When my mom was pregnant with me, they asked my older sister what she thought about her sibling still growing in the womb.
“It’s a girl, and her name is Jennifer,” she insisted a few times.
Jennifer is a very common name for girls born in the 70s or 80s. Even in the 90s we had two, sometimes three, Jennifers in my class most years.
But my parents didn’t know where my sister had heard the name. There were no Jennifers on her favorite shows or in her class. Her best friend at the time was a “Valentina”.
Picked it up on the tail-end of its zeitgeist, maybe.
My parents couldn’t consider any other name after I was born.
Category: Poetry
The Night I Couldn’t See the Eclipse Because It’s Cloudy and Supposed to Snow by Kevin A. Risner
I knew there’d be a cloud-covered sky hereon the night of the lunar eclipseknew itI readied my eye for red moonfelt cheated whenever swirls of gray rolled infirst measurable snow forecast instead, an occasionI’d normally […]
Variations on a Faded Swastika Tattoo by Scott Cumming
1.
Followed his friends
wherever they went
That’s how he found himself
in the barn that first night
Seig Heils and venom
Impassioned and celebratory
His awe and fear
Why he was chosen first
Branded like cattle
in what was supposed
to feel like belonging
Belief sown into skin
City Triptych by HLR
1.
Thursday night in the city / 10pm-ish I think / I’m busy / doing nothing / watching / the girl in green as she trips down the escalator & cuts her knee / it bleeds a little & her friends scream. Apparently / once lost / sanity is hard to find; seeing is believing & I am blind [drunk]. I can’t remember exactly where I lost my mind but I might well have lost it here / Kings Cross no apostrophe / where the streets are mean & the people are mean(er) & I myself have nowhere to be & no one to see (I was meant to party with a drag queen but he’s pulled a sickie) & I must stop praying to a God who doesn’t believe in me & yes, the Eurostar is tempting—Montmartre in the morning—drunken dreaming? clearly: I don’t have the fucking money for properly escaping. And look at the men on a stag-do whistling / grinning / leering. Misery hates company but danger becomes me. Where I end up this evening remains to be seen but for now / for right now / it’s just me, Chablis & Sarrazin (Patti gave me Albertine for free) & the grime of city life trapped between my grinding teeth.
A lesson in poetry by Fizza Abbas
Today my husband told me
I must know the ABCs of poetry.
”Take it seriously”, he said
It’s no longer A for Apple, B for Ball, and C for Cool
Now it’s a game of AABBCC and ABABAB,
Alphabets will stay closer together.
(if we’re very lucky) Death by DS Maolalai
it’s wonderful, frankly,
being comfortable.
and I spent so long
in search of suffering
to breed a poet’s
soul. I had – and we all have –
my romantic aspirations,
but there’s nothing else
like this, or shouldn’t be;
like falling over
Weighted Blanket by Grace Hui
You understand worlds I do not, pull them
into words I cannot, but it is more than your brilliance
I love—
it is how you wrapped me tight, a weighted blanket
when I was spiralling, spiralling,
spiralling so dizzy I was heaving,
spinning out of control, my molecules
colliding
when you held me tight,
and made sure I was fine in the morning.