strange city of asphalt and perpetual construction
better every time, the people think
I sleep in a hotel across from another
mine is barely adequate but the other is large and lush
a fishbowl
I prefer the barely adequate
cigarette burns on the edge of the tub
a broken faucet
I’ll mime bathing instead
I’ll swim through bubbles that aren’t
too few pillows
a broken phone I only use as a weird paperweight
I feel hidden here as if burrowed under soft earth where no one can find me
and I imagine there are squirrels in the walls
keeping me company in my temporary hibernation
maybe I’ll stay here till winter
ground hard as rock in the northern Midwest
then head north from Minneapolis
in search of snowfall
with its heavy embrace
as I lie still in a snowbank
flakes touch me, fall
stars bathe in the blue veins
beneath my skin
I’m plugged in
ready to be seen from space
ready to envelop the stars flowing through my veins
to admit they exist
then, unfettered and somewhat footloose
under aurora borealis
I join a herd of origami reindeer
massage my tender head against theirs
give butterfly kisses with my eyelashes
rub noses
one of them has a message of love
for me in its belly
there are so many ways
to unfold
Liana Kapelke-Dale is a poet and ATA Certified Translator (Spanish to English). She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish Language and Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin Law School. She is the author of Seeking the Pink (Kelsay Books) as well as two poetry chapbooks. Her poetry has been featured in myriad journals, and she has work forthcoming in Roi Fainéant and Shoreline of Infinity. Liana lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, with her lovely pointer-hound mix, Poet.
some days i see both the sunrise and sunset – bookends to wash away the guts of the mundane that nestle into the in-between time is so serrated, but i know how to slow my steps, breathe the good air when i see it i’m still learning, though, how to hold these beautiful things without break- ing them
HASHTAG DREAM INTERPRETATION
I have this recurring dream that the ocean rises to meet us where we are. The sky falls and the seven seas empty at a snail’s pace. my whole world turns blue and now I understand the metaphor.
Nicholas Olah draws on his love of nature and photography as his main inspirations for writing. He loves walking around in his neighborhood in the Chicago suburbs and watching the colors change during each of the four distinct Midwest seasons. He has self-published three poetry collections, Where Light Separates from Dark, Which Way is North and Seasons, the third of which also includes his photography. His work has been published in Duck Head Journal and Humana Obscura. Check out Olah’s work on Instagram at @nick.olah.poetry or visit his Etsy shop (nickolahpoetry).
Brandon McQuade is an award-winning poet and Founding Editor of Duck Head Journal. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Dewdrop, Rust + Moth, 34 Orchard and several other magazines and anthologies. He has published two collections of poetry, Mango Seed and Bodies.
GRASS VALLEY, UTAH Out here, mountains rise one either side of the valley. Spring breeze. Morning choir of songbirds. Harmony. Some long-broken part of me has been made whole again. I felt it— just now.
ARIZONA CABIN
Cold morning light
spills over our bed—
enough light to color
the soft curve of her hip.
Fragrance
of fresh-cut pine,
and gentle tired
loving.
Intoxicated
by all that wild love.
Canyonland love.
Desert love.
Love. Love.
Love.
STORM IN PINE CREEK PASS after Orazio Benevolo’s “Regna terrae” Thunder and rain over mountains in Eastern Idaho. Elemental choir. We startle a young bull moose, the massive hulk of his body dark with rain. He vanishes deeper into the pines, like a myth carried across the kingdoms of the earth.
ELK SHIT HAIKU In springtime mountains, small lavender butterflies smother the elk shit.
RINGBONE LAKE SUTRA “All is bliss.”
-Jack Kerouac, “The Scripture of the Golden Eternity”
All trails eventually end. Go beyond them.
Take hidden paths up to wild places where elk, bear, and moose live out their secret savage lives. Find this lonely court of windy prehistoric music— water, stone, beast, and bone.
Oh, yes, when the trail ends, keep climbing higher and higher up glacial moraine— this Precambrian ruin,
these old bones of the earth.
Nicholas Trandahl is a poet, journalist, outdoorsman, and U. S. Army veteran. He lives in Wyoming with his wife and daughters. He has had four poetry collections and a novel published. His most recent poetry collection is Mountain Song.
Trandahl’s poetry collection Bravery was the recipient of the 2019 Wyoming Writers Milestone Award, and his poem “Francis and Sistani” was nominated for the 2021 Pushcart Prize. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in various literary journals, including but not limited to the James Dickey Review, Sky Island Journal, High Plains Register, The Dewdrop, Duck Head Journal, Resurrection Magazine, Dreich Magazine, Voices de la Luna, Deep Wild Journal, Wild Roof Journal, and anthologies from Middle Creek Publishing, Wee Sparrow Poetry Press, and the New York Quarterly.
Additionally, Trandahl serves as the Chairman of the annual Eugene V. Shea National Poetry Contest and is the poetry editor for the literary journal The Dewdrop.
I wear a fat suit shaped like a giant flower to stop the wilting inside. My tinnitus turns into a scream and I hold my hands over my ears so the poisonous flowers don’t force their way out. I wear a fat suit shaped like a bloated sewer rat drowning itself in internal poison then floating up to the top of the sky like its own ratty planet. Sunset is overshadowed by malformed ghost clouds and more ghosts are suffocating inside until they are ready to collapse into anti-gravity.
Juliet Cook is brimming with black, grey, silver, purple, and dark red explosions. She is drawn to poetry, abstract visual art, and other forms of expression. Her poetry has appeared in a peculiar multitude of literary publications. You can find out more at www.JulietCook.weebly.com.
I properly learned this song existed in July of 2021 but didn’t know who wrote it until tonight. I listened to Pablo Honey for the first time tonight and was pretty shocked to find out that Creep is a single on it. Let me try to explain. The first time I heard this song was actually in 2009. I was at an open mic in Galesburg, Illinois and some guy played a slow, droney acoustic cover of the song. But I didn’t realize it was a cover. I assumed he wrote it and was really embarrassed for him, singing the lines, “I wish I was special,” over and over. But then I noticed a woman sitting alone at a table mouthing the words, “I wish I was special,” along with the guy singing. I thought it was weird that some other random person in Galesburg knew the words to what I assumed was this guy’s song and was singing along. After the open mic ended I went out drinking with a girl I’d wanted to eat out since I was fifteen.
2009.
Let me talk about this girl for a second. Her name was Allison and she lived in the Quad Cities. We hungout for the first time in 2005. She was alternative and my friends and I were metal. We met on Myspace, I believe. I found her extremely attractive and one afternoon after jerking off I didn’t have the chance to take a shower after I came and later that evening I smelled my hand after dragging it through the skin around my testicles and felt intoxicated by the smell.
2010.
Something in my mind decided that’s what Allison’s pussy would taste like and I was obsessed. Eventually after meeting in 2005 Allison and I decided to hangout. We planned to each bring a friend and go for a walk by the Mississippi River. Shortly after the walk we ate some fast food and then dropped Allison and her friend back off in Rock Island. Immediately once we started driving back to Galesburg, my friend started talking shit about Allison, “She fucking smells like she turned her vagina inside out, she’s disgusting.”
I almost passed out when she got in my car because she smelled so good. It always puzzles me how anti-LGBTQ+ straight guys seem to really hate vaginas. By 2006 my friendships with my heavy metal friends were coming to an end. I had recently received a psychiatric diagnosis of bipolar disorder with psychotic features and began taking a strong anti-psychotic. And since my mental health only seemed to get worse it seemed like a bad idea to join my friends when they started doing drugs on the weekends. So instead I took the ACT test, barely passed it and got into college. These metal guys resented my apprehension for drugs and also resented my desire to go to college. They had also heard rumors I started sucking cock. And thus my friends became enemies.
However due to my unfortunate circle of friends I didn’t have much exposure to alternative music. I knew that Allison liked a lot of alternative bands so I started listening to everything she listed on her Myspace. I started off with Elliot Smith and in 2007 I was a little offended by how bad his music sounded. But in 2008 I needed to drop out of college and, for support, bought Nirvana’s Unplugged album, Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning and Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. After dropping out I soon decided Elliot Smith was a genius. Moving away from heavy metal and towards alternative musics didn’t really help my dating life at all but it did do me a lot of favors creatively and internally.
But anyway. This is an essay about Creep and listening to it by choice for the first time. Let me get back to that by talking about the moment I learned Radiohead existed. It was probably March or April 2004. I was in a freshman government class in highschool and had just been sexually assaulted by several members of my junior highschool basketball team at a super bowl party. Several of the guys were in the government class with me. I was already suicidal and pretty much a mess and the assault did not help.
By the time we were in highschool I had a reputation. I had given up basketball in junior highschool and joined a boxing club instead. I wore worker jeans and Iron Maiden and King Diamond tshirts to class everyday. Everyone knew I was suicidal, a boxer and worshiped Satan.
Most people were afraid of me except for the guys I used to play basketball with that sexually assaulted me at a super bowl party. A lot of people in my life thought my problems were a result of the music I listened to. One guy in particular that used to be on my team felt this way. Maybe he felt bad about the assault? It’s hard to say. But regardless a few weeks after the super bowl party he made me a fucking mix CD of Radiohead and Coldplay and tried to tell me that this kind of music was much better for me than the heavy metal I was listening to at the time. And that was that. I swore to never listen to Radiohead or Coldplay for the duration of my miserable life.
But eventually in 2019 I bought Thom Yorke’s Suspiria soundtrack. He did a great job on it and absolutely blew me away. Listening to that score made me think that one of these days I’d actually have to give Radiohead a chance. Then in June of 2021 I was watching the television show, Cruel Summer. There is a scene where Creep is playing and I recognized the chorus from hearing that guy in the bar playing it back in 2009. I had no idea Creep was actually an upper-mid tempo rock song! Or that it wasn’t actually written by some dude from my hometown.
And even though I’d been meaning to listen to Radiohead ever since hearing Thom Yorke’s Suspiria score, sometimes it takes me awhile to get through my to-listen lists. For example I’ve been meaning to listen to Hammerfell since 2004 and just got around to it last week. So anyway. Tonight I chose the album Pablo Honey and was shocked to find out that Creep was a Radiohead single. And even more shocked to find out that it sounded really good.
Thursday Simpson is from Galesburg, Illinois. She is a writer, musician and cook. She has a BA in English literature from the University of Iowa. Her literary work is anthologized in Hexing the Patriarchy, Nasty! Volume 2 and Satan Speaks!. Her first full length album is titled, She Wore Black Leather, and is on major streaming platforms under her bandname, The Bluegrass Pornstars. Her full publication history can be found at www.thursdaysimpson.com and her twitter is @JeanBava
Seeds In a secret garden I buried a seed that bloomed and blossomed into a field.
“Edifice” Medium: Acrylic on canvas Year: 2022“Metropolis” Medium: Acrylic on canvas Year: 2022
Baby Breath Open skies Baby breathby a bridge Fresh breeze The grass on your feet A smile upon your face All in a day.
Vian Borchert is an established award winning expressionist artist and award winning poet. V. Borchert has exhibited extensively in many group and solo exhibitions within the US and internationally. Vian is a graduate and “Notable Alumni” from the Corcoran College of Art and Design George Washington University, Washington, DC. Borchert exhibits in museums in the USA and internationally along exhibiting with key galleries in major cities such as NYC, LA, London, Berlin, Hong Kong, Valencia and DC. Borchert had her artwork exhibited in prestigious places such as the United Nations Lobby Gallery, NYC, Art Basel Miami Beach’s Spectrum Miami, 1stDibs Design Center, Chelsea, NYC. Borchert’s art has been vastly featured in interviews and features in numerous press like: The Washington Post, Art Reveal Magazine, Art 511 Magazine, 300 Magazine, Influential People Magazine, MOEVIR Paris Fashion Magazine, ARTPIL, Vie magazine, The Flux Review, Dwell Time Press, ShoutOut LA, Seattle Refined, The Miami Art Scene and others. Borchert is an art educator teaching fine art classes in painting and drawing to adults in the Washington DC area. Some of Borchert’s artwork is also available at “Artsy” and “1stDibs” which are the world’s leading marketplaces with auctions, best galleries and museums. Website: www.vianborchert.com
Do not make huge changes, Make subtle adjustments. Too grand or too sudden, And it won’t stick. Try drinking four beers On a Sunday, Instead of six. Grow your hair A little longer, Read a book by an author, You have not tried before. Go to a different bar, Take the train Instead of your car. Eat mulligatawny soup and Watermelon. Watch a French movie On Television. Worry about the morning, When it comes.
Saul Bennett is a poet from Rotherham, a small working class town in the North of England. He had been published in numerous places in the U.K. and US, including Moss Puppy, Vocivia, and The Whisky Blot. He can be found on Twitter @SBennettpoet and at various bars.
I studied Creative Writing and Philosophy at NYU’s Gallatin School and was lucky enough to study under William Packard, founder and editor of the New York Quarterly. Lately, I am found in Horror Sleaze Trash, Beatnik Cowboy and The Opiate among many other publications. I published my first novel, Death Sisters, with Alien Buddha Press. My first chapbook, Smoke & Mirrors, will launch this fall with New York Quarterly. I currently serve on the editorial team for Red Fez and New York Quarterly.
It was a reason to knock on your door– the ice cream from the freezer, a bowl of vanilla seasoned with pink salt like your great grandmother taught me. There are things that seem off-putting at first at just gone 2 in the morning, when the snow makes a soft hiss as it shifts and falls with the spiked orbs of the sweetgums behind your house where they’ve been gathering for hours in a jumbled, briery mess of stars across the yard. I stick out the tip of my tongue in homage to a memory I’m not sure exists. There are untraversed distances, perspectives into unfamiliar lives, rose quartz rising in the snow– things you must come around to.
Leigh
I finally felt you somewhere around nineteen weeks while watching a girl circle around two stumps jutting up from the sand, her sandals crunching fragments of pebble and grit. It was ridiculous with your father’s arms around my middle, his fingers longer than I remembered. His breathing came fast behind me, and I could feel him winking. We sipped coffee down by the ocean– frozen tunnels of mud, rocks, and scattered gulls. A kitten tilted its head staring at flecks in the spray. You, your father and I, the kitten, the ocean and the coffee, the fisherman in bright yellow passing over the shale, cleaving the earth for bait about a mile from shore. Everything was moving.
Christi Gravett (39) is a queer, non-binary professor from Little Rock, Arkansas. They’ve taught both Rhetoric and Creative Writing at the college level for 12 years. Christi has had non-fiction, poetry and photography published in various independent and small-press publications, and currently has a chapbook of 20 poems, titled “We Monsters”, available on Amazon. Their work provides glimpses into larger stories, focusing on single striking moments of happiness or discovery, unsaturated by heavy meaning.
res·ur·rec·tion
/ˌrezəˈrekSH(ə)n/
the action or fact of resurrecting or being resurrected
resurrectionmag.com 