kingsoftrain

Jessie Lynn McMains is a poet, writer, zine-maker, and small press owner. Her words have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Awkward Mermaid, Wyrd & Wyse, Juke Joint, Occulum, Memoir Mixtapes, and others; she’s also a contributing writer for Pussy Magic. You can find her website at recklesschants.net, or find her on Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram @rustbeltjessie

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forget the fuck away from me (origin stories of a safety pin girl)

coil magnetic reels back into cassettes
collect scraps flaked from yellowed glue bind
sheafs once held by rubber bands now
snapped & staples all a-rusted

static- magnetic between voices graves ghosts
so loud & sorrow-slick my blood smeared
with all that dark lilac remember

string me a necklace sing me a song decipher
me these stories how I was born to hate
pink dresses’ itched rustle & cobweb silence
by four I was lost to the basement carved

Joseph Murphy’s poetry has appeared in a wide range of online and print journals. His second collection of poems, Having Lived, was published in 2018; his first collection, Crafting Wings, in 2017. Murphy is a member of the Colorado Authors’ League and for eight years (2010-2018) was poetry editor for an online literary publication, Halfway Down the Stairs.

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Celebration of Being

1.

Under an equal moon
I see the mountain lake
as an infinity of reflection
as the center
of a boundless faith

I see the lake and the stride of the moon
loose from me
like vapor
loose from the cove of a skull

These images
without distance
out deep in time

As I remember
I know
the angled wheel
from which my own self
is spun

2.

From a rooftop
I watch gulls weave
over seawall and pine
over a village’s
well-worn paths

Alexandre Ferrere is a writer who lives in France, whose essays have appeared in Beatdom and Empty Mirror, whose poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Rust+Moth, 8poems Journal, Riggwelter Press, The Ideate Review, Barren Magazine, armarolla and Lucent Dreaming.

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Building Moments: After Death

[Night is libre in smoked dead days
but
instant hangs or falls from the trees.]

[Plates
are being emptied
by mouths of death.]

[Loss is a loss of all:
the deft motion,
the daft emotion
(moorings for explanations).]

[The tired eyes
sacrificed in the after
noon after
rest
while shadows try dancing
over towns.]

[The infinite layouts:
minutes
wait side by side
for a wisest schedule.]

[(future thrown
at the feet of Greek statues)]

[“Burn or smile”;
the gurgles from the bloody pools of Hell.]

[It does not
come within
but without.]

__*

Coreen Hampson lives in Grants Pass, OR. She is a gardener and poet. Her first book of poetry, Growing Smaller, has recently been accepted by Flowstone Press. Poems recently accepted to appear in Amethyst Review, Turtle Island Quarterly, and Pulsar.

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WRITING ON THE RIVER

My words float in bubbles of foam
at the bottom of the riffle.
Or are they my words? They
may belong to someone else.
They have moved on downstream
anyway. But now
another cluster forms. Foam bubbles
whiten before they burst, the words
becoming something else.

A song woven by winds
in the locusts and cottonwoods
maybe.
Or the rush of the riffle itself.
And then there is the whistle
of the Tannenger before it crosses
to meet its mate.
And the cry of a lonely daughter.

Not my words, but I will claim them.

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