The Upcoming Reunion- Georgia Park

The Upcoming Reunion by Georgia Park. This slice of life has bite and the wherewithal to step back and laugh at itself. Fantastic.

Sudden Denouement Collective

My father was my date to the abortion clinic

he can be my date again to this family reunion

instead of my cousin and i both bringing our boyfriends

(hers is more impressive and will invite unhealthy comparisons)

and both our puppies

(hers is younger and will attract more attention)

and everyone asking, “Who will be the first to get married?”

 

No, I’ll just go with my father, and drink.

I’ll drink to my beautiful cousin

and all of her accomplishments.

 

And when I say, “Oh, I won’t have a wedding”

what i mean is, neither my cousin

or my aunties will be invited.

 

But I’ll go to hers, and relish it

Hell, if she has a champagne fountain

I’ll even take the initiative

to get everyone skinny dipping in it

 

because when i talk

everybody shuts up and listens

i always get these parties

to…

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Someone

Someone by Nicole Lyons at thelithiumchronicles. A beautiful poem about that deep seated yearning for that…someone.

Nicole Lyons

I want someone to taste the misery on my lips,
someone to sit next to my shattered self-worth
and feel the possibility of me becoming beautiful.
I want someone who understands that rainy days
and misty nights make for splendid scenery,
and if I could build a home in the middle
of an everlasting rainstorm, my doorstep hiding
in the fog, they would juggle their baggage,
heavier than mine, and burn candles and hang lanterns
from the branches of the trees that line the road
they will travel on their way home to me.
I want someone who understands that everything
I have ever loved, though it all be unworthy,
was worth it in the end, and I want them to remember
fondly our end, long after I am gone and we have
rewritten it so many times that the world’s grandest
libraries could never be quite big enough to…

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Guest Blog: Roadside Rabbits–Emmy New

Roadside Rabbits by guest writer Emmy New at Sudden Denouement. Wonderfully descriptive and builds a mood that I haven’t shaken…yet.

Sudden Denouement Collective

From Roswell to Albuquerque
I counted 53 roadside rabbits
in one hour.

They stared at the moon
from the outside of the highway
craning their necks towards the sky.

Light lit their dust
as they inched away from the cars
but their eyes did not leave the night.
Hunching behind cacti they counted constellations
like lamps torn away from the sun.

They did not suffer the street fright
from headlights
nor hear the road kill requiems
lulling colonies to comfort
in crossing over.

In Baytown, Texas
there’s a dirt devilin’
at the state line
an oozing layer
of burnt up turpentine.

Thick mist
from an oil town night light,
a flicker of a refinery candle,
spilled into the sky

There are dead animals in Houston
that are not the black spot mirages
we see in the distance
but crushed bone of something once been.

They could not be seen
past…

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Modern Heat- Mick Hugh

Modern Heat by Mick Hugh at Sudden Denouement. What a ride! A sculptor getting rid of the useful bits and right to the heart of the matter.

Sudden Denouement Collective

What are these ghosts that hide in our dreams? The smiling beasts that stick in the shadows while we sleep? A bed sopping sweat in August heat, fuse blown, waking up to hangovers in the middle of the night. Reach for the beside reservoirs of Excedrin. Reach for the bottles of water beneath the mattress, reach for the joint half-spent in the ashtray. Pace the living-room, pace the kitchen. What are you doing here? This city has us in its grinder. What are we doing here? Looking for dimes on the sidewalks, tallying our dollars and paying student debts to the bar. We’ve lost interest in the good life, ferris wheel of office jobs and part-time gigs. Counting days to eviction, reading beatniks by candlelight, fucking ourselves raw flushed with wine and the ache that everything spent is never fully paid for: smiles full of good teeth, bank tellers who…

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Ink

Ink by Diana at The Wandering Armadillo. No one builds a moment with imagery better!

The Wandering Armadillo

you find my words at their crumbled end

powdered syllables tumbled

from cracked lips

smudged ink stains paper

flecked with fools’ gold

mordant mildew and dank mould

…

you open your mouth to speak

and the air is winter

forming icicles of perennial

participles

going, going, gone

i hear

and the sharp nib scratches

as ink runs clear

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Into My Arms- Nathan McCool

Into My Arms by Nathan McCool at Sudden Denouement. This captures, perfectly, the crazy/sad/desperation of loving and loss and longing.

Sudden Denouement Collective

The place where I gathered all our hopeless dreams

only to bear witness to each of them devouring another.

My arms that always failed

to protect the things I cared about.

All of it was useless in the end wasn’t it?

 

I would take back the mistakes if I could.

I’d run through the world to come and 

kick down your door,

just a torrid, dreaming vagabond 

smoking lithium from a lotus flower.

I’d say, “I’m here, my darlin. I’m here for good.”

 

But things never turned out the way we thought they should,

and our hearts are still just opposite horizons 

torn in half by the same savage splinter of lightning.

 

I still dream of you swaying to my music

as you balance yourself on this piano.

I am still haunted by all the things in this world

that remind me of you.

I still sing…

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Childhood

He spoke the secret, shared language

Of identical twins

Despite the fact he was an only child

You could find him at any time

Smiling and nodding in agreement

In a room alone

He played the harp on spiderwebs

He whispered secrets into heater grates

Walking out into the sun

He would sneeze almost every time

He’d mastered lucid dreaming

And tried to make the waking world

Bend to his will, unsuccessfully

He thought being half Native American

Would give him the ability to walk silently

Across leaves and twigs

He knew, comparatively, that he was poor

But mom was there for him, growing up

And that made him rich beyond compare

He wept the night his friend showed him

How to kill ants with a magnifying glass

He wondered if the ants sneezed

Before they melted

I missed that boy

Until I had my son

Together

We will make

The waking world

Bend to our will

the eventuality of successive delay.

THE EVENTUALITY OF SUCCESSIVE DELAY by Ra’ahe Khayat. This was, for me, a gorgeously dark painting, made with the brushstrokes of a master.

Fallen Alone

he keeps scattering me like birdseeds on the roads, on the twenty-third of every month, some couple hours before the sparrows wake up.

i memorize the crevices in the concrete, and he memorizes the cracks in my bones from where the corpses on his temple dug their way under my skin, and set up cities on top of cemeteries full of smoke that could just never break free of their own pyre. it’s like a routine we follow, such that Luna has about half a fortnight to forebear the consequences of her absence, before she leaves again. she keeps coming back for him though, and he keeps coming back for me, and i keep coming back for the feeling of feeling myself break every night just to be regathered right before the dawn drapes himself on top of an adulterous sky.

i lay there, some couple of thousands of lightyears…

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Come With Me to the Great Wide Sea

Come With Me to the Great Wide Sea by Mick Hugh at micksneonfog. This wonderful vignette lulls you into acceptance then shakes you awake, like great art should.

Mick's Neon Fog

The sleepy neighborhood turns slowly with the dawning sun. Morning yellow, sky refreshed; the cool damp rising while bathrobed husbands collect papers and garbage cans. Older mothers out for a run; sleepy drivers dressed for the day creep their cars by, sometimes wave. Younger siblings prepare immense bowls of sugared cereal. Yawns and crotch scratches while family get themselves out of doors. And pretty soon the house is quiet. I turn on the news. I turn the news on loudly to let myself hear it from the back deck. I smoke pot and then a cigarette and then I sit and think about the news, all very vague to make much sense. The neighborhood is still. Brief shouts of kids down the street, maybe on bikes, maybe playing stick-ball. Warmth and certainty, July heat rising round houses that never change. In one hour we will be rolling naked through bedsheets…

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la tristesse durera toujour

LA TRISTESSE DURERA TOUJOUR, by Samantha Lucero at sixredseeds. This is pure alchemy, a willing of words and images into 24k gold.

samantha lucero

i was in a dirt hole or clasped on
a napping road-trip road.
palpitating thru the lines or bones
on the ground, or underneath.

i found her heart in a rat pile
flapping like loose mother-skin
grieving with the last milk oval
on the whelps tongue.

are above me, like you
in a circlet of whore-stars,
maniacal with
teeth for deep space.
a belligerent isolation embraces
me and i am born in bright black.

i stare into the sun and when i
shut my eyes, it winks back
and it will never leave.

my love was a thousand shells
in salt on earth. i was the killing jar.

the beat of sunflower wings
in cement initials.

samantha lucero 2018 ©

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