Our Identity

We are the masses.

We are here.

We are together.

We are human.

We are intelligent.

We are beautiful.

We are fun.

We are happy.

We are rich.

We are students.

We are small.

We are blue.

We are black.

Somos amigos.

We are the masses.

We scrutinize– each other.

We look.

We dare.

We talk — a lot.

We walk.

We ride.

We drive.

We eat.

We preach.

We love.

We love.

We are the masses–

Or so we thought.

Shouldn’t have looked.

3am
Their asleep.
Heaving, dry—
Nothing there, fatty.
Try again.
Surrender—squeak of the door.
Peek from the dark (too much coffee).
She glances in the mirror.
Vanities, art school, reality and disorders—
Eating disorders.

Individuation by Avah Pevlor Johnson

If I must be wrung through the paradox,
—broken into wholeness,
wring me around the moon;
pelt me with particles from the dark side.
Fling me into space;
hide me in a black hole.
Let me dance with devils on dead stars.
Let my scars leave brilliant traces,
for my highborn soul seeks its hell—
in high places.

¿Qué posición? (old one, lost in previous entries)

Since I’ve birthed this illusion,

There’s this erroneous conclusion.

Since I’ve soiled and masked my mien,

Your epithet has become fiend.

Here’s what my guise hides:

Soy los alimentos y los raices of a premature seed

Yearning to be kindled by a sunbeam.

But, the Oleander chants in a lethal voice

That forbids me to do more than own a paramour. I

t tells me a history.

You’ve heard it too.

Women are in the missionary position of society.

 I slit the throat of that idea with my style and stamen

I reap vengeance on that idea by imbibing that fear;

And yet, the rain has struck me.

Sloshing away are the dirtied advices that sprouted from the petals of my mother,

Dear Oleander.

Junkyard

One sharp malignant light

Pierces the dark on a frozen hilltop,

Silhouetting the deformed beings,

Inexplicit and black,

Disguising their bitter curves,

Their spiny, serrated edges

Chipping in the mouth of the illuminated ether.

They seek rebirth.

To write we forgot.

What,

What happened?

Change, it has, we’ll agree,

Soaked into all my threads,

Threads that twist and tear,

Reorganize,

Reattach,

Leaving uncertainty where certainty was taken for granted—

Like the curling lips of a stranger—

Leaving images where words, “spiny or smooth,”

Painted stories and sounded “noise and bramble, thorn and din.”

But the change,

The change is making me tell not show, not show,

how show, show this.

Ian francis

“It is we who are Hamlet.”

White page,

Black ink,

Banter,

Polyptoton.

I hear an echo,

Echoing.  

Accusations and Recriminations

You,

You you you

You are the more,

Egotistical

Of the two.

You do what’s been done before,

Answering the same question “no”

One

Two

Three times in a row in exactly one year at Thanksgiving,

Telling yourself practicality never trumps five years,

Never vindicates the sweet sleep of Wilmington nights,

Never nullifies the longing to be simple and content.

Can you function in society (dreadful society) or in “healthy” relationships?

It’s climbing Mt. Everest.

Who needs that?

Who needs that?

Who needs that?

You.

You?

 

Calc Poem by Rachel Best

Dripping with insanity as bright as stars,
I wait in the rain for you.
Rabbits run through my brain,
Tasting my memories and spitting them out.
They don’t want them, and neither do I.
Where do you think this insanity came from, anyway?
Glittering, it hangs on my lips, little orbs of belladona.
All I have to do, it says, is part my mouth.
It’s easy – like ripping gauze.
Bitter, it say, at first, but ohthesweetrelease.
Aren’t you tired? it says. Aren’t I tired?
Amn’t I tired? Amn’t you?
I mean me. Oh, I’m tired.
I don’t want to do this anymore,
But think of the neighbors!
Insanity trawls closer.
You know, people expect a crazy person to be crazy.
This is true. Maybe it would be better to -
But then you arrive,
I wipe my lips,
And smile.