My son has been sick his whole life but he doesn’t remember being sick. He has no future because it’s all we have. God puts a face to god, but touch invented touch. I should’ve been more curious about the world. In Ohio, anger subsides. Because it’s new.
In the dream I am scrubbing the floor of hell with donated blood. A phone is behind me somewhere playing footage of god two days ago eating a lightbulb but not faster than others. In the dream I ask you under my breath what it means. My mother and father make me sad. If you were them, where would you recover from a botched attempt to switch mouths? Would you both be in the same room? I have heard that angels throw their voices when they die and that they can die from seeing someone give signs in baseball. Ohio is gone for most of the dream.
Upcoming readings for the 'I think I can't speak for everyone here' series:
Saturday, July 13th, 3pm EST: featured Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi and Saba Keramati
Saba Keramati is a Chinese-Iranian writer from California. She is the author of Self-Mythology (University of Arkansas Press, 2024), selected by Patricia Smith for the Miller Williams Poetry Series. She is also the poetry editor for Sundog Lit.
Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi, Frontier I, is a Nigerian-Hausa multidisciplinary artist, poet, and a licenced Medical Laboratory Scientist from Bobi. She is the author of the chapbook Cadaver of Red Roses (winner of the 2023 Derricotte/Eady Prize) and winner of the inaugural Folorunsho Editor’s Poetry Prize 2023, Labari Poetry Prize 2023, the inaugural Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature 2023, and Gimba Suleiman Hassan Gimba ESQ Poetry Prize, 2022 and the first beneficiary of Carolyn Micklem Scholarship. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Strange Horizons, FIYAH, Uncanny Magazine, Poetry Daily, Agbowo, Torch Literary Arts, Arc Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. Her chapbook Uncensored Snapshots is forthcoming with Chestnut Review (April/June 2025). She is active on X @ZainabBobi.
Sunday, July 14th, 4pm EST: featured Melissa Eleftherion and Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong
Melissa Eleftherion (she/they) is a writer, a librarian, and a visual artist. Born & raised in Brooklyn, she holds degrees from Brooklyn College, Mills College, and San Jose State University. They are the author of two poetry collections, field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & gutter rainbows (Querencia Press, 2024), twelve chapbooks including abject sutures (above/ground press, 2024), & several books currently touring the rejection circuit. Her work has been widely published & featured in venues like Quarter after Eight, Sixth Finch, Entropy, & Barren Magazine. Melissa now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Branch Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as Poet Laureate Emeritus of the City of Ukiah. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.
Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong is from Oregon. Her poems can be found in ONLY POEMS, Shenandoah, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and The Columbia Review, among others. She is a Wednesday's child.
Thanks to all who participated in/attended the reading yesterday. So special to hear William Erickson and Devan Murphy pray over seashells. A recording of the reading is here
Please join us over Zoom at our readings throughout this month. Please email bluejawedsnake@gmail.com with questions, comments, to request the Zoom link for a reading, and/or to sign-up for the open mic
Upcoming events:
Saturday, July 13th, 3pm EST: featured Zaynab Iliyasu Bobi and Saba Keramati
Sunday, July 14th, 4pm EST: featured Melissa Eleftherion and Kaylee Young-Eun Jeong
Friday, July 26th, 9pm EST: featured Marylyn Tan and Angelique Zobitz
The healer’s secret diet confuses starvation. We live in houses, here, and share dancing videos that will touch three people at once in a cornfield. We bomb our unloaded guns and say things in singsong that are attuned to a cute, collateral resurrection. I drink and my ribs tell god.
kingsoftrain 