Category: Poetry

By Gigi Krembs

a spelling mistake. reciting my ABCs with a bright green lunch box in my right hand and stuttering my lmnop’s. eating peanut butter jelly sandwiches with the crust cut off. a spelling mistake. learning how to play piano. tying my shoelaces the wrong way. kids laughing and pointing their dirty index fingers like lollipops towards my stumped face. my teacher asking me to stick behind to “talk”. another spelling mistake. taking the green minibus home and wondering if the towering mountains could just fall down! sitting down at my wooden table with my father who does not understand my math problem. yelling at me. not knowing my lefts from my rights. embarrassing. playing four square at recess and never winning. hiding in the bathroom eating my lunch and sinking into the grey dirty floor. isolating. growing up with tiger moms who live in the jungle and feast on their children’s shards of homework for breakfast. waking up. brushing my teeth. looking in the mirror. laughing and knowing that if I were in a dectionary I would be a speling mistake.

Author Bio

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By Gigi Krembs

Looking down into summer,
And all I can remember is how my

skin stitched into yours like a knitted blanket,
Or how we would dance under ripples of orange light
leaving only my shadow.
Or how your checks blossomed with red cherries,
that I longed to eat.
Or how green grass grew out of the hallows of your
back sprouting with new life.
Or how we would brush our teeth together,
And imagine our mouths were at sea, struggling to stay afloat.
Or how you made the world spin and stop like a record player.
Or how you kissed me with thorns between your lips,
like you wanted it to sting.
You mistook my hand for a blade.
You folded me up like a lawn chair,
And hit me like a hiccup.
Now your teeth are made of butted cigarettes.
Now you are just a body that never deserved my shadow.
Soon will come winter. Soon you will freeze.

Author Bio

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By Gigi Krembs

What is this salt on the tip of my tongue?
It stings with the wound filled with sand, each grain scalped into my skin Is it this heart, confined in my rib cage
Or maybe it’s this uneasy fly, wandering around in the glass you left.

What is this sugar sitting on top of my lips?
Could it be the blue goosebumps of a pig
I guess it is the glaciers that melts with milk
Or my reflection in your dark round pupil.

What is this honey that sprouts from my teeth?
Intertwined yarn wrapped around our hands
Or maybe it is the joy of celebrating a candle that has never been lit Is it the haunted mouths filled with dahlias.

Could it be snow on snow.
Or ice on ice.
Is it your sugar on mine
And my honey on yours
Or maybe it’s the dream of salt on salt.

Author Bio

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By Gigi Krembs

For Babaji.

My hands disappear.
In my burnt jean pocket.
I find the Taj Mahal.
It lays in my wrinkled hand.
Cool to the touch. Dimples of light seep through. The white marble holds me.
Among the trees with windows of waffles.
My Babaji is playing hide and seek.
With a girl whose cheeks are filled with pollen. She is wearing a dress made of fluttering hummingbird wings. She has golden maple syrups for hair.
And an orchestra for a brain.
Prelude in C Major.
The white piano keys are still.
Indented with Babaji’s frail fingers.
Headlines of newspaper say.
Pigeons waddle like him.

Babaji?
After you go,
Will we still play hide and seek?

I’ll look

I’ll seek

I’ll wait

With an orchestra for a brain,
Pigeons play violin.
Trees hum.
Waffles sing.
And even the Taj Mahal dances.

Author Bio

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By Sahn Khanpour

would the mundanity of a peeled mandarin nestle in those hallowed walls,
the way those settled words seem to have settled,
the way those unspoken thoughts seem to have sunk, still sink
and the supposed scream of a kettle, better to be belittled than be that little,
steams its way through open ears–
sticky and sickly you’ve been left, wipe those hands clean before you touch
their pristine glass, fingertips that stain everything you seem to glance at–
is that what you think?
their sledgehammer touch won’t slight you,
let those pastel words and the stench of comfort back in, again,
you’re so good, again,
you feel so good, again,
laid at their convenience,
used for their convenience,
this rotten hand has hurt so sour but what are you if not convenient?

Author Bio

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By Dana Garcia Mendez

Only mexicans can enter
But we let anyone who is valid in.

You don’t have to worry about
The verde or ICE.
We worry about
the type of neive to get.
There is all the flavors
You can imagine.
I always get leche quemada y tuna.

You don’t have to worry about chismosas
Because it’s a
“Chismosa free zone”

There will be cuetes every night.
There will be fruta con chile
Or esquites whatever you want.
There will also be all kinds of agua frescas.
If we forgot one let me
Know.

You don’t have to worry about
Who’s making everything.
The people
who called us
“wetbacks”
or
“beaners”
are working,
Very hard in fact.
I will train them
To satisfy my gente.

Don’t worry though
Dance the night away
There is going to be banda
I heard.

Don’t worry please
You deserve it.
Everyone will talk about the carnival
Because there is
No way
That you will leave unsatisfied.
All the Mexicans would not
Want to leave.

Author Bio

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By Paul Dolby

Some dimes, some nickels in my satchel, oh
If I had quarters too! Then I would hear
And feel the jangles, chimes remind me—no!
Those days at prayer chanting words austere—
So flustered, I had fallen; the coins flew ways
Upon the cold ground and rolled
Among the cracks my pleasure is astray
In between the lines and I and I sold
My heart my rhythm for a beat
Satchel and lackluster metal bits
And slammed on the concrete
I lay in gum and spit
Sweet seraph, star on high, from world unbound
Come here, come now, and I will hold your sound

Author Bio

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By Hailey L. Parkinson

Thud-ump
Thud-ump
Thud-ump

What is this vibration
Deep below hidden behind the bars
Of a cage made up of bones?
Entrapped away from reach
Of the wanton greedy hands
Of any man who dare draws near.
Locked away for sacredness
In hopes to never be hurt again.

Thud-ump
Thud-ump
Thud-ump

Yet it is still pounding
Desperately
In want to be heard,
Felt, acknowledged.
A desire to be held as it once had been
In the long lost years of
A lovely past turned
Green.

Thud-ump
Thud-ump
Thud-ump

Yet it has been ignored for so long.
It has not called out like this
In so long.
Has it been weeks?
Months? Years?
It no longer remembers the
Restless butterflies that soar
Or the initial panic of the beginning.
It only remembers
Feeling, feeling, feeling.

Thud-ump

It misses feeling.
Misses stirring, dropping,
Dancing.
Oh, how it would dance
When it had been nurtured and loved.
How it wouldn’t dare crawl back
In the safety of its enclosure.
No, it had once been released
In reverence and worship.
Off its leash —
No cuffs, no chains,
No restraint in its capacity.

Thud-ump

Free;
Wind blowing through my hair,
Gentle fingertips caressing and tracing,
Eyes locked on the possibilities
Of eternity rarity,
Embracing this

Thud-ump
Thud-ump
Thud-ump

It’s hands are clutching at the prongs
Of the ribbed cage,
Anticipating of a new devotion;
A passion of wildness
That plucks at its strings
In harmony like a harp.
Screaming into the chest cavity,
Ricocheting,
“Listen to me!”
In its melodic yet cracked voice.

Thud-ump
Thud-ump
Thud-ump

This is the first time it has spoken to me
Since the incident.
First sign of life when I believed it
Benign;
Dead from lack of attention.
First time it has begged
With clenched fists against my chest,
Being devoured and drowned in agony
Of longing and desire
To be set free once again.
To embark on an adventure that could
Only have it crawling back
To where it is safe in its
Enclosure.

Thud-ump
Thud-ump
Thud-ump
Thud-ump

But his hands are reaching out
And it reaches for him, too.
I cannot deny it any longer
Even though every other being
Is in protest.
The logic, the mind,
The sense of it all.
But it does not care for sensical actions.
Does not bother with
Half-hearted maybes or baby steps.
It wishes to
Jump, jump, jump.

Thud-ump

Don’t look at me with those doe eyes,
Don’t look within me
Knowing what is held behind
Bars of protection.
Daring to release what you want
But I am terrified to give
Will only create
Feeling, feeling, feeling.

Thud-ump

Oh, how she wishes for
Feeling.

Thud-ump
Thud-ump
Thud-ump

Author Bio

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By Hailey L. Parkinson

That house on Maple Drive is far too big for the
Elderly couple who lives inside.
The lawn is too hefty of a task for them to accomplish;
The neighbor’s boy mows it for them instead.
They thank him with excellent baking skills, gifting him with treats.
They’re always making something;
Pies, brownies, cookies, and chocolates.
Spoiling their neighbors with charity and kindness
As grandparents would to their grandkids.
The windows are draped with curtains of sea foam blue
Along with shutters that always remain open,
Welcoming anyone who would like to stop by.
Sunflowers grow in their backyard
Within a wilted garden in the far-left corner.
Shaky hands and blinded eyes can only take care of so much.
The walls are decorated with family pictures that are at least
A decade old.
Oh, how those kids have grown.
The color scheme within their décor
Masks over the emptiness of that home.
Half of their hearts reside in Nebraska and California,
Tearing them apart.
Those toy rooms assigned for boys and girls,
Who now make their way in adult lives,
Remain vacant.
Endless chests of toys never to be played with.
They babysit the neighbor’s kids
So that the toys don’t get lonely.
So that they don’t get lonely,
In that house on Maple Drive.

Author Bio

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By Hailey L. Parkinson

The hair left on my clothes, car, and blankets
Were once my biggest concerns.
Now I never wish to remove them
From where they sit.
They can be embedded into every piece of fabric,
Every corner of this house,
And every inch of my heart
For the rest of my life, if needs be.
The horizon may bring us something unfortunate,
But your fur will remain behind
Reminding me of your once loving presence.
It may lay with dust and drive my nose crazy,
But I’d rather sneeze and remember you
Than have to completely say goodbye.

Author Bio

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