Poetry

#finalpoems / [?]

“To think of death”

It might surprise you to know:
I do think of death.
Not in the weird orphan way
you pounce at the sky’s
dubious messages,
but like a blanket
I am coming
to the forest
to bury the leaves
with what I have

Zams is a cat who lives in the place some humans call Chicago. She is here to help.

#finalpoems / [?]

City Blues

Bone chattering

rickshaw driver,
slow down.

I feel the weight of us
slip through his

left leg. His
tattered loafer

sinks into the groove
of the road. It

tells us that someone
bigger has been here before;

the brakes on his
bike stopped working

two weeks ago, but,
my god, he knows

how to rev and release,
I don’t feel a thing.

I adjust my hands:
palms open,

wrists crossed,
patient anchor on

my gut, hold me down
until morning.

Through smog, smoke,
through song, I see it now:

The sun is a star.
The sun is a star.
The sun is a star.

Mehtab Kaur is a writer who was once initiated into a gang without realizing it. She lives alone with her cat in Los Angeles, CA.

#finalpoems / [?]

Safe in Death

Ah, sweet sleep,
Sweet slumber,
Sweet death.
When will you come to me?
To release me from all my pain
To free me from all the hurt

Begone all oppressors and tyrants,
You have no power over me now.
I will be with my Lord,
The one being that cares for me
Through the hatred, the mockery,
The minimization of my being.
Begone! I am safe!

I have grown aged and decrepit
By the power of sin
Like a sacrifice my beauty was taken
My mind once exploding with figuring
Now tired, sapped, so many ideas and hopes killed.
My muscles ache from straining,
Pliability now gone
My heart stops, then starts,
Not sure if it should beat on.
I sit still and wait for the Lord to fetch me.

My last breath will be a gasp
At the sight of the Lord,
And I will laugh when He says,
“See, that wasn’t so bad.”
“Come joyfully to me,
This is where you belong.”
And all worries and strife
Will evaporate and
No longer exist.

But I in my soul
Will live forever in the Lord.
Without earth-borne parameters.
Earthly foolishness, you matter not!

Prayer for my Life

Why am I here
Answer me God

In silence I find my answer
Silence which rules the universe
And fingers destiny through the ages

Amalgamation of spirit and clay am I
My turn to join life’s rhythms

I grew in fits
I sought evenness
I found equilibrium

Grateful I got to dance

Seeing the wisdom of His way hidden
In every life experience

God you fill me to the brim

Now used and tired vessel
My body returns to the clay which formed me
And it’s as it should be

My spirit returns to its source,
The Almighty.

Outta Here

It’s the end. What do I want to say?
‘F you’ to all the bastards.
‘Thank you’ to anyone who was a friend.
‘The world needs help,’ would be my final conclusion from my research here.
And I’d ask ‘Why.’ Like I’ve been asking my whole life. Why is the world
So messed up? Why are people so mean? Why don’t people get
That we need to help each other while we’re here.
If you’re one that believes that this is all there is,
Why do you trash the place?
Why do you trash the people who are stuck
Here with you and could
Actually help you enjoy it more.
Then I’d end with
‘What was was’ and
‘It doesn’t matter anymore.’
Not to me, anyway. I’m
Outta here.

Clara Klein has been a freelance writer for almost 30 years She first took up the pen to help her cope after her mother’s death, and hasn’t stopped writing since. Many of her writings are poems, prayers, and prose about life situations. Her aim is to inspire and help people by sharing wisdom she has learned from difficult circumstances. The subject of final poems was apropos for her to write about, as she has been forced to face the subject of death head on.

#finalpoems / [?]

DEMENTIA

When she unraveled,
I collected
her frayed edges
and tangled words

and knit
the embrace
of her.

In the cold abyss
of my own
unknown,
she keeps me warm.

And now I know
why she taught me
how to sew.

Michele Popadich is a Chicago native. She has been published in Driftless. She has self-pu blished ananthology called Unsweetened, as well as Uncharted, a travel themed book of poetry and photo graphy.She also runs an Instagram account called Petit Poetry which celebrates the union of the visual and thelyrical elements  of poetry into one delightfully petit experience.

#finalpoems / [?]

Dream Wind

The place where we ache to go again.
-“Don Draper”-

It begins by dreaming itself into form, ripple and wave,
soft swell and breaker, whatever source it springs from,
desolate lover’s plaint, shimmery scorched alluvial bed,
gnarly surfer Jersey shore pipeline, Margate to Manahatta,
so small a thing this summer wind shrouding hollyhock mallow,
shedding willow fuzz abroad, passing politely, first, as mist
over bottomland poplar and sycamore, upland stone-sere conifer,
ascending as thick fog to meet mountain peak and crest
in dense, blind florets as unclear as life itself, we lumpen,
motely, spirit-dreaming proles waiting to bliss highs and lows
of living in the Not Knowing, waiting to Only Connect! be taken
to a place on every summer breath where we know we are loved,
where, when night turns blue and starlit, all else just fine dust filaments.

-March 2018-

FROM FALLING was published Fall 2017 (Spirit-of-the-Ram P). Work appears in AGNI, CINCINNATI POETRY R, KANSAS Q, LOUISVILLE R, MISSISSIPPI R, NEW YORK Q, RHINO, SONORA R, TEXAS OBSERVER; PITTSBURGH Q; & BASEBALL BARD, among others. EVERYTHING SPEAKING CHINESE received the SunStone Poetry Prize (AZ). Recognitions include NEA & NEH Fellowships and nominations for Pushcarts and The NEA Western States’ Book Awards. Dream Wind manuscript is currently under review at publishers. I divide personal and professional lives between Asia and the Desert/Mountain Southwest.

#finalpoems / [?]

ONE WEEK LEFT

See,

Feel,

Listen,
Touch, be-

Live. Beware,
Behold all
That comes, be-

Seech, be free in ways
That past decades did
Not allow you. Taste
The air when the sun
Rises, spread your arms…

SIX DAYS LEFT

Think,

Dream,

Search and
You’ll find

A spaceship
By your side.
Look at her,

Drink her, relish her,
Tell her you hope to
Find her waiting for
You at heaven’s gate.
Then watch the sun rise.

FIVE DAYS LEFT

Smile,

Laugh,

Allow
Your heart

To be glad.
Allay your
Children’s fears.

Play in dirt with them,
Ask them about their
Dreams and hopes and if
They had a way to
Save the world; They will!

FOUR DAYS

Now,

Cry.

Let your
Anguish

Become at
One with death.
Make a list

Of the things you must
Do if you had an
Extra day or week.
You are allowed to
Look for real spaceships!

THREE DAYS

Sleep!

Wake,

And sleep
Again.

The past four
Days are gone.
Look ahead.

Two Days

Do

All

Again
In one.

D-day

Die!

Ahmad Holderness is a poet, aspiring writer, and a medical doctor. His poems and haikus have appeared in different journals. He believes poetry can be used as a medication and hope his collections can be bought at a drugstore in the future. He writes from Lagos, Nigeria where he enjoys the aromatherapy of family life.

#finalpoems / [?]

“Creating Cataclysm: Buarquean Construct”

I

He ignored his soul like it would last.
He cultivated his mind like it was his last,
And his body like it was weak,
And paced his room like he was meek.

He shuttered his windows like he was entombed.
He barricaded the street like he was doomed.
Door to door with insistent fervor,
Bleary-eyed about town with triumphant clamor.

He alerted the state like it was destiny.
He fled the coast seeking shelter.
He tumbled into waves like a deity.
When the Earth stopped, he imploded like a whirlpool.

He hurtled from the Earth like a tumbleweed,
And burned through the solar system like kindling,
And disintegrated through the galaxy like a dandelion,
And fluttered through the supercluster like a feather,
And vanished at the edge of the multiverse like he was gossamer.

II

He ignored his soul like it was his last.
He cultivated his mind like it was his last,
And his body like it was redundant,
And paced his room like he was a fervor.

He shuttered his windows like it was shelter.
He barricaded the street like he was a dandelion.
Door to door with insistent destiny,
Bleary-eyed about town with triumphant gossamer.

He alerted the state like it was doomed.
He fled the coast seeking clemency.
He tumbled into waves like a whirlpool.
When the Earth stopped, he imploded like a tumbleweed.

He hurtled from the Earth like a feather.
He burned through the solar system like a deity.
He disintegrated through the galaxy like he was entombed.
He fluttered through the supercluster like he was meek,
And vanished at the edge of the multiverse like he was weak.

III

He ignored his soul like it was kindling.
He cultivated his mind like it was a deity.
He barricaded the street like he was a tumbleweed.
He alerted the state like it was a dandelion,
And disintegrated through the galaxy like he was gossamer,
And fluttered through the supercluster like he was doomed,
And vanished at the edge of the multiverse like it was destiny.

IV

For this smog-ridden air; for this endless despair;
For this dank lair; for the demon not there;
For this thin hair; for this lack of care;
God bless me.

For your damned heir; for his empty chair;
For an answered prayer; for this rotten pear;
For this mended tear; for a divided pair;
God bless me.

For all I accidentally impair; for all you repair;
For a face so fair; for all you ensnare;
For a longing stare; for a passing scare;
God bless me.

Bernardo Villela has a BFA in Film from LIU Post. His first short film Suffer the Little Children, won four awards at 13 festivals worldwide. He has since branched out directing and editing short films, editing a feature, writing and directing a TV commercial; and writing and directing for theater. He’s most recently turned to fiction publishing a novella and three short story collections. You can read more about these various pursuits at www.miller-villela.com.

#finalpoems / [?]

All we have is this moment

It all has to end
I suppose I should teach you that
We are not eternal

Like the spring blossoms
Cherry petals white and pink
Rain in flittering descent
Wind-charted; how, where, when
They will fall

It all has to end
Let that be your reason for living
We are not eternal

Our campfire burning down
Even now the embers glowing
Red outline, opaque core
The s’mores gooey overflowing
Sweetness of this moment

It all has to end, so
Love impermanence’s caress
Let go of fear, cinder that would char
Experience, live knowing
We are not eternal.

Michael DeMaranville loves poetry and is constantly looking for inspiration. He has taught English in Korea, Vietnam, Russia, and currently lives and teaches in China.

#finalpoems / [?]

Dear Crestfallen Leaf,
I love your poetry beyond belief
Your words exude love, comfort, sweet relief
For this young old soul now battling disease
Awaiting Mother Mary’s soft whisper, “Let It Be”
Bringing a whole new meaning to carpe diem, seize.

Running down the dream, only to find
Karma’s a trip, with no travel agent in mind
And this, my desperate attempt to answer you in kind.
Maybe just one last trip, for old times’ sake
Niagara, Superior, Victoria Lake
“But the sea is wide and I cannot swim over
Nor have I the wings to fly.”

Still might I fashion, from my imagination,
Destinations just over that horizon.
Chocolate on your pillow, a room with a view
Through my mind’s eye
I glimpse Scarborough, Innisfree, Xanadu.

“Take the wave now and know that you’re free.
Turn your back on the land, face the sea.
And in due time, I will forge
A bridge over troubled water
To lead you back home.”
Full circle on this accidental poem.

“È la fede che
Hai acceso in noi
Sento che ci salverà.”

Nita Jain is a a 25-year-old biochemist from Lilburn, Georgia. Jain enjoys hiking, watching documentaries, playing piano, and trivia. Jain’s role models include Rosalind Franklin, Rachel Carson, Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing, Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, and Oliver Sacks.

#finalpoems / [?]

let me tell you about a moment i remember
in a life where they are the cheapest currency
devalued, and
not recognized at most major
airport money exchange counters

i remember a pause we co-wrote.

you were cutting garlic
you always did it better than me
i was stirring tomatoes until the bitterness would leave them

when our moment came
a pause leached of the sharp taste of half-cooked tomatoes

we stood inside each others’ overlapping arcs of energy
without looking behind me to where you stood
holding my existence with such sweet lack of effort
us wrapped in each other easy as pie
interlaced fingers of dough touching in the middle yet
open to sunlight, receptive to moisture

knowing that to turn to you would be like coming home
but staying where i was
because i knew you wouldn’t leave

that i wouldn’t find myself alone in a hot kitchen
stirring former tomatoes, now stripped of their skin
and without the soft embrace of garlic to enhance them

no, i knew you’d still be there
coming up behind me, at any minute to pass over
those small white bits
your hands fragrant
you, holding me still,

Ilse is an uncertain, sensitive English teacher who has lived and taught in Uganda, Laos, and soon China.

#finalpoems / [?]

At The End Of It All

Colossal angled fingers,
Stretching to the sky,
Extending, uncurling like spiders legs,
Wide and red.

Poetry allows S.Peters to describe sensations that are ephemeral, abstract and poignant. Her #finalpoem was written at 30,000ft in a state of painful ecstasy, as she flew to America alone to begin a new life there. The poem describes both a fleeting moment of intense joy as well as a sensation of transcendental movement, fear and an almost holy, alien sense of purpose. “My very being was flying through the sky and I felt as if my whole body was stretching, striving for something. I am continuously living in that moment and this poem represents that.”

#finalpoems / [?]

Womyn is Phoenix. Is God.

And finally
the entire thing is gone,
swallowed as the earth licks itself aflame

sun,
an unapologetic master heads home

moon,
mistress of the night beckons sweetly in the belly of darkness.

In the beginning man slept
as the beauty of womyn was fashioned, and

I can imagine the Creator speechless while
molding flesh into curves,
lips into resistance,
hair a lasso of truth,
eyes the very embodiment of Styx,
thighs the gates to forever, now and then.

I can imagine the angels gathered,
nodding,
reverent,
wings shivering in awe at the image of God—

perfect He created them, and
when the jaws of this foundation bite shut
only She can create this life, fashion
like Him in Her image as the man sleeps—

spent like the sun.

Gervanna Stephens is a girl from a small Caribbean island with congenital amputation. She is a poet, educator, and a proud Slytherin. Gervanna has had poems published in several print and online magazines, including Whirlwind Magazine, 12 Point Collective, Spillwords and Anti-Heroin Chic. She hates public speaking, has two sisters who are way better writers than her and thinks unicorns laugh at us when we say they aren’t real.

#finalpoems / [?]

Our Daily Becoming
after Adam Clay

Like the same Mayagüez
rock my grandfather moves
from one side of his house
to the other, it should be easier

to distinguish inhales between
exhales, the hands that rebuild
his mother’s house, quenepas
spawning overnight life in green.

In these moments of living,
proof of flesh serves as a halo,
the shape of the cheapest bean
that feeds our daily becoming.

It should be easier to define
one’s path to the winning
lottery ticket, but dreams at
his feet only reflect the chasing

of beads around the rosary.
Eventually, he stops running
even if he misses it. O, how it
felt like flying he says. How he

now flaps his fingers filled with
nourishing fruit while respecting
the movement of rocks. Despite
that he says, finalmente, los

pichones le robarán el aire,
he will continue to respect
grass in his yard as the blades
always reach towards the sun.

Dimitri Reyes is a Puerto-Vegan educator, writer, artist, and community organizer from Newark, New Jersey. He is the recipient of the SLICE Magazine’s 2017 Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets and a finalist for the Arcturus Poetry Prize by the Chicago Review of Books. Dimitri is a candidate in the Rutgers- Newark MFA program and his poetry is published or forthcoming in Acentos Review, Anomaly, Hawai’i Review, Kweli, and others.

#finalpoems / [?]

Can I Get More Time? No, Okay Then.

A smile still touches the brim of my lips
I travel to my favorite places

Legs carry me to the fields
Fingers kissing the tall grass
Inhaling the crisp clean air
Bare feet sinking in the churned dirt
Finding the gravel
The south, how it hugs me

Walking to the underbelly
Where graffiti splatters cement
The abandoned buildings whisper
Telling stories of the people that lived there
Brick and green peeking through cracks
The city, how it toughens me

Through the cemetery and the church
To all of my favorite restaurants
Pressing cheek to stages
Running palm against mic
London, how it tested me

Climbing the hills
Lungs breathing in faith
At the peak hands extend to touch the clouds
It is then that tears cascade to the trembling smile
The beauty and pain potent
Sharp, like avoidance
Tennessee, Baltimore, St. Louis how they grew me

Places are easy
People,
Love swells in the heart
Dipping body one last time into the water
Caught in the current
Floating as the sky cracks open with trumpet

My taxi home is here
A smile still plays on still water
Purpose fulfilled, I love you

Sahara Sista S.O.L.S is a author, poet, actor, and teaching artist with a BFA in Communication: Theatre Studies and a specialization in Art Therapy. She was born in Knoxville, TN, raised there and in Baltimore, MD though she currently lives in St. Louis, MO. She was member of the nationally ranked St. Louis poetry slam team for three consecutive years and placed in the top 20 of Woman of the World Poetry Slam 2017. Currently she is a librarian at St. Louis Public Library.

#finalpoems / [?]

“Nothing’s the same low”

Other-sides of mountains
and empty
puddle valleys
rend cloud tides
apart in lace shard
summits,
wine-darked and airy crucible
     .     we stagger and throw our petrified agony
over obelisk anxiety, winter-picked
firefly-minds scattered across uninterrupted glacier-fields
monochrome razed
descents last cinder-colored
light stroke and secure flat spaces
Gore-Tex and Arc’teryx and
heavy sleep
wind purged apostates always coming back,
the note on the fridge says “the emptiness of the planet
    .     can’t be escaped behind any number of walls”

Nathan Caines is a student and mountain guide in the western United States.
His work has been featured in the 34th Parallel, the Bitchin’ Kitsch and Maudlin House.

#finalpoems / [?]

CLOSING BEAT

Tango two,
when two are dying
tangling you, these lives
at our toes. We lose a foot,
we’re gaining feet, an inch,
a closing beat
steps out of reach.

Times we moved when
we should have taken root.
Now repeat in reverse time.

We would miss this beat. Lost
time, last measures.

You always hated other’s beats.
We always were off.
But so was he, your first conductor.

There: we three were in sync.
Then our sway broke the moment
the last beat ceased.

Fordy Shoor studied at Sarah Lawrence College before graduating from UC Berkeley. He is a graduate student at CSU East Bay, where he served as an associate editor for Arroyo Literary Review and works in the College Link Program. His writing has been featured in Atom Magazine, CLAM, Occam’s Razor, Shotgun Honey, and the East Bay Review.

#finalpoems / [?]

Be it enacted by the Legislature of Alabama, That any person wandering or strolling about in idleness, who is able to work, and has no property to support him; or any person leading an idle, immoral, profligate life, having no property to support him, and who is able to work and does not work; or any person able to work, having no property to support him, and who has no visible or known means of a fair, honest, and reputable livelihood: (the term ‘visible and known means of a fair, honest, and reputable livelihood’ above used shall be construed to mean reasonable, continuous employment, at some lawful occupation, for reason able compensation, or a fixed and regular income from property or other investment, which income is sufficient for the support and maintenance of such vagrant); or any person having a fixed abode, who has no property to support him, and who lives by stealing, trading or bartering stolen property; or any person who is a common drunkard, or a professional gambler, living in idleness; or any able bodied person who is found begging for a living, or who quits his house and leaves his wife and children without means of substance; or any person who is able to work, and who does not work but hires out his minor children and lives upon their wages; or any person over sixteen and under twenty-one years of age, able to work and who does not work, and has no property to support him and has not some known or visible means of a fair, honest, and reputable livelihood, and whose parents are unable to support him, and who is not in attendance upon some educational institute; or any person who is a prostitute or a keeper of a house of prostitution and who has no honest employment whereby to maintain herself, is hereby declared to be a vagrant and must on conviction be fined not more than five hundred ($500.00) dollars and may also be imprisoned in the county jail or sentenced to hard labor for the county for not more than six months. Provided, that it shall be a sufficient defense to the charge of vagrancy under any of the provisions of this act that the defendant has made bona fide efforts to obtain employment at reasonable prices for his labor, and has failed to obtain the same. The provisions of this act shall not apply to persons who are idle under strike orders or lockouts.¹

I always keep my new work ID above my state
ID in my wallet because my family has been work

in this state longer than we’ve been citizens
in this state. My body was work, was wealth; what is

my body doing if it isn’t breaking
earth or breaking itself for the state? What is my body doing outside

of a school or inside
of a parked car or passing

time in a park? If my body is not on
the clock, then my body is idle,

and idle hands are the devil,
and the devil must be chained

and sentenced to a lake of fire.
And the fire can be United

Steel. The fire can be Red
Mountain ore. The fire can be a River

Falls lumber camp. The fire can be a Belle
Ellen slope. But the fire always comes

after the chain. Black bodies can’t be free
in Alabama because black bodies

were never free in Alabama. Somebody has to pay
for me, and my new work ID says I can pay. And I’m happy to

say that I can pay for my mother
when she orders pizza on Thanksgiving eve.

The new job lets me pay. I interviewed for the job
on a Thursday, the fourth day of the work week.

Four is my lucky number.
I was born on the fourth

of the month, and I’m the fourth kid when god
knows my parents didn’t need a fourth kid. But

I interviewed for the new job on a Thursday
because Thursday was always my mother’s

day off, the day she didn’t belong to J.C. Penney.
She was with me, and we had outings,

and I didn’t have to wake up early to work the coal
out of my eye and get ready to go

to grandma’s house. I was free
to sit in the front seat of the Chevy Celebrity

and ask my mom dumb kid questions
like if she ever dreamed

of being anything when she grew up.
And, really, this new job, this new ID, and this

poem won’t stop one siren
or sentencing guideline. It’s all about me

buying my independence back from an Alabama
that swore I could afford to live

a free life if I was willing to
sweat enough. It’s all about me still trying

to pay off the debt I took on
to buy into that lie.

¹ Text taken from 1903 Alabama Vagrancy Law

Jason McCall holds an MFA from the University of Miami. His collections include Two-Face God; Dear Hero, (winner of the 2012 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize); Silver; I Can Explain; and Mother, Less Child (co-winner of the 2013 Paper Nautilus Vella Chapbook Prize). He and P.J. Williams are the editors of It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop. He is an Alabama native, and he currently teaches at the University of North Alabama.