TODAY AT 4PM EST!
Featured readers Nadia Arioli and Jay Besemer!
The first of two events this weekend for the 'I think I can't speak for everyone here' reading series.
You can email bluejawedsnake@gmail.com for the zoom link and to sign-up for the open mic
Nadia Arioli is the cofounder and editor in chief of Thimble Literary Magazine. Arioli’s poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net three times and for the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Cider Press Review, Rust + Moth, McNeese Review, Penn Review, Mom Egg, and elsewhere. Essays have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Hunger Mountain, Heavy Feather Review, SOFTBLOW, and elsewhere. Artwork has appeared in Permafrost, Kissing Dynamite, Meat for Tea, Pithead Chapel, Rogue Agent, and Poetry Northwest. Arioli’s forthcoming collections are with Dancing Girl Press and Fernwood Press.
Poet and artist Jay Besemer is the author of numerous poetry collections, including [Your Tongue Is as Long as a Tuesday] (Knife/Fork/Book 2023); Men & Sleep (Meekling Press 2023); the double chapbook Wounded Buildings/Simple Machines (Another New Calligraphy 2022) and Theories of Performance (The Lettered Streets Press, 2020)). He was a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Transgender Poetry, and a finalist for the 2017 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. Find him online at www.jaybesemer.net and on Twitter and Bluesky @divinetailor.
My first onscreen death was a horse.
And my second, a horse.
If my scene is empty
I’m not poor.
Imagery is form’s broken comb.
Children
in the dark
their hair
for Benjamin Niespodziany
We moved
away
but kept
the same
tornado.
I felt nothing for three days then something for seven straight.
My pills lost their invisibility. God disappeared.
A toddler with a spraycan
walked
into traffic
to start a church
for toddlers
with spraycans.
A sister said to a sister
you’ll die
if you keep
playing dead.
A delayed mirror
personalized
its first
suicide.
I wrote about being pulled from a bathroom stall by a boy I wanted to be.
I folded my mouth into a hurt that only a toothache’s
mother
could harm.
You loved your father.
Your father loved his.
SNOW
Lara Glenum
Action Books 2024
All wrecked attitude and in-house mania, Lara Glenum’s holistically punkish Snow is a fairy tale of reverent perversion as told from the side of two recut mouths. In verse of such unified doubletalk, it hurts to hurt. It hurts to laugh. Glenum is a student of the student’s deep child, and outsources the body acoustic and orgasmic and dooms it and frees it to roam for both leisure and pleasure in an open-air escape room. So knowledgeably sad, Snow has beats so bleakly hilarious that one might need to see if the house is coming from inside the call. You won’t hear it coming.
~
reflection by Barton Smock
Touch touches everything it touches.
The tv
our own
grief
santa
ever you see
disappeared
from its own
pain
a rabbit
with no
skull
not stare
at god
ever
you nod
off
sleep
was bathing
death
looked
how shy
Saturday, May 18th / Sunday, May 19th – The ‘I think I can’t speak for everyone here’ Reading Series
Hey all! Please join us this Saturday May 18th AND Sunday May 19th for the next two installments of The 'I think I can't speak for everyone here' reading series.
You can email bluejawedsnake@gmail.com for the zoom link and to sign-up for the open mic
Saturday May 18th, 4pm EST
featured: Nadia Arioli and Jay Besemer
Nadia Arioli is the cofounder and editor in chief of Thimble Literary Magazine. Arioli’s poetry has been nominated for Best of the Net three times and for the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Cider Press Review, Rust + Moth, McNeese Review, Penn Review, Mom Egg, and elsewhere. Essays have been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize and can be found in Hunger Mountain, Heavy Feather Review, SOFTBLOW, and elsewhere. Artwork has appeared in Permafrost, Kissing Dynamite, Meat for Tea, Pithead Chapel, Rogue Agent, and Poetry Northwest. Arioli’s forthcoming collections are with Dancing Girl Press and Fernwood Press.
Poet and artist Jay Besemer is the author of numerous poetry collections, including [Your Tongue Is as Long as a Tuesday] (Knife/Fork/Book 2023); Men & Sleep (Meekling Press 2023); the double chapbook Wounded Buildings/Simple Machines (Another New Calligraphy 2022) and Theories of Performance (The Lettered Streets Press, 2020)). He was a 2021 Lambda Literary Award Finalist for Transgender Poetry, and a finalist for the 2017 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature. Find him online at www.jaybesemer.net and on Twitter and Bluesky @divinetailor.
Sunday May 19th, 3pm EST
featured: Pamela Kesling and Bee Morris
Pamela Kesling grew up in a hole in the woods in central Appalachia, with mostly her sisters and books for companionship. She taught herself to read at three years old and read voraciously from that point on. Over the years, she has written magazine articles, newsletters, tourism brochures, and lots of marketing copy. Today, her personal focus is on poetry about the complexities of life in Appalachia, much of which is inspired by the natural world surrounding her. She occasionally dabbles in short stories as well, and has a novel perpetually "in progress." By day, she works in business development for a mid-size regional law firm. She earned her bachelor’s degree in English Literature from West Virginia Wesleyan College and an MBA from Marshall University. She has been published in The Vandalia and Metro Valley Magazine.
Bee Morris is the author of Notes on Qualia (Bottlecap Press, 2023). Their published work can be found in various online and print journals, including Poet Lore, Salamander Magazine, Underblong, and Landfill. They reside in San Francisco.
a spot
in the human
brain
all my life
a worm
in my son’s
dream
my eyes
tell my eyes
that light
is on fire
that light
can trick
a bomb
it needs
a machine
that uses
men
I am in
that spot
a private
doll
burns
its dick
with a dick
I crush
the doll
it hurts
it hurts
god
fact one
fact two
fact three
on boats
there’s no
term
for suicide
suicide
watch
the bird
sick
sea
The baby is sad three times before it dies. At the funeral, we smile with our mouths closed. A singer friend of mine tells me he can still feel the body temperature of a wolf spider in the arch of his foot. The spider is fine. It might be the only spider in Ohio. Ohio is a pharmacy run by children. There’s food, but there’s no food. Mirrors belong to the puzzle piece in my throat. Teeth confuse god.
kingsoftrain 