Justin Carpenter

For a Black Cat Lying Peacefully on the Road’s Side

There is a certain sound that haunts a city.
It sounds of a charged and flowing river.
It is the trucks moving softly at a distance, 
Their iron-chain tires, a rotund jouissance, 
As they trundle along some paved clarity
Rubber soles shredding road-worn livers.

It rings out in the shimmering and slamming
Of glass doors closing of their own volition
Glinting as a well-tied chance, a fishing lure,
Cast behind just as gravity must ensure
That all things fall and change upon landing
And so doing feel a lightness in demolition.

Muffled by the background and its cold facts-
The events and the hum-drumming dance-
The shades outside howl and yet, no avail,
Unresolvable for these long-dead squirrels
And the black cat lain on an icy bed, relaxed.
His family will find him tomorrow, and aching

Will mourn him with a shoebox and candles
Some proper music, hope to warm his bones
As they meld into the heavenly wood's chorus,
Sink further and further into a cool calmness
As the persistent sound of steel sea ambles,
Seagulls and shorelines muted to low moans.

And he will enter the pristine cavern of echoes
Reserved for piping players, five, facing outward.
His heart will be weighed and, weighing nothing,
Will disperse into the groan of a bridge melting
To be reunited with the peculiar cawing crows
Beneath the concrete groaning with celerity.

His ghost will string meetings inside the air
Of timbres and tinges, a purring intonation. 
He will cross the paths of whoever he wishes
And no one will hear it, his voice diminishing
In the dell of cherry trees lacking pink hair,
Their long-term solidity a teasing bifurcation.

Justin Carpenter is a PhD candidate in English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo in Canada, focusing on aesthetics, critical game studies, philosophy of technology, poetics, and new media art. His poem “Desynching Procedure” was published in Existere in 2018.

Kelli Simpson

A Girls' Florilegium of Necessary Numbers

Zero is the absolute,
the egg inside -
fertile, but unfertilized,
and waiting.
 
One is the creep of light.
The begetter of two.
The center of periphery.
God in isolation.
 
Two is a pairing -
a static pull.
Sun and moon.
Prophet and witness.
 
Three begins,
middles, and ends.
Clings to the body,
a skinside alchemy.
 
Four holds the world,
perfects the square,
and rivers milk
from ritual.
 
Five is first counting,
the first wild reach.
The first prayer.
The blooming.
 
Six is the swallowing
of three and three.
Long days of creation.
Stretched luck.
 
Seven brings you six
beautiful sisters,
six cows and a bull,
and 80 octaves of song.
 
Eight is the wind,
the beatitudes;
the plenty promised
after a fast.
 
Nine calls the muses
dressed in fire;
the purest poetry
dancing.
 
Ten is the tithe
owed to your order -
Ten Commandments,
Ten Thousand Things.
 
Eleven is the generous
gift of beauty -
neither male, nor female -
better.
 
And twelve is the torment
of grim resignation -
the return to chaos
in the hours of night.

Kelli Simpson is a mother and poet living in Norman, Oklahoma.  Her poems have appeared in numerous publications including Snakeskin, Eunoia Review, Third Wednesday, and Picaroon Poetry.

Cassie Yochum

CRASH

I’ve been trying to piece my mother’s life together
One cigarette burn and ragged scar at a time.
Trying to make sense of the drowned look in her eye,
The fire in her throat
Her inability to cry.
 
My mother is a series of plane crashes
The ones where you question whether or not the survivors really did get out alive.
 
They call it guilt – but she wears it more like a widow wears a wedding band.
You look long enough and you can see her reaching out for a phantom hand
Of a boy she loved
Of a boy who died
Of a boy whose body lay bleeding out on the roadside –
 
Or maybe she was looking for my grandmother.
Cool palms and blue eyes to waiver over broken jawline skin,
Only to be turned away because to dishonor one’s husband would be considered a sin.
 
My mother is the feral cat we brought into the house
Clawing up walls and snagging at flesh
We’d hold her and it bit back
And my mother – she fights back
Pairs kindness with car wreck.
And this is what she sees in me;
I am unbuckled seatbelt smile
Cracked windshield chest and too wild to be her child
 
Too fond of flying because I am always trying to see the world.
And she is there waiting –
 
Telling me that I will crash.

Cassie Yochum grew up near Rochester, NY. Her work has been published in Pretty Cool Poetry Thing and Ground & Sky.  Aside from writing poetry, she enjoys orange cats, hazelnut creamers, and peaches.

Stefania Gomez

ars poetica

After Amiri Baraka and Jamila Woods

Poems are bullshit unless they are
a coil of hair above a nipple, a photograph
taken in warm light, an unadorned wool blanket,
each plane of skin you kiss and kiss like a bird
splitting bark for worms. I want poems
that are your mother’s paintings, a tin espresso pot
born the same year as you, the soaring feeling
of fingers scaffolding a thigh. I want a sweat poem,
rose oil poems, poems to be used as lube
in a pinch. I want poems that find a soft place to burrow,
or to unfurl and dry out at last, like a leaf. 
Poems that are a dream about giving birth 
to a boiling Great Lake, and raising it up with you 
in your old house. Poems like that house’s 
worn hardwood floors, the ones that yelp
with pleasure at your every movement.

Stefania Gomez is a queer writer, radio producer, and teaching artist from Chicago's South Side. She received her BA from Brown in 2017, and has work in the Offing, Missouri Review, and Sinking City Review. Her chapbook, ONCE I LOVED A COWBOY, is forthcoming from Ghost City Press. She works at the Poetry Foundation.