turns
Wherever you are
to the sound of Celine Dion.

Lauren Aspery

an ode to troubled times

– after ‘I Wish You Love’ by Natalie Cole
Rebecca L. Yong

when times are trying
and life hangs in the balance,
(i wish you bluebirds in the spring)

when we feel like crying
because the future is uncertain,
(to give your heart a song to sing)

we sing for one another, undying,
step into flourishing gardens
(and then a kiss, but more than this)

i wish you love

Rebecca L. Yong

Brill-Building Pop

Alan Parry

i live for the
songs of teenagers,
close harmonies
that force feet to tap
& tears to run –
romantic ditties
of malt shops &
sock hops

Alan Parry

Soft susurrus

Athena Melliar

Short interludes of gold sand suffuse blue
like fingers gently strumming string-waves,
humming sea tunes, humming away the blues.

Waves furl and unfurl, foam wriggles through you.
Lips — open caves — sing on wave upon wave
short interludes of gold suffused with blue.

Let this be — sea insists — let this be you:
skin soft susurrus-laved and soul sun-laved
humming sea tunes, humming away the blues.

You are not alone, you belong to
a family of seas swaying to staves —
short interludes of sand that suffuse blue.

Which body played which note? You are not new.
Which sea played which note? And you have no grave.
Humming sea tunes, humming away the blues

seas fuse the rhythms of life with joy — you knew.
Sea is your root. Can you unhear a wave?
Short interludes of gold sand suffuse blue
humming sea tunes, humming away the blues.

Athena Melliar

Atlas & The Exact Weight of Calamity in Six Letters

Ariel Moniz

It’s reason that tells me
it could have been any name at all
but it wasn’t—

It was always yours.
It was always going to be yours.

It was always going to be your name at sunrise
echoing in the cavities created by our tangled sheets,
hushed, breathing fresh sun rays
like expensive perfume or a winter-smothered valley,

and it was always going to be your name
that was destined to undo me a dozen times
at half-past you breaking the horizon in two.

Your name in my flawed mouth
knotted in my discordant heartstrings
was never fit to be heard by anybody
but still I believe, more than I can carry—

it could have been more than this
walk off a desperate cliff, of this—

fragile thing—

this thing we call living

and you know it, you always have—
we were never meant for the Atlas-heavy silence
of what comes after the calamity that was us.

Ariel K. Moniz

Record Player

Maya Stott

I’m six, listening to dad’s record player
in the garage. It’s a Sunday afternoon
and there’s a fat satsuma sun in the garden.
A band is blowin’ Dixie, double-four time.

Bill Haley and His Comets
are in the kitchen.
Little feet glued on bigger feet.
Bluish tiles and high lemon ceilings.
There’s laughing,
So put your glad rags on and join me hon.’

Adam and the Ants are marching through
the front room. Striped cheeks and socks
too big charge across the laminate floor.
Cheering, Stand and deliver!

West end girls
on long Blackpool drives.
Illuminations by the sea, fingers tracing
lights on the windows, leaving melted
shapes behind.

Aretha’s backing girls on grey dressing up boxes,
scribbled lipstick smiles, taking turns on the
hairbrush microphone,
shouting: R-e-s-p-e-c-t!

Wake me up before you go go,
with cardboard saxophones,
and mum’s pink leg warmers.

Hungry like the wolf in the red Renault Clio,
parked up by the docs, eating French fries
and goofing on Elvis.

Lipstick on your collar, told a tale on you,
dad teasing, laughing into her ear,
tells her,
Oh, your hair is beautiful.
She looked atomic.

but

he was losing
his religion

as she sobbed
in the bathroom,

you were always on my mind.

Maya Stott