Monday 30 September 2019


Redbird

by Kara Knickerbocker


I.

Working in tandem/this break leads to woman/to a Redbird/I untangle my life from yours before/I can fly you should know/four years is hard to swallow/tell me what is left here to be saved?

II.

In this poem, I eat you whole.
In this poem I open my fist to your strange face,
lock my jaw around the fleshy part of your neck
use every word I know to strangle you speechless.
In this poem, I grow my hair out to tie her wrists together in the kitchen,
shave her blonde locks to the floor
watch those blue eyes break like mine did when you dared to leave.
I am so beautiful, you want to die now.  
I’m sorry, you’ll plead, and I’ll gnaw on your ring finger,
tilt my pretty little head back and laugh.   


* * * * *

Kara Knickerbocker is a poet and writer from Pennsylvania and the author of The Shedding Before the Swell (Dancing Girl Press, 2018) and Next to Everything that is Breakable (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her most recent poetry and essays have been published or are forthcoming in print and online publications including: Cabildo Quarterly, The Laurel Review, and the anthology Voices from the Attic Vol XXII. She lives in Pittsburgh where she works at Carnegie Mellon University, writes with the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University, and co-curates the MadFridays Reading Series.


Sunday 29 September 2019


Monologue of the Woman Dreamer

by Kara Knickerbocker


I don’t know how to peel back the months of my life. When those moments I was in became days that drifted into years, how I stopped recognizing myself in old photographs or where the people beside me in them went, or how to get them back. (As if I could convince myself it would be the same.) When six year old innocence became sixteen angst, became the shell of this twenty six year old woman. I blazed through adolescence with bleached hair, a hungry heart, a kind of wild ambition I can’t even dream up now.

Graduation was almost five years ago. The night before, I stood on that dock ready to jump, ready for cool dark water, something to shock my body, something to wake me up, just something underneath that May moonlight to either bathe me or drown me, I wasn’t sure which. It’s a strange feeling to want to be consumed. To be ready for it. That desire, that ambition, meant long city nights were ahead, and I fought my way to see them through. To pay the electric, to keep the light on, to keep burning. I set myself on fire. I raked through a 9-5 like I was taught. I stopped looking for answers to the questions I forgot I’m allowed to ask, steadied myself against the current of the world and from reaching the bottom of the bottles on my shelf. I buried myself. Had milestones and mistakes on repeat. I bled trying to figure out just what it meant to be successful. A degree. A job. An apartment. Check, check, check. I did all of it. And yet…what for? And what now?

What happens when the supposed keys to happiness don’t twist and give way at the door in front of you? What if your wants and your needs and your reality don’t meet at this intersection and you look over to find nobody but doubt is sitting shotgun? I’m knee deep in my life and all of a sudden, I’m not sure where I am going or if I like it and who I am. I’ve stood in shadows and I’ve stood in the light, and I still don’t know how to love myself in either.

But I’ve loved. I’ve loved men who have seen all of me and yet never even knew my scars. What does that say about them? Better still, what does it say about me? I’ve loved the chase, the thunder of the unknown barreling through me. I loved the hum of a heartbeat, the strength of fingers interlocked, the safeness of a naked soul. I clung to the notion I should romanticize busyness. I loved making calendars and planners fill up until I realized I was emptying myself. Running on coffee and the belief that I was making you, or at least someone, proud. That I was becoming something. Starving despite a full stomach, the appetite for my life lost. Maybe I’m repeating myself. Maybe we’ve all been there.

Women – how fragile and fierce are we? Too much this, too much that, but not enough. Crooked noses, big feet. Hair that frizzes in summer heat to swallow anything it touches. Clavicle bones that are never kissed, shoulders sunken with a weight we shouldn’t have to carry. The dripping curve of a lower back that forgot how it felt to be touched. Eyes an ocean of maybes. Stomach too soft, hips hidden from unwanted gazes (even our own), cellulite sliced into upper thighs as if it was a hot pepperoni pizza. Lips that beckon to tell secrets and inhale whatever a sunset is made of. Made of a million particles of “what ifs” and a swelling storm that rages even when we’re calm, even when we smile. Everything we are could bring you to your knees. We are composed of sheet metal our fathers molded from childhood, translucent glass that can never break, diamonds and teeth from past lovers, wood from the tree in your front yard, dirt roads and plastic bags, and stitched together with ribbon our mothers gave us- fragments of raw love, fraying at the ends. With bad posture and clumsiness and a beautiful brain and a lot of guts. I promise I am 75% fire and within me there is a real hurricane. I feel too much and I feel nothing at all. I’m trying to explain to you how that’s possible.

How do you learn to know who you are when the world is still telling you who to be? Where can you find what you love and let it kill you?  Maybe we’re just the blind leading the blind toward this whacked-out definition of happiness. Will there ever be a moment you look in the mirror and you don’t feel even just a little uncomfortable?  How do you make sure friends won’t be just a profile on a Facebook page and family won’t be strangers you feel obligated to see on holidays? Stop hiding behind filters and phones. Strip it all down, scream, do something. We’re so far removed from feeling anything and acknowledging it, revealing it. Too immersed in media and this illusion that everyone else has it together, and therefore so should we.

I’m here to tell you I don’t. I’m not exactly unhappy with my life. I’ve stood in crowds at concerts, feeling invincible. But when it ends, I wonder when’s the next time I’ll feel a part of something again. I’ve been told how envious people are of my accomplishments and experiences, like my life was this incredible dream they wish they could attain or trade something for. To some, that validation would hold meaning. But what do you say back, when they don’t realize the half of it? I’ve made friends in corners of the world, but those connections don’t reach across phone lines, probably for reasons that all lead back to me. I’ve stood on Machu Picchu, dined atop the Eiffel Tower, rode a camel in Morocco. I have traveled to cities where my tongue couldn’t speak the language, felt my skin burn from the fire of a different sun, and I’ve tried to soak my tired bones in all of it to find out what it means. Seeking fulfillment. I’ve crossed state lines and boundaries and crossed off bucket lists. I’m living but when do I start to feel alive?

And here we are already, another calendar year, another birthday looming ahead, emotions moving at the speed of light. How did we get to this place? I wish I could slow it down. These seasons are melting together so fast, memories always slipping through the tiny cracks in the palm of my hands as I try so desperately to hold on to them. And yet, I’m here still secretly hoping the leaves would just hurry up and change again, still wondering if there’s something more and measuring up just short of it, still waiting to find the word “yes” just so I can say it out loud, over and over again, to my reflection without flinching.


* * * * *

"Monologue of the Woman Dreamer" was first published on the author's blog, www.fromthissideofthesun.com.

Kara Knickerbocker is a poet and writer from Pennsylvania and the author of The Shedding Before the Swell (Dancing Girl Press, 2018) and Next to Everything that is Breakable (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her most recent poetry and essays have been published or are forthcoming in print and online publications including: Cabildo Quarterly, The Laurel Review, and the anthology Voices from the Attic Vol XXII. She lives in Pittsburgh where she works at Carnegie Mellon University, writes with the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University, and co-curates the MadFridays Reading Series.


Sunday 22 September 2019

Writing In A Woman's Voice is now on equinox sabbatical and will resume on September 29, 2019. Happy fall or spring to you, depending on where you are.

Saturday 21 September 2019


Silent no More

by Ann Christine Tabaka


The silence of a thousand years
is broken with a whisper,
emanating from
the heartbeat of oppression.

Time can no longer restrain truth.
It breaks open sins of the past.
Soaring above the rabble,
chains falling off,
secrets bleed out.

Blackened bones of our ancestors
crumble in desperation.
It is my turn to speak.
My words are winter rain.

Bare limbs reaching from the pyre,
their cries can no longer
be buried alive with their bodies. 

Blue songs and green desires
melt away in an inferno.
Annealed, weak become strong.

Pained voices unite,
shedding off their shroud,
never more to be silenced.


* * * * *

"Silent no More" was first published by Barren Magazine (September 2018)

Ann Christine Tabaka was nominated for the 2017 Pushcart Prize in Poetry, has been internationally published, and won poetry awards from numerous publications. She is the author of 9 poetry books. Christine lives in Delaware, USA. She loves gardening and cooking. Chris lives with her husband and two cats. Her most recent credits are: Burningword Literary Journal, The Write Connection, Ethos Literary Journal, North of Oxford, Pomona Valley Review, Page & Spine, West Texas Literary Review, The Hungry Chimera, Sheila-Na-Gig, Pangolin Review, Foliate Oak Review, Better Than Starbucks!, The Write Launch, The Stray BranchThe McKinley Review, Fourth & Sycamore. Website: https://annchristinetabaka.com/



Friday 20 September 2019


Tonight At Last Call, J. Calls Me His Brown Liquor Girl, Again,

by Alexis Rhone Fancher

his voice dark urgency, like when we were attached.
I let him grip my hips, slow dance me back to that lust,

to the parking lot, his car,
my tube top a trophy in one hand,

a bottle of Southern Comfort in his other.

He pours that sweet Joplin down my throat,

guides my hand between his legs. Drives

to the Malibu motel with ocean views,
vibrating beds, and once more, our delicious thrashing,

complimentary KY where the Gideon should be,
the insomniac waves rocking us long before my marriage,

and now after.
When I ask him which part of me he loves best,

J. answers: Whats missing,
tonguing the place where my nipple had been.

He doesnt mind the mastectomy scar,
the one my husband cant bring himself to touch.


* * * * *

"Tonight At Last Call, J. Calls Me His Brown Liquor Girl, Again," was first published in Rattle.

L.A. poet Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Verse Daily, Plume, The 
American Journal of Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Diode, Nashville ReviewWide Awake, Poets of Los 
Angeles, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She’s the author of 5 poetry collections; How I 
Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015), Enter 
Here (2017), Junkie Wife (2018)and The Dead Kid Poems (2019). EROTIC, New & Selected, 
publishes in 2020 from New York Quarterly. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net 
nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com

Thursday 19 September 2019


STILETTO KILLER … A Surmise

by Alexis Rhone Fancher


“She told me if anybody screwed with her they’d get a stiletto heel in the eye,”
 - her former apartment manager told the TV news.


Alf and Ana drank tequila at the club until closing.

Ana wore a tight, green dress. Alf said she looked like a whore. 

Back at the apartment, the neighbors heard screams.

“The defense will prove she was a battered woman,” her lawyer told the press. 

She was too short when the stilettos came off but her feet ached.

She had to stand on tiptoe to reach him, for Christ’s sake.

Women are always losers in Texas.

Ana alleged: “He cursed in Swedish when he beat me.” 

She’d read Swedes beat their women in The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

In the early morning hours, Ana stabbed her lover thirty one times.

The stiletto heel fused to her fist.

When the police arrived Ana was covered in blood.

In that green dress she looked like Christmas.


(CNN) -- It may have been a vicious murder or the unintentional result of a
lover's quarrel. Either way, the death of a Texas college professor stands
out for the weapon the killer allegedly used: one of her own stilettos.


* * * * *

"Stiletto Killer ... A Surmise" was first published in The Mas Tequila Review, 2015

L.A. poet Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Verse Daily, Plume, The 
American Journal of Poetry, Rattle, Hobart, Diode, Nashville ReviewWide Awake, Poets of Los 
Angeles, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She’s the author of 5 poetry collections; How I 
Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies (2015), Enter 
Here (2017), Junkie Wife (2018)and The Dead Kid Poems (2019). EROTIC, New & Selected, 
publishes in 2020 from New York Quarterly. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net 
nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com


Wednesday 18 September 2019


The Calling

by Leonore Wilson

      --for Sylvia Fomina

I. He held the orphans upon orphans with HIV AIDS, the ones dying, the ones with days, minutes to live, the many the many who called him father, father. And the women he drove for hours over unpaved roads, over rocks and ruts, and he had the only small car for miles and miles, a rickety one, and the women about to give birth so young at thirteen fourteen, too young, the ones whom he drove for miles and miles and miles, singing to them, and then the silences that were a part of the singing and yes 

II. today at Mass you suddenly thought of Sylvia, lost Sylvia, lost love Sylvia at Villa Montalvo, the cottages in Saratoga an hour from the Pacific, the wild pacific, beaches of sand by artichoke fields, Villa Montalva where violet bee filled wisteria poured out water, streamed in large and small rivulets from the small wooden porches, Sylvia who escaped Russia after her mother had a nervous breakdown and so Sylvia was adopted by a family in Argentina, an Italian maestro and his wife, she and her brother, her brother a professor murdered during the coup.

III. and Sylvia walking miles miles over the Himalayas, she who couldn’t talk for two years, gripped by grief, a grief that her maestro told her...told her to go to Kenya and live with the pygmies for the pygmies do not talk but said everything in song and Sylvia healed, healed, healed and at the Villa I took her to have her teeth looked at for the very first time, she in her early thirties, and the teeth pulled out and the opiates they gave that made her droopy as the long daisies that grew around the white statues, the statues of gods and goddesses, the beautiful matilija poppies with petals white as the blouses of Catholic schoolgirls, the ones you wore, starched and ironed that made you sweat, and made you smell like old stale milk…

IV. and how you drove her your Sylvia in your little blue station wagon, as she listened to the notes in her head, as you drove down the hills full of wealthy mansions behind iron gates, oh and sometimes as you took her here and there to grocery stores bookstores she would stand mid-step in her long brown hair and white flowing dresses as you walked here, there and even around the marriages that happened in the main house, the back with the fountain of goldfish and minnows and orange koi and soft lily pads, and she listening as if there were angels speaking and there probably were, the angels of sound Mozart heard, Beethoven, Mahler, Chopin, and didn’t she love the word smoothie for she could not eat and you took her out for smoothies and how she smiled with that word in her mouth like a holy wafer, and oh Sylvia how she composed a symphony there at the Villa, the song of the women, the song of the forest, the song of the pygmies that took care of her, loved her and she came back to song, slowly came back and she wanted you to write librettos for her…

V. she who moved to Berlin and loved Philip Glass and John Cage and you thought how you could love this one of soul and spirit, and yes even matter, her new boyfriend coming from Germany and she was glad when he left for she could not hear what she needed to hear, to hear to heal, oh and yes you could almost have taken this one, this beautiful young woman in your arms in your lap like a mother to soothe her, soothe her, mother who left her flock of toddlers at home with your mother to write your long poems in the morning when the doves called and called in the beauty of the long walks, she who left you a midsize photo of her embracing her maestro in Florence, she with the long bouquets of roses in her arms like St Theresa of Avila...

VI. oh remember, when you had stayed in your room because you felt the darkness in your head that came back, the long darkness of your childhood, your marriage, the pain in your womb, your heart and you stayed in bed at dusk though you heard her little knocks and the cat mewing behind her, the one you fed bowls of milk though you were told not to, the feral cats that needed the abundance of love, the feral, the feral like lost Sylvia, the one in the hinterland now, somewhere somewhere, and you remember how you walked long mornings in the garden by the white pillars walked among the bees and the heather, and the priest came to see you, the one who said he needed someone to love like you who read poems for homilies the one who said he was leaving the priesthood saying he needed someone someone, and telling you how a man slid his hand in his pants on the long train going somewhere when he was a teen, and the hand the love he loved for his mother was so hard on him so hard, oh Montalvo where other artists lingered, the large blocky fellow from Amsterdam who you drove to Frisco and he told you he had never seen such colors of houses such colors on the outskirts of the City, and you saw as if you were a child, again, the first time, and the playwright who wrote about golfing on the moon, and the young Thai novelist who wrote about being a whore in his parents homeland and he had a father who did not love him love him and always he found himself in strange cities, towns, artist colonies looking looking for that love, that father love that he failed to find, and what about Fr Tom now whose first parish in this valley town, he was sent to live in the convent with the nuns, the other priest, the one who visited you, who returned to the church, the one who told you he could not be around “little ones,” but where else could he go go and you said nothing didn’t know what to say, he would not live with him, Fr Tom the Kenyan, he would not live in the rectory with him, sent him there and when he left to your parish, fumigated the rectory as if there was it was diseased, if as if the diseases he had seen lived in his skin, his hands that blessed the orphans, those who called him father father father……


* * * * *

Leonore Wilson is on the MFA Board at St Mary's College of California. She is a former university instructor of English and creative writing. Her work has been in such magazines as Quarterly West, Laurel Review, Pif, Upstreet, Iowa Review, English Journal, etc. She lives on her family's holistic ranch in the east hills of Napa Valley.

Tuesday 17 September 2019


POWER

by Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard

                        for Colin Kaepernick


            1

We walk into a protected natural reserve   for native Hawai'ians,
a narrow path between  trees  and boulders   with the sound
of the distant surf,   then come upon  a blond woman
in an electric cart.  When she sees  the surprise
on my face, she says, We own this, the ranch
up the mountain.

            2

There is a mirror  where only one  image
flickers  with its own colors  and shades
and there is only  one language  only
one way  to honor  the Creator.

            3

The football player  kneels  during
the national anthem,  kneeling to honor
his soul  to honor  social justice  and the color
of his skin   that too many  disdain. 


* * * * *

Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard is the author of 11 poetry books, two of which have won awards and 15 non-fiction books concerned with human rights, women's rights, social justice, illness and more. She was born in Trieste, Italy.

Monday 16 September 2019


A Dream of Him

by Emily Marie


I had a dream about the man with lightning Nikes
Desperately waiting to see him again
Desperately waited.
And there he was, just over the sphere of the horizon
It was strange and chaotic
He was shorter, though he knew me,
and said “hi” with his eyes.
I was the same
But he was different, grungy
And the scent that wafted through the air
emanating from him
was septic and sweaty
The once overpowering sweetness that lured
me close to him,
was just a dream.
And the dream was real.


* * * * *

Emily Marie lives a spontaneous, on-the-move lifestyle, though she finds peace in routine. She writes poetry sporadically when a moment in time has somehow fixed itself to her inner musings. Delving into the moment, she identifies the minutiae, desiring to describe them accurately, artfully, and to convey the potent mood of the scene at hand. Instead of a journal, she forms experiences and emotions into short, expressive poems. Subjects of interest: landscapes, oddities and acquaintances.

Sunday 15 September 2019


The Songwriter, strutting with coffee

by Emily Marie


Met the Songwriter last night
A young male, shorter than ankle slacks
Ear hole.
Struck up conversation
and he knows me as The Poet.
Strutting with coffee
Nodding as knees bend
I find myself free in his presence
But see it as nothing more than
a light weight mate
A down to earth, three dimensional,
coffee cake.
I wear my boots and boot cuts
High life hat, Carhartt Jack
I say
“We come in all shapes and sizes.”
He says “Boom” and comments on
the space craft which is my home.


* * * * *

Emily Marie lives a spontaneous, on-the-move lifestyle, though she finds peace in routine. She writes poetry sporadically when a moment in time has somehow fixed itself to her inner musings. Delving into the moment, she identifies the minutiae, desiring to describe them accurately, artfully, and to convey the potent mood of the scene at hand. Instead of a journal, she forms experiences and emotions into short, expressive poems. Subjects of interest: landscapes, oddities and acquaintances.

Saturday 14 September 2019


The day after the full moon brings another Moon Prize this month: The forty-fourth Moon Prize, goes to Mara Buck's compelling "Chain Link."



Chain Link

by Mara Buck

    A child's voice echoes in my ears, in my bedroom, in the night, his faint cries weaving within my nightmares. It is a distinct voice, a pleading voice with an accent from the lands to the south, lands of palm trees and chili peppers and hot days and nights with strumming guitars. Lands of machine guns and drugs and terror. Have you heard this voice, too? Or have you heard another? Can we listen closer to these voices so together we can ride our white horses to the border and like a fairy tale gather the children who cry in the night, and transport them to a place where children can still dream the dreams of childhood? Every night Esteban calls to me.

    Hola?

    Help?

    Anybody?

    My name is Esteban Gonzalez and I'm scared. I used to be scared of the dark. Now I'm scared of the light that never leaves. It bounces on all the silver blankets. I see spots even when I close my eyes.

     And the noise never leaves. Crying. Slamming. Moaning. I moan too. I cry for my Papi.

     My Papi used to tell me, "Ask for the jefe to help you." I ask to see the jefe with the tall wife who never smiles with her eyes.

     The woman with the keys laughs at me.

     "The jefe? You mean El Presidente! He hasn't time for beaners like you, you pissant scum. Your Papi is a criminal in jail forever and you'll be here in this place forever until you die or run out into the desert and rot."

     Little beaner.

     No beaner. My name is Esteban.

     I repeat. Esteban Gonzalez. I'm so afraid I'll forget it. If I forget my name, then how will Papi ever find me?

     Take me to the jefe and the lady who never smiles with her eyes.

     I do not know where I am.

     I am Esteban Gonzalez and I am lost.

* * * * *

Mara Buck writes, paints, and rants in a self-constructed hideaway in the Maine woods. She hopes to leave someday. Winner of The Raven Prize for non-fiction, The Scottish Arts Club Short Story Prize, The Moon Prize. Other recent first places include the F. Scott Fitzgerald Poetry Prize, The Binnacle International Prize. Awarded/short-listed by the Faulkner/Wisdom Society, Hackney Awards, Balticon, Confluence, and others, with work in numerous literary magazines and print anthologies. The ubiquitous novel lurks.

Friday 13 September 2019


A magical full moon today, on Friday, the thirteenth, no less, making it three feminine markers all in one. The forty-third Moon Prize, goes to Cynthia Atkins's evocative poem "A Goddess in Purple Rain."


A Goddess in Purple Rain

by Cynthia Atkins


Behind glass, a lady is lit-up inside the laundromat.
She’s folding sheets, pink curlers of baroque
in her hair, singing and creasing
a t-shirt with sequins. Her arms and hips stretch out
to a body of air—the room filling with sound.
And I am humming inside her—inside her body,
burning for shelter from the abyss
                          of my alone. Rounding a corner
in a car, I am passing by, hearing “Purple Rain”
on the radio—I can almost taste
the sweat on the brow of the boy I danced with
so many years ago—It tasted like dry toast
                          or the brunt of hurting. 
Listen to the sky imploring, Come as you are—
Alone to the last concert, to light matches
in a spell-bound crowd—Remorse of loving
a rock star we can never own.  And now the lady
in the laundromat is swaying, and I am swaying
with her from my car—Maybe she is dancing with her son,
going off to boot camp, or the ends of the earth.  
                        I’m thinking of my son at three,
standing on the kitchen table in a wet diaper,
banging music from a wooden spoon.
This is that concert, where you lit a match
to your own bag of wounds.  You felt like
                        you belonged, a citizen.
Alive as a hackle of girls at the May prom. 
Look at the moon, hanging like a shoe
to throw its heel of light
                on the page or an empty field.
We are all in the body of this night, cogent as a judge
who loves the law.  The lady in the laundromat
carries the load to her car, unpins her hair.
I don’t want to be alone tonight.  The stars allow
me to follow her— we are passing the town,
rooftops are hunkering down to sing
lullabies to the young, and the night
is a stranger touching my sleeve. 


* * * * *

"A Goddess in Purple Rain" was first published in Hermeneutic Chaos.

Cynthia Atkins is the author of Psyche’s Weathers and In the Event of Full Disclosure, and the forthcoming collection “Still-Life With God.” Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including, Alaska Quarterly Review, Apogee, BOMB, Cleaver Magazine, Cultural Weekly, Denver Quarterly, Diode, Florida Review, Flock Lit, Green Mountains Review, Le Zaporogue, Los Angeles Review, North American Review, Rust + Moth, Sweet: A Literary Confection, SWWIM, Tampa Review, and Verse Daily, and have been nominated for Pushcart and Best of The Net. Formerly, Atkins worked as the assistant director of the Poetry Society of America. She has received fellowships from Bread Loaf and the VCCA. Atkins teaches creative writing at Blue Ridge Community College and lives on the Maury River of Rockbridge County VA with her family. More on @catkinspoet www.cynthiaatkins.comhttps://www.facebook.com/Cynthia-Atkins-190490067665164/