Poetry – Page 13 – VAGABOND CITY

GIRLS WHO LIKE BOYS AND GIRLS | Jemma Hoolahan

girl liking boys and girls girl hating labels; hating boxes, but girl loving; always loving. girl falling for crooked smiles; the quiver of eye lashes like leaves in the wind, protecting cobalt irises full of love; full of empathy.

Everything, Poetry

I AM EXACTLY LIKE A WIND STORM | Maia Irwin

I. The night is alive and so am I. II. Maybe instead of the wildfire I long to be I should be a rolling storm. III. Or maybe just the shadows. Maybe the night is harsher than the day.

Everything, Poetry

GABY, HAVE YOU DONE YOUR BEST? | Kaitlyn Crow

My first roommate in the adolescent unit had most growing on her arms and spots of mold between her toes. I didn’t realize until months later that there is nothing beautiful about that.

Everything, Poetry

UNTITLED #1| Kaitlyn Crow

i. I am the mood swings striking in the middle of the night, keeping you nocturnal past three in the morning. They call me mania, bipolar. I am your misdiagnosis, the ADHD pills that made you go insane, the tug of impulse when manic becomes the new normal.

Everything, Poetry

FROM KIERKEGAARD TO REGINE | Alex Lenkei

“Darling, dearest, dead,” Sovereign queen of my heart: You’re the sunset in a cup, you’re the ink bleeding into my marginalia of Aristotle, Kant, and Luther, and in the candlelight alone your face shines ever new across the gradient of my half-worn pages.

Everything, Poetry

GAPS | Alex Lenkei

To be a construction of signs of sighs, remembering memories of encounters that were dreams— meeting-places in the dark.

Everything, Poetry

LITTER ON THE STREETS OF LAS VEGAS | Nicole Lourette

The bare-breasted nun prays in front of children as their parents snap photos of anything but her body. She is not the memory they want of this place. Her habit hangs far below her puckered lips, and for $45, she’ll show you what spring is like on Jupiter.

Everything, Poetry

ST. ANTHONY’S RELIQUARY | Nicole Lourette

There are yellow roses at Mary’s feet and two fingers missing from her right hand. She looks fragile, but the other at the pulpit looks more like a harlot. Jimi Hendrix would enjoy

Everything, Poetry

THE CRITERIA BY WHICH MY MOTHER SELECTS A FATHER FOR HER CHILD | Nicole Lourette

He has to be a white man, under six feet mid-forties intelligent a George Clooney chin

Everything, Poetry

ALL OF A SUDDEN I MISS EVERYONE (EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY) |Michael Prihoda

it’s natural to be afraid, watching the birth and death of the day. this is your catastrophe and the cure,

Everything, Poetry

DARKEST HOURS (FOX AND THE BIRD) | Michael Prihoda

when i was young and heading east these ashes weren’t counterfeit. we avoided

Everything, Poetry

UNTITLED | Sarah Francois

white powder runs down his nose his laugh is ragged

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SEA SHELLS | Sarah Francois

Ze sold sea shells by the sea shore no not really Ze sold sex by the pier It was amusing the look on people’s faces The deadpan expression to the straightforward question

Everything, Poetry

Bits | Neobie Gonzalez

In my dream I carry a mason jar filled with bits of Einstein’s brain (stolen before the rest of him was ashes), pieces they still haven’t found. I run up the stony steps of Gaudi’s basilica in Barcelona (built 1882 and finished never). Spires high, bricks laid, most of it a skeleton of becoming. Some […]

Everything, Poetry

Dorothy Faces the Tornado | Meggie Royer

He called her bruja so she prayed day in and day out over hemlock and wart of toad that he would let her leave. Braided ribbons of thorn into her hair in lieu of satin. At night it purled and crawled

Everything, Poetry

LYING NEXT TO SOMEONE YOU DON’T LOVE. | Elizabeth Tobin

The water is next to the bed. I am having those dreams where I am awake again. Whispering take your fingers away in sleepy protest moans.

Everything, Poetry

ALMOST HEAVEN | Elizabeth Tobin

The asphalt of summer stood still. Swum the deep end of mother’s disease and dreamed of dangling from telephone wires, calling the world to watch from under the table.

Everything, Poetry

Losing Teeth | Elizabeth Tobin

Swimming in between stubborn kindergarten gums, my mouth is full of blood. We pull up to that blue house while the kitchen curtain is on fire.

Everything, Poetry

FOR THE AVERAGE MELIPHONA BEE | Inara Lalani

I speak the language of a vanilla-flavoured day. Just beige pastels, and an ordinary tint of a café-au-lait. I have spent a lifetime crawling over a blanket of shells, just to coat my bones in the achromatic pain of synonymity so that my crescendo of affliction remains unheard,

Everything, Poetry

AN AQUARIUM FOR THE DEAD| Inara Lalani

I have this theory, That for six days, I could maybe keep a goldfish alive long enough so that I could see you again. On day one, I would watch the salesman pull it out from its home, and tuck it into a bag filled with more air than water.

Everything, Poetry

Fluid | Sarah Pinkerton

I am valued only in triptych, in tandem with someone and the services I can provide. Rolling out like the underfoot mat I so often am, belly up or arse in the air, I aim to be agreeable and end up flat on my back, fucked like a newlywed. Not enjoying it,

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the last time i tried to kill myself and was too ashamed to tell my therapist | Abigail Staub

Editor’s note: trigger warnings for sexual assault, suicide a college student asked me if it was true that i’d fuck him for booze; he said he knew how i liked it,

Everything, Poetry

2 poems| J.L. Harlow

Drifting Away Numb, and I cannot use this hidden shade of blue, Evening and the noise is everything but music, Mother is screaming, and I do not live for the bible, Mother is screaming, because I do not live for the bible,

Everything, Poetry

Blackness: A poem and identity in parts | Elizabeth Mudenyo

I. I used to deny it Pretend I didn’t see it And now I devour every bit of blackness I lick my fingers clean

Everything, Poetry

Honey & Asking For It| Meggie Royer

Editor’s note: I’ve decided to group these two poems because they respond well to each other. Be aware that there seems to be a theme of sexual assault/abuse. Honey Honey let us take you home tonight so we can rob you of your arms and then put them on again backwards so you’ll always remember […]

Everything, Poetry

She Has Found Religion At The Gym | Marnie Bullock Dresser

The girl next to me strains as though she’s on a quest, not an elliptical. Constant sweat, an occasional groan. She keeps murmuring, “Oh God. Oh God.”

Everything, Poetry

Clementine | Laura Mayron

“We’re going to be man slayers,” you told me, fox eyes glimmering. We were nine, on the playground. I knew you would be, with your sharp, fast grin and trickster ways. Already you were revolutionary. You moved through the woods like a sprite daring and limber among the sweet-smelling eucalyptus as we searched for fairies […]

Everything, Poetry

2 poems | Johannes Punkt

Inner Thighs sext: I hesitate to use the word beautifully to describe the way you open yourself like a coral-reef in bloom to me, but I’m prismatic too; I fuck you like an oil spill.

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Sex Scene | Kelsi Villarreal

While the show swells forward through its scenes— the windfall of sex, and the sudden twist ending where all good fortune is reversed—

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Eden | Grayson Herrgott

Sometimes I sit and stare at the coils of the bunk above me tracing their weaving pattern as if they were some sort of pathetic man-made constellation. And I think of all the ridiculous ways I compare you to others.

Everything, Poetry

What I Imagine You Taste Like in Bed | Lora Mathis

Like all of your ex-girlfriends swirled into one The Hippie becoming the Shaking Limbed The Almost But It Never Happened becoming the Fantasy Like your mother offering you a tangerine

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Wondering | J.C.

My first crush was in love with Patrick Dempsey. So I used to watch Grey’s Anatomy so I’d have something to talk to her about.

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An Almost Woman | Emily Nash

There are thousands of poems by women who were misunderstood with fears of either becoming an old maid, or of marriage.

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Elegie of a Diaspora | Ally Ang

Love, unfold yourself like a flower unto spring. Let the sun cradle you when you ache for your mother’s arms. Do not weep when you trace your bloodlines but find only an empty picture frame hanging in your grandmother’s house.

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It must have got lost in the mail | Susannah Betts

The sweatshirt still smells musty at the third wash and my thong still in the corner of the laundromat floor where I left it. Does spandex decompose? I didn’t like the look of someone else’s blue detergent on my red so I couldn’t own the thong after I saw it. Thongs don’t get adopted though […]

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—moLt ShEd | Rebecca Y. Lee

Most mornings, I wake and imagine myself lizard— nails running over rust-gray puckerings, peeling centuries blood into dust when the old skin wears too ancient I never know if I’ll emerge— sloughed-off history showing soft new smooth, breathing fresh or when my mask will slip—reveal monster underneath: past deeds etched deep within each canyon crinkle If I […]

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3 Poems | Andrew Wetmore

Cancer We laid on our backs and pulled shapes from the sky like reading the letters out of porno magazines. You had all your vaccinations and went to Sunday school every Sunday. You memorized your catechism and realized you were witnessing an execution When I walk down the street widows throw signs warding against the […]

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Annual Well Woman Visit | Victoria Massie

I. My arms stretch to the heavens pre-destination lengthy torso stunted by chicken legs The nurse begged me stand tall; wall and back kissing; head and neck reconnecting inward like best-friend secrets. “Five and three quarters” It takes women in my family incessant earth-moon rotations for them to fall down permanently in love with the […]

Everything, Poetry

3 Poems | Kelsey Schmidt

conversely she was my saturday night my bathroom stall drug the cigarettes butts on my back porch. you are my sunday morning my lipstick stained coffee mug bleary-eyed kisses that taste like toothpaste left, right, you left again. i lost all desire to be your/china/doll your sixAM/hotelroom/smoke little bitch, don’t call me ring/voicemail/ring/hangup rinse, repeat. effloresce i am full […]

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3 Poems | Venus Crow

Home. Come home my love to gentle rains, where fire hearts breathe you in. walk among the feathered pines with me at your side. Be blessed by love’s tender touch swim with lost memories of days swiftly flown and scattered upon the breeze. We miss the sanctified song of your soul exalted among mere mortals. […]

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Majid | Maj al-Yasa

Majid from your wine-stained lips meem alif jiim daal م-ا-ج-د you print the letters on my palm and close my fist around the syllables. ت-ح-ب-ن-ش you love me like the Prophet –salaam– loved Fatima –beloved– and I love you as a brother. ت-ض-ح-ك you laugh. be my wife. و-ق-ف habibi, I […]

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2 Poems | Patricia P.

Futile Morbidity I imagine my funeral to have a punch bowl of regrets and scarcity of people the place would be drab, not much different than my own life my mother would burst into tears every second or so and my sister would be handing out tissues that would end up unused I hope the […]

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California | Lily Cigale

california did you forget scratching off your skin on the floor of your parents’ shower, home from a chilly vacation with a warm girl? a text at three am: “I’ve peeled all my skin off do you still love me? can you still love a mess of bloody muscle, viscous trails, teeth, teeth, teeth?? things […]

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Out of An Ant Hill | R.K. Gold

Out of ant hill, rolling over itself in unison with the white grains of sand was a green caterpillar. I’ve seen the desperate search for a home before. Reflecting off its eyes and down its cheeks hoping its tears will dampen the sand enough for a child to build him a castle. Only to have […]

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5 Poems | Šejla Srna

Salesclerk i feel like i am fading away everything irritates me the sound of my space bar at 2 am is my worst enemy right now and the fact that this isn’t a poem but i’m still making it look like one is making me sick to my fucking stomach i just drank a can […]

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Four Poems by Matthew J. Hall

French Manicure She thought about getting a new sprinkler for the freshly mowed lawn. He had worked on it for an hour, sweating. He was sweating now while her pondering moved to the kitchen, where she would have him fix the dripping tap.

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“At A Party Recently I Saw” by Paul Strohm

At a party recently I saw Kierkegaard lounging in the curve of a sensuous chair and in a corner Kant leaning against a dark wall covering scrolling his big fat finger at a Wittgenstein arms akimbo threatening in his silent way stoic Hopper in green beads, red leather mulling small actions for Derrida’s roundness deconstructed […]

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2 poems | William Jackson

Apartment #112 Set the beer down on the counter where the roaches play, stir the food. It’s night outside and in your heart and in your mind. A police helicopter circles circles above your head a halo w/ search-lights and you’ve become so holy you no longer notice. The bag briefcase dynamite you left the […]

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Anthropomorphism | Changming Yuan

the sea smiling widely with every wrinkle open towards the morning sun, the trees balletting in the storm of summer, the birds chatting aloud, indeed, all is well as God is taking a nap, dreaming about becoming a human both in form and in mind, where nature imposes itself as a wild urchin and the […]

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I Said I’d Make You Breakfast | Natalie Strickland

I knew you were hiding behind the shelf silent and bare-ass naked but I had important things to do like say I’d make you breakfast, but I forgot, because I saw the paint on the counter asking to spread itself on blank pages that I opened and shut, and opened and shut, til it looked […]