Linda M. Crate’s works have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies both online and in print. She is the author of six poetry chapbooks, the latest of which is: More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019). She’s also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018). Recently she has published two full-length poetry collections Vampire Daughter (Dark Gatekeeper Gaming, February 2020) and The Sweetest Blood (Cyberwit, February 2020).
She was a blend of rage and love. Of oud and tobacco and long nights at the ranch. She was gratitude and agony. She was food stamps and laundry quarters and she never went to bed before 2 a.m. Her smile was warm but reluctant, she loved traumatically but selflessly. She never yelled, only at everyone. But only because she cared. She cared about everything so intensely. She was curiosity and endless wisdom, but most of all she was love. And she was angry. But even her angry was love.
She was pain and she was secrets and she was almost never enough, but she loved. She radiated it. I tell you- everything about her radiated love, even her rage. She never swore, only always. And always with love.
She was back to school clothes two weeks too late and was ashamed she took the bus. She was always losing all her things, but she never forgot your birthday. She was amazing at giving gifts. She could see through your soul, but she was paranoid. Always wondering what the world thought of her. She was scraped knees and tangled hair and she hit the swings so hard her stomach dropped. She was Sunday morning alabanzas and she was Sunday night soul searching. She was broken yet whole, and she was lowkey Jewish. She was mommy and daddy issues. She was never depressed, only completely. But only because she was love.
She was a sponge of love. Soaking up people’s pain before they had a chance to feel it. She had suffered enough for everyone. She was lusted and she was desired but she was unloved. She was stress eating and she was depression drinking and she fucking hated being embarrassed. She worked to heal the world and the world healed her, but sometimes it just pissed her off.
She was a blend of anger and everything, she never slept in the car and she was always bare foot. But most of all, she was love.
Destiny is an LA native with a love of poetry and advocacy. She’s a 24 year old model, writer, and spiritworker. She grew up in a biracial home with a Salvadorian mom and Black father. She honors both of her identities through the work she does and the projects she takes on, always. Writing was her first love and she plans to use her voice to change the world.
She asked me “what did you need to learn from this experience?” So I said: Love. The hard ones. Those two lessons sit in my lap these days. The teacher has come. She smelled like God— So I knew her well. She promised to guide me along the shadows of myself until we became well acquainted. And how could I know that I was still afraid were it not for times like these? little girl me just so scared right now in this world Grown Goddess me keeps vibrating good energy right now in this universe, Both of us walking ahead with steady breath in prayer. And when I am soft again, my demons worn off again, then and only then can I say “My Love. I have learned.”
How I Found My Lover
It was never too heavy. You were not too weary. Eventually, it would have crumbled anyway and might have crushed another. You wouldn’t let me stumble upon its cracked roughness and fall into you. There was no need for these walls. Everything inside belongs to me too. I picked up the useless beams that you laid down for me and started a fire. I tended to your broken windows and let the light in. I unearthed your rusted door. And it was open. It was always open.
Keren Johnson incorporates poetry, dance and spatial organization into her work to freely share of herself with others. Recently, Johnson has poured into those creative outlets with the hope of fostering healing in her community and in an attempt to stay connected to all that is good in humanity.
Every little fight that without loss I wouldn’t remember.
The small good times.
Now we’ll never have better.
I take it all in on purpose.
Just so I can come crashing down.
Because after the fall I am free.
I’m free from it for awhile, until the next time.
It’s easier than the sneak attacks.
That song randomly playing in a public place.
Siblings day.
A picture unearthed on accident.
The smiling face of the girl that lived.
So sometimes I break my own self down.
Just to feel all of you, just to feel free from you.
For a little while, until the next time.
Lillian
My favorite letter is an L.
I’m biased, I know.
But there is something comforting in the swoops.
The way it effortlessly comes out of my hand.
The only thing that I know.
The only thing that makes sense.
Lillian.
But I tried so hard to change it.
“Call me Lily.”
My dad always refused.
The name of his mother,
the love of his life.
Before it became me.
I am now the love of his life.
Maybe that was always the problem.
I couldn’t live up to the hype.
I never picked the cotton fields of Alabama.
I never raised 10 kids.
I do not have the strength.
I cave under pressure.
I cry too much.
Everything breaks me.
It should have been a simple hand off from her to me.
But who knew it was such a fragile thing?
And I dropped it.
I’ve been fumbling around for it ever since.
How could these bones hold the weight of that masterpiece?
That epic woman?
Her body held centuries.
But I’m ready now.
I ask for it.
I know it feels too late, but I want it.
Call me by her name.
I want to know what it feels like.
Her hands in that dough.
The strength in her fingers.
Whatever feeling it brings you to say her name.
I want it.
“I’m jealous that you can look away from this. That you don’t scroll with anxiety and fear. Scared to see another black body crumple to the ground. You barely see it in me. Black but not black. “You’re not like one of those typical black girls,” she says to me at a fucking college event. Surrounded by black girls. Embarrassed. Scared someone would think I thought myself better than them. Scared I thought it. She’s the type of reason I ask my dad to never give me braids. The reason I would turn my hip hop down. The reason I would pull myself in real small. Smile. Stand up straight. Look like I’m actively shopping. Look like I have money to spend. Keep my purse closed. Hands out of my pockets. Don’t use slang. Never say nigga. Don’t be a nigga.
How many layers did I put on? When can I stop peeling? How buried am I? Another life lost and it still seeps through every layer. Do I have any right to be sad? Am I still a threat with my valley girl voice and my Star Wars shirt and my hip hop turned down?
Another body falls and I’m shielding my eyes. I can’t breathe. What does it feel like to not be a secret? To go about your day the same way? Every day of my life they taught me to hate myself. And I easily complied.”
Lillian Rankins is a black writer, singer, filmmaker, and witch. She is stuck in the early 90’s, halloween obsessed, only happy when everything is purple, and is struggling to deal with the fact that her birth chart says she’s a Pisces when she’s always been an Aquarius. Words are magic and she’s been trying to cast spells with them since she was 9. She shares a birthday with Toni Morrison and can only hope to be as freaking awesome. She was born in San Francisco and lives in the Bay Area. You can catch her on instagram @teapotsonfire and a random rare post on www.teapotsonfire.com
Thursday Simpson lives between Peoria, Illinois and Iowa City, Iowa. She is a writer, composer and cook. Her work has recently been anthologized in Nasty Volume 2, Hexing the Patriarchy and Satan Speaks!: Contemporary Satanic Voices. She also works as a producer and audio engineer. Her twitter is @JeanBava and her full publication history can be found at www.thursdaysimpson.com
Jason Dominguez is a native of Southern California. In his spare time, he enjoys listening to the hum of power lines and trekking the hills of his surroundings. His illustrations have been published in Abyme magazine and Curious Publishing. Find him on Instagram via @teclo
Dani Tauber is a basket-case poet, professional ghost, former music journalist, and antiques archivist from NJ. She shares a room with more than 50 journals and several antique locks of hair. She doesn’t know what she’s mourning yet, but she’s beyond consolation.
so everything crashing into me would feel weightless.
I turn love into bitterness
resentment
that is my superpower
my alchemy)
I’ve found treasures tucked away
eroded through years of layers upon layers
upon layers
buried meticulously
and when a piece shines through (or I feel it
in my bones)
I pick and prod set it free
study it
nurture it
name it become its friend.
Perhaps some treasures are too powerful to be unearthed
some are so bright and blinding
they drive their burier mad
others do not want to befriend their treasure
they find it ugly, even
call it junk.
“Throw it away,
pretend you didn’t see that”
They curse their treasure
it curses them back
and so begins the dance for dominance.
Of course, when you put it that way
it’s my fault isn’t it?
I was the one who set it free
and I’m sorry
for digging
for prodding
for prying
for naming that which wasn’t mine.
You see,
I never imagined you’d hate anything which came
from the depths that you so loudly flaunted
in your poetry and prose.
Perhaps some treasures are too heavy too blinding
too earth-shattering
and unearthing them seems nonsensical
foolish, even
but I am an archaeologist in love
I cannot help but dig and dig and dig
until all that was buried
is brought forth to the light
which it came from.
Stephanie is an unhinged Uruguayan Jewess poet and multi-media artist based in Salt Lake City, and is currently quarantined with her charming and existential hottie partner Nic Contreras (who is also a super talented poet). Her latest obsession is Animal Crossing, where she is provided a slight escape from a reality where she is financially indebted to other wealthier humans/corporations, and instead is financially indebted to a raccoon, something that (for reasons unknown to her) feels far less daunting and absurd. You can shop her handmade jewelry, read her poetry, and keep up with her antics at StephSchubert.com.
There are nights that I too have stretched my palms
across the neighbouring body to mine
and convinced myself
that the innocuous hum of indifference
travelling between us was some kind
of beautiful song in a foreign language.
There are times that I too have fantasised
of a call for help at the foot of the stairs
as the hallway and I remain silent.
The both of us, on our backs since birth,
have no business asking anything remain unbroken.
St. Guthlac Street
The boys had been fighting upstairs again,
two-out-of-three falls giddy
in punch-ups
but still sleeping with the light on,
and the lamppost outside, concerned,
all struggle-mouth to articulate
the ways it would be needed
to shine pretty-bastards of light
on their sons,
or the strict wind of a cringing god
to tear great-galloping-shitless
through them
to bite down on their scruffs
guiding them above the frequency of the street
every house, a big dented radio of warning,
every bathroom, a child in the tub,
inviting every radio he could find.
Silk Cut
Look, sometimes we let a little trauma
salt the meat of the men we become
when we were boys
every son on the street
was a murderer
suffocating their softest parts
so their fathers
had less of them to hurt
unbuttoning buildings
to sneak upstairs
past curfew
if caught
their cries for mercy
were tested on the damn birds
until the damn birds
were broken.
Dean Rhetoric is a working class poet currently eroding in East London. He has had poetry published in Crab Creek Review, Five:2:One Magazine, Rising Phoenix Review and others. Please read him with appropriate apathy.
res·ur·rec·tion
/ˌrezəˈrekSH(ə)n/
the action or fact of resurrecting or being resurrected
resurrectionmag.com 