Terri Linn Davis

Better in Barbed Wire

I was closer to my mom when she was 
562 miles away at the federal penitentiary
in West Virginia. There she was a Russian
Nesting doll—kept safe from herself. Her plain
khaki jumpsuit was a magnificent strait
jacket. She has always been better in 
barbed wire. Out, she is free to drown
her liver, own the empty space in
family photos—mangle the word “mother.”
I pray she commits her life to more
bank fraud, to bad checks, to petty theft.
I want to surround her in layers
of collect calls and weekend visitations,
of pretending—
pretending she’ll be better when she gets out.

---

Terri Linn Davis was born in Fairfax County, Virginia. She is a graduate student in the MFA program at Southern Connecticut State University, where she has held a Graduate Assistantship, and where she serves as a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the English Department. She is the recipient of the Jack and Annie Smith Poets and Painters Award (2018). Her poems appear in Southern’s literary journal, Folio and also in Persephone's Daughters Literary Magazine. She lives in Milford, Connecticut with her partner, Adam, and their two sons.

Evan Cozad

Shakespeare in the Shower

I almost fall asleep underneath the pine. But I can’t. I have too many responsibilities. My wife, her wife, and all our children and, hopefully someday, all their children too. As I spring up, preparing to head back to it all and everything, a cow nearly runs me over. I catch myself on the pine. He pivots back towards me and leers at me with torrid eyes. There’s a dung beetle on his back and on the dung beetle’s back, a tiny cow. They’re a very odd couple, especially on the back of a cow. I wonder if there’s an even smaller dung beetle on that small cow’s back, but my eyesight isn’t good enough to see something that small. I start to worry as the cow edges back towards me in a mysterious way. But, then, the cow walks on past. He and his compatriots leave me. My mouth grows dry from all this, and I’m having trouble remembering if it is my wife or my wife’s wife that knows the remedy for a dry mouth.

---

Evan Cozad is a poet from Indiana. His work has been featured a few places across the web. He tweets @realEvanCozad.

Sydney Conley

Mother, an atonement

Honestly, 
I cut my hair short because each tangle 
brushed me back into my five-year-old body. Into
all those mornings your white fingers battled my black hair. 
Bottles and bottles of conditioner smothered my knots,
you’d grab a tuff by the root— comb, scream, comb, scream— free
look there they go!you’d point, three rats just ran down your arm!
I never caught a glimpse of tail before they disappeared into the walls.
 
Honestly,
I feel you missing the most waiting on cups of 
instant mashed potatoes. On the oven’s preheat,
wrapping frozen dinners in aluminum, corn dogs on
baking sheets. I live on your tongue, nagging Eli to shower,
dad to swallow his pills, enduring endless laundry. Remembering
to clog the cabinet with rosé and that your spirits are lime-green. 
 
Honestly,
Thai food is the chipping glue of this family. An apology
for the three out of five nights your headlights don’t gaze
at the garage door until after eight. And I sweat soy sauce
in silence as my sighs, dad’s snores, and Eli’s Chopin 
hands hum us to sleep. 
 
Honestly,
I ate microwavable lasagna and three Pepperidge Farm
macadamias at four a.m. before Christmas morning.
My stomach wandered into the yard as I stumbled up the driveway,
and I thought the cinnamon roll rack covered my tracks, but
on the yellow-plaid loveseat you handed me two self-help 
books in peppermint wrapping. 
 
And honestly,
I carry grief in my wrist and leave texts in my fingertips. I 
remind myself not to hate, but I often do— It's a virus in my jaw 
that aches, hungover mornings when you’re not there to pull the
cotton from Tylenol bottles. 
 
But honestly,
my throat collapsed three years back, when every man
you knew drown in a disorder. All those semesters I spent on 
a barstool, you spent ignoring questions about Jesus and Mohamed,
putting ointment on skull scabs, on hospice couches, tracking down dad at the 
casino. So please know — I wade through syrupy soup, kneading 
out the truth between me and you.

---

Sydney Conley is a writer from Fayetteville, Arkansas. She graduated from the University of Arkansas with a BA in English and Journalism. She enjoys drinking coffee and perpetually trying to put words in a satisfying order. She tweets @sconley94 and blogs at https://sydneyconley.wordpress.com.

Daniel Warner

You’re hunting for unicorns at the bar when Jack London walks in

Your wolf wife starts eying Jack London.
You start eying Jack London. 
You say: You know he only wrote White Fang, he’s not the same as White Fang.
She says: I'm aware, tapping her front paw.
You sip the dregs of a cheap gin, 
a drop of dead juniper burning its ghost on your tongue.
At the bar, you see he's drinking scotch.
Of course, you think.
And you check your pockets for scotch money.
You look back at your wife.
So? She asks with her eyes.
You shrug: We have a problem.
She rolls her eyes,
then folds her arms.
Well?

You order another cheap gin, 
at the last second turning toward Jack.
Hey, are you-
Busy? He looks to you with the scotch at his lips. 
He finishes it off and slams it on the table. 
You jump a little.
Look, I know what's going on here.
You turn completely around to face him.
Really? How-
Happens all the time.
He blinks his yellow eyes.
I'm flattered, really.
You scratch your head with your wolf arm: So-
But I'm chasing other tail tonight.

Jack pours another scotch, slams it on the bartop 
and walks over to a pack of wolf girls trying to leave a table of loud frat boys. 
He bears his white fanged grin and they smile all open mouthed and giddy, 
wrapping their arms around his. He looks back at you still sitting at the bar 
and winks as they walk away into a sleepless night. 
For a second your eyes grow wide and you worry your wife is with them, 
but she is at the bar on your other side. She puts her hand on your knee. 
She's ordered a bottle of scotch and, before you can object, 
she's holding a glass of it in front of your face.

On me.
You hold her amber gaze a moment, 
then take the glass.
Fucking writers, you mumble as you tip back the scotch. 
Shards of peat and sea foam lodge into your throat from that first sip.
And she pours you another.
 
By the seventh glass, the burn is the burn of a soft fire, 
and your faces are so close they make the silhouette of an hourglass. 
You have no idea what you've been talking about, 
but every word has been perfect. 
Every word a story that hasn't yet been written. 
The bar is closing and you take the empty bottle home as a trophy, 
falling asleep half naked in the den tangled up in each other. 
Eventually your hand relaxes, the bottle rolling away and stopping at the wall. 
Your wolf arm is still wide awake and it howls at the yellow moon, 
four distant howls echoing in return.

---

Daniel Warner is the author of Woke (Ghost City Press).

Ellie Zupancic

Times Light Kept Going

In my childhood bedroom,
there is indirect sunlight
through upturned blinds.
 
From under my parents’ closed door,
salt-lamp-orange fluoresces on
carpet six inches out, then stops. 
 
One half of the downstairs 
in an Iowa City townhouse 
glows pink, other half blue. 
 
Downtown, there is a house
and its upper level 
is constantly in moonlight.
 
A corner room in Chicago
opens up to sodium vapor,
deep yellows hit pavement.
 
From the interstate at midnight
moonlight glints half-
frozen water in the median.
 
In Tennessee, a barn’s
windows face east, bleak
light breaks glass. 
 
A high school science 
lab bears alkali, potassium
dies in pink and purple.
 
TV shines indeterminate 
around a corner wall in a Texas brick home
to where it yields dark. 
 
In my sister’s bedroom, 
moonlight cuts through blinds,
stripes slate-blue into shadows.
 
From a backyard, Christmas 
lights illuminate from the inside, 
out; tiny glowing. 
 
In Wisconsin, a neon sign glares 
into a koi pond and downwards, 
through basement windows. 
 
The red of an alarm clock glows 
in my brother’s old bedroom
when my mother sleeps there. 
 
Somewhere, a room is almost in complete
darkness, except for a smoke 
detector’s yellow light.

---

Ellie Zupancic is an interdisciplinary artist and emerging poet. She lives in Iowa City where she studies English & creative writing and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Fools Magazine. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Canvas Literary Journal, The Apprentice Writer, Ink Lit Mag, Fools Magazine, and Dream Pop Journal. Find her Twitter @misszupancic.

Rachael Ikins

Elder Orphans

Part 1.

Gray, watered-down dawn,
December. Sleep’s oblivion disturbed by arthritis
He rolls from covers. 
Cat jumps off the bed.
He creaks along the hall to the kitchen, coffee and toast with meds, 
a dream of flying on his bicycle tracks tears from eyes to mouth.
His hand clutches a crumple of pocketed paper.
The list for every day; 
 
            1.         brush teeth, 
            2.         shave, 
            3.         feed cat.
 
His eyes slide past the silent phone. He counts days
since the last time a real person called. His mind shies.
 

Part 2.

She wakes at 7:00 a life-long habit, decades of work
for the county.
Her bed-covers barely wrinkled, she tucks and pats.
 
She smells medium roast, opens the TV cabinet.
Though the directions say to take her medication with food, 
she skips breakfast, worries about fat layering her scarred belly.
 
She checks her cell for missed calls. 
She will rinse her mug, wash and dress, smoke a cigarette
on the porch, leave by 8:30, errands, grocery, pharmacy, 
home in time for an 11:00 talk show.
 
All the FaceBook walls of family groups. Many teeth.
While she keeps her wall colorful, she never posts pictures
of herself with another person.
 
She shakes herself. 
One wrinkled hand
strokes the cat 
purring on her lap. 
Husband, 10 years dead, a miscarriage, ‘98. 
 
Escaped an abusive second marriage. Nephews helped move
her boxes into a one-bedroom, 
third floor, walk-up. 
Never stayed for dinner. 
 
No room for her at Christmas, 
not even the year her mother died. 
She chuckles, thinking of a religion where a long ago 
family was told that there was no room for them either. 
Nephews go to church.
 
If she had to take one of those dementia tests
in the ER where they ask you the date, day and
who is the president, 
she isn’t sure she’d pass. 
Orange idiot supposed to be running the country
 
haunts her nightmares, but newspaper is no more. She used to
count days based on Wednesdays and the Food Section.
 
Expired ketchup collection in her fridge, 
fossilized popsicles carried apartment to apartment.
 

Part 3.

Just a cat or goldfish to see you
on your birthday. You sit on a park bench, 
eat a hotdog from a corner stand. 
 
Teeth gritted each dawn, 
face to face with daylight
until the ash tail falls 
off the cigarette.

---

Rachael Ikins is a 2016/18 Pushcart, 2013/18 CNY Book Award, 2018 Independent Book Award winner, prize winning author/artist with 9 books. Her art has appeared across the region and in Washington DC. Syracuse University grad, member CNY branch NLAPW, and Associate Editor of Clare Songbirds Publishing House, Auburn, NY. Her new memoir Eating the Sun a love story narrative punctuated by poetry and garden recipes available 4/2019 at https://www.claresongbirdspub.com/shop/featured-authors/rachael-ikins/.

Matt Mitchell

[i haven’t been to west virginia since my grandfather died]

i haven’t been to west virginia  since my grandfather died
 
            next time i go   i want to stand atop dorsey’s knob       
 
holding hands with weyes blood
 
                              across from mountaineer mall        
 
after we’ve come up with 
 
                                              a new word for            
 
sunset
 
 
                                          yet
 
           i’ll settle for a pair    
 
       of hands      gentle 
  
               as the hospice nurse thumbing the iv      
 
       clockwise under                       
 
        the skin of 
 
       my grandfather’s hand
 
            the last thing i remember        
 
                        hearing him say was         
 
                                     my arms hurt son
 
in a drawl floundered 
 
            by morphine             
 
                        & now my elbows crack 
 
       when i extend mine out to heaven 

---

Matt Mitchell is an intersex Northeast Ohio writer trying to make his work as beautiful as Ken Griffey Jr.’s swing. He’d love to meet up at your local coffee shop (not Starbucks, because the aforementioned poet’s partner’s family owns a coffee shop and the aforementioned poet refuses to cross enemy lines) and talk about how the Thompson Twins’ “Hold Me Now” is the quintessential pop banger. His chapbook, you & me & the pink moon & these portraits, is forthcoming from Ghost City Press.

Aden Thomas

Grizzly Tracks

You see his grizzly tracks, 
your father’s tracks, 
in autumn snow,
like poetry across a white page.
 
You wonder how those first words were written,
how cold the forest, 
where he roamed,
a bear in wanderlust,
sometimes under moonlight, sometimes
shrouded in the wind.
 
You follow those tracks 
to where the snow ends.
Ahead, the unfamiliar night, 
the dark and disappearing ground 
where you think the tracks have gone.
 
No stars 
to guide, no scent,
only the claw marks on the bark of trees
like a secret language.
 
The days of young grizzlies, 
forgotten, 
the instinct of words,
unwritten,
and you with you animal compass,
slow along your way.

---

Aden Thomas grew up in central Wyoming. Previously, his work has been featured in The Inflectionist Review, Turtle Island, and Up The Staircase Quarterly.  His first collection of poems, What Those Light Years Carry was published by Kelsay Books in 2017. He has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. More at: www.adenthomas.com.

Dani Putney

Sanctuary

You led me to a stretch of trees
a mile away from home.
We crossed a sagebrush-ridden ditch,
entered a window among the stems.
 
                        I looked at the cloistered canopy,
                        branches and leaves obscuring
                        grey sky. I repeated my parents’ slurs,
                        tears dropped from my cheeks
                        onto roots housed around our feet.
 
You walked me to your favorite stump,
wiped away my tears.
It’s okay, you said.
We’re in this together.
 
                        I hugged you, electric-blue hair
                        against my face, gauges tickling my cheek.
                        I felt warm in your embrace,
                        in the embrace of a tiny forest
                        caught in desert heat.

---

Dani Putney is a queer, non-binary, Asian American poet exploring the West. Their poetry most recently appears or is forthcoming in The Blue Mountain Review, Juke Joint Magazine, and trampset, among other publications. Presently, they’re infiltrating a small conservative town in the middle of the Nevada desert.

Peter H. Michaels

Overtaken

God failed me when my burden weighed enough
to crack collarbones and split shoulder blades.
 
We got our marriage convalidated
when we got pregnant and although he was silent
 
for the first wedding he let us know how pleased
he was now. My unborn daughter metabolized her First
 
Communion and fed my father-in-law in turn
when his remission turned into recurrence.
 
You haven’t really bared yourself until you let 
someone change your diaper. I practiced changing
 
diapers on my father-in-law before my daughter came 
and brought me a year of blackness that I outran by working:
 
daycare drop-off, fought top-loaded agitator and side-loaded lint traps, 
daycare pick-up, food-shopped, meal planned, and cooked, wrote 
my wife’s cases before mine because she couldn’t yet,
Three promotions in two years seemed easier than stopping 
 
to think. And now when I do, I just remember that I was alone 
carrying his pyx, and given the choice I’d rather be Judas 
than the one who ended on a crucifix.

---

Peter H. Michaels' poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Nimrod, The Operating System, Cagibi, and other places. His poetry book reviews have been published by PANK Magazine's blog and Sugar House Review. His website is peterhmichaels.com and he tweets from @dethmtlcardigan.

Charnjit Gill

Lethargic Karaoke

If the friend zone was a real place
It would be a karaoke bar
Where people choose songs that they love
And belt their heart out
But everyone knows
That’s not how the original goes
 
After the sunset, everything is hazy
The warmth of the sun makes you lazy

---

Charnjit Gill has an MA in Creative Writing and a BA in English Literature & Creative Writing. She is a private tutor and has been a spoken word artist for 4 years. She was a member of The Writing Room. Her work has been published in the London Spoken Word Anthology 2015-2016 by Gug Press, Typishly, Minerva Rising Press, From Whispers to Roars and KYSO Flash.

Jacob Butlett

When Snow White Refused to Wash the Dishes

the dwarves asked her to leave.

Her hands red from scrubbing 
the floor all day, she didn't want 
to beg to stay, so she put on 
her cloak and strutted out the front 
door, heading toward the hut 
she’d seen the day before.
 
She knocked on the door, 
but when the master stepped out, 
his ox arms devouring the doorway, 
she realized he was the huntsman
who’d tried to stab her with his dagger. 
 
He suddenly cried and begged 
for forgiveness. No longer afraid 
of him, she asked to come inside. 
 
That night, she and her huntsman 
fucked on the sticky floor, the grimy 
kitchen table, the wrinkly old bed. 
 
Afterwards, he asked if she’d
finally forgiven him. But she ordered 
him to clean the hut. 
 
“Then you’ll forgive me?” he asked with hope. 
 
She said nothing, cutting an apple 
with a knife and eating each slice
while he cleaned the dirty dishes 
in buckets of suds and tears.

---

Award-winning gay storyteller Jacob Butlett (he/him) holds an A.A. in General Studies and a B.A. in Creative Writing. In 2017 he won the Bauerly-Roseliep Scholarship for literary excellence, and in 2018 he received a Pushcart Prize nomination for his poetry. Some of his work has been published in The MacGuffin, Panoply, Rat's Ass Review, Cacti Fur, Gone Lawn, Rabid Oak, Ghost City Review, Lunch Ticket, Fterota Logia, Into the Void, and plain china. He was selected as a finalist in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards residency competition of 2019.

Yuan Changming

My Crows

1/

Each time I run short of inspirations 
I would try to fold the dull season 
Not into a decoration
But into a bird
 
I always hang it high 
Above my head
Like my own spirit
Like my white crow, where I 
Can hear the droning complaints of
Each creature over its pain 
 
The pity is, my senses are often too soft
To hold the shape firm 

2/

After so many years
            The white crow
    I had been keeping as a pet
            Finally flew away
Without a single moment
                        Of hesitation
Through the back window
            Blown open 
By a gust of sun wind
                        Last night
 
Into the black Brickfielder 
            Rising right 
Above hell   

---

Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving his native country. Currently, Yuan lives in Vancouver, where he edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan. Credits include ten Pushcart nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17) and BestNewPoemsOnline, among others.

John Dorsey

What Passes for Salvation in Salina, Kansas

you cannot buy beer here after midnight
but we watch as a strung out girl 
in camouflage yoga pants ties one off 
in a gas station parking lot near iron ave
 
history just moves slower here
with its tall waitresses & buckwheat pancakes 
just looking for a little laughter
 
it’s poetry in motion 
waiting for the punchline 
on handwritten checks 
from the local diner
 
the billboard in the center of town
says that you can have a hysterectomy your way
 
that’s what drives tourism now
removing parts of a whole
 
with lingering doubts
on our tired tongues
 
silence is the only form of currency
that the wind seems to recognize
 
we just accept its terms
& go inside
 
we are all alone at the party
no matter what time it is
 
tomorrow all of this
will be someone else’s problem.

---

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Press, 2017) and Your Daughter's Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Jessalyn Johnson

Juice

Let it sink in
letting all go down the drain

Yesterday is a brush fire
holding on

Tomorrow is a grudge
blazing

Today is mourning
on the patio

Yesterday is grabbing
drinks at nine thirty

Tomorrow is bleeding
alone

Grieve the off season for oranges
as today already knows

Leave the key under the mat
for tomorrow will soon arrive

Ready the table
so today will be groomed

An extra helping for yesterday
who is a small child

A slap for today
misbehaving 

Tomorrow a longing sigh 
Over a clean plate

Yesterday is doing fine now
Let that sink in

---

Jessalyn Johnson is a writer from Central Florida currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She currently attends The New School’s MFA Creative Writing Program. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Maudlin House, Soft Cartel, and Barren Magazine, among others. Follow her on Twitter @jessalyn451 and Instagram @jessalynjohnson or visit her at jessalynjohnson.com.

Laura C. Wendorff

Verdant

Green is not my favorite color.

But who can resist pea green, olive green,
lily-leaf green, spinach green, grasshopper green, 
mint green, fiddlehead green, and 
apple-blossom green all mixed together 
on the hillside as you drive to work 
in late April?
 
Only in this month does green speak to me.
 
The shy light-green of the oak tree leaves and
the bold, shimmery green of the newborn grass, 
just a smidge lighter and duller than the
brassy color of Easter-basket grass.
 
My mother died in November, 
as red and gold receded into brown, and
white was only a stone’s throw away.  
 
My mother’s eyes were a deep olive green:
bright and rare.

---

Laura C. Wendorff is professor of English, Ethnic Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. She has been published in several journals, including After the Pause, Bluestem, Door Is A Jar, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Hektoen International, Minetta Review, The Opiate, Poydras Review, Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Spillway, Temenos, Two Cities Review, Voices de la Luna, and Wisconsin Poets Calendar. Wendorff’s essay “Worth The Risk: Writing Poetry About Children With Special Needs” was nominated for a Best of the Net Award and the Pushcart Prize. Laura also enjoys growing flowers, playing the piano, and has been a member of the same book club for over a decade.

Kristina Krumova

Genetically

Approach meekly to the altar

Do not pay any attention to the ladles 
hung on nails
stuck in the eyes of Virgin Mary
to the leftovers of soup
on the chin of the Infant
to the hospital stretchers
the plastic mannequins dressed in swimsuits
the cups of coffee
the blood stains
the laundry hanging on the chandeliers
children’s wallpapers around the icon’s frameworks
the vulgar drawings on the cheeks of the saints
the suitcases full of money
the cat’s leashes
the homeless men on the benches
the empty infant incubators
the home cinema systems
the syringes on the floor
the red shoes
Do not pay any attention…
The Good Lord has mixed up the boxes with puzzles
You must concentrate on the smell of incense
congregate even more 
Approach meekly to the altar
and light one candle each
 
for those who were born 
sad

---

Kristina Krumova is 29 years old and she lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. She has a Master’s Degree in “Contemporary History” from Sofia University and she was an Editor at New Social Poetry Magazine, (Bulgaria). Her work was published in North of Oxford, Ann Arbor Review, The Pangolin Review, Rusty Truck, The Conclusion Magazine, Unlikely Stories, Oddball Magazine and The Mad Swirl. Kristina Krumova works as a freelance editor and she’s preparing her first poetry manuscript.

Erich Slimak

Mother with Cigarette, Hurricane Bertha

Perched on the radiator, she wears a sundress
owned by her own mother, checkered red
and we watch the gunmetal sky.
Plume after plume of smoke rises, is spun
into gossamer by the ceiling fan.
The five-story oak trees in our yard never move
but now they bow back and forth
as if part of some horrible ritual. I bury
my face in her side and can smell the deep
places I have come from. She swears quietly
noticing her flame has gone out. Lights another match.

---

Erich Slimak is a singer, amateur basketball historian, and an MFA candidate in poetry at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is also an editorial assistant for Ninth Letter. His writing has appeared in Plainsongs,The Santa Clara Review, and elsewhere.

Dylan Angell

Manhattan Rain

A tissue box filled with orange peels 
floats in a rain filled street crater
 
The war vet’s sign is as legible 
as tear smeared mascara
 
“Have a nice day” bags hang in the trees, 
collecting our voices as they are snatched by the winds
 
A woman screams at a dog 
in an attempt to keep it from swallowing a condom
 
A millionaire fakes a phone call because reality is just too much 
when nobody is buying the illusion you want to sell 
 
Four different cars on the block are playing the same song 
but each car rattles with a different buzz of distortion
 
A thin-faced grandmother carries a bag 
of emptied bottles on her back 
 
And I am a just another reality star 
whose deadlight still burns

---

Dylan Angell is a North Carolinian who is currently based in Queens, New York. In 2016 he released the book, An Index of Strangers Whom I Will Never Forget A-Z, via his Basic Battles Books imprint. He has collaborated on two books with photographer Erin Taylor Kennedy; 2017’s I'll Just Keep On Dreaming And Being The Way I Am and 2018’s Beyond the Colosseum. In 2019 he released Sinking Windows, a bilingual publication that was printed in Mexico City. He has been published in Fanzine, Fluland, Parhelion, The Travelin’ Appalachians Revue and Sleaze Magazine.

Devon Ward

Before bed I read one of the more recent HuffPost Headlines: “157 Republicans Just Opposed Renewing the Violence Against Women Act”

I fell asleep thinking of all the daughters that
will puff into clouds of gun shots
 
The echo that reverberates throughout the 
skeletons of all the women who lay in the 
unmarked graves of shell casings
 
I wonder if I could string the bullets together 
wrap it around the necks of those who 
claim 2nd Amendment Rights would feel the 
same when the choice to breathe no longer
felt like their own 
 
Their hearts beat faster
 
The ricochet of their heads cracking back
They look at the ghosts that stand before
them
 
The women in broken heels 
The women with dirty feet
The women in socks and slippers
worn out sneakers and converse 
 
The snapped necks of the once left-sided 
raise their hands asking for help
 
The shadows loop around them 
bend down close in response to the pleads
they feel so connected to
 
Saying the only thing they have heard most
“We’re sorry, we can’t hear you”
 
 
Chokes them

---

Devon Ward is a graduate from Buffalo State College and is currently pursing a degree in Nursing. You can find her on Instagram @devon_with_an_o and on Twitter @D3vthed3von.