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
Category: Poetry
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.
anti-feeling by Jonathan Chan
‘i just have a lot of feelings you know.’
– 2016
Seasonal Depression Guide by Morgan Boyer
Traverse along the pebble-filled potholes,
wander aimlessly through the aisles at CVS,
gazing at every variety of potato chips in their
plastic bags whose wrinkles glisten ever so slightly.
buy something just because you’d feel awkward
going somewhere and coming back with nothing.
Bird Calls by Connie Woodring
Tweet-atweet-atweet
chirpchew, tweettweettweet, chirp, twittertoo
sqeeeez, twittwit, cheep, atweet
chirp, aacoocoocoo, hoothoothoot, chirpchirpcheeou,
scraaaaaaaaacawcaw
Seeds, seeds, seeds
Cat, danger, cat, cat, fly away
Worms, bugs, eat, do like me
Uninvited Onions by Hermione Cameron
I am embarrassed by my dissection of the sandwich. My fingers pick away at it, clumsily pulling apart the various parts, like some inexpert surgeon.
Why did they have to put onions in it? Is nothing sacred?
Outside the window someone who looks a bit like someone I know walks by.
I continue my open-heart sandwich surgery, easing open the bread skeleton, pulling apart the strands of cheesy yellow flesh, prodding around the tomato red blood cells.
The Sharp Edge of Spring, a love letter to Hades by Lauren Theresa
Sitting in my room
incense burning in the living space.
Unsettled here, on the edge of Spring.
Today marks Oestara, the Vernal Equinox where I reside.
It’s 9:22pm; already one foot deeper into Spring than the Winter
And I’m having a very difficult time stepping out of my Dark Beautiful Season.
This Winter has been long and deep.
Entering it with a distracted head, focusing on the holidays and festivities—
the novelty of the seasons.
When January edged on and February came,
I was truly finding my Self in the Depths of Darkness.
Consumed by the cold Void as the days were mostly consumed by the Moonlit eve.
Although I first met this with resistance, I’ve grown comfortable here.
Not complacent or at ease, but profoundly at Home
in this fiery Underworld.
Ballad of the Drowned Maid by Donnie O’Shaughnessy Mitchell
Ages ago she danced among
The joyous grey blue ocean waves
Not ever knowing she was wrong
to dance where danger lay
They watched her with eyes lit like dark flames
The Mermaids Disquisition by Beth Hartley
“you are standing in a terracotta city. A mermaid appears and hands you an essay”
I am not washed up but dried out,
on this baked dry plain.
The earth cracked beneath my feet,
my feet cracked beneath my limbs,
my limbs cracked beneath a body craving water.