Jack Galmitz

Looking Out


Through the door
pass a hundred clowns or more
each with a dagger
through the door
A woman enters my room
eating her placenta
through the door
the ballroom floor covered
with prayer carpets
through the door
Men seen dying
in fictions
through the door
infants working
without compensation
through the door
troubadours
forget
their songs




Jack Galmitz is on SSD for 4 or 5 mental illnesses.

Nima Kian

BODY GUEST

I.

Body, I see you walk away.

Gravel streets recognize

my absence in your soles.

Did you learn a new language or did I

forget the way we talked to each other?

You grew quiet like a vessel, drained.

II.

We cannot emigrate out of skin

that holds us together.

Another language changed us

from the inside. We are

foreigners in our self.

I understand that

our body-guest rearranges our living

arrangement, removes myelin

sheathing you draped

around axons of our brain and spinal cord.

Your reactions—what feel like multiple

tiny legs running on my skin,

electric water pouches under my feet,

crumpled fingers like deformed paper—

alarm me.

III.

We possess a personal painter

who resides throughout our nervous system.

You and I, plus one whose abstract arts—

little white lines, narrow, scattered—

weaken us.

A new language takes time.

Fluency rescues.    

Nima Kian lives in Lincoln, NE, where he teaches writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in, Saint Mary's Magazine, Black Lantern Publishing, Mascara Literary Review, Mythic Delirium, Stone Highway Review, Strange Horizons, Blast Furnace, among others.

Linda Hunter

Torture

Racing thoughts run through my head,
I believe the demons are trying to keep me in bed.
Shake with fear all day long and hear a strange pop,
Please someone help me! make this stop!
I pray for the thoughts to stop tormenting me,
I feel like jumping high from a cliff into the sea.
Bad dreams and scary nights feel each day,
I wonder how long I will have to stay.
The drugs I take to make me well,
Fill my head so big I don’t want to swell.
So many tormenting years to come,
Why me? This torture is no fun.



Linda Hunter suffers from bi-polar type 2. She takes numerous medications.

 

Jade Wallace

The Vines

twine upon the wall, garlands

for brick red hair that falls

from the head office

how do you feel about that?

sand skittering across rock with the

sound of

wordless whispering;

but my mother had words for it,

and she said-

let’s talk about you

I’d rather speak of the white

bench, around which the

trees huddled in quiet

ceremony

why don’t you speak of yourself?

myself, lying

on woven grass,

small egg in a vast nest.

the sky is pearly

curving blue:

I am on the inside

of a seashell

i really think we need to work on developing your sense of self

senses: five:

radar by which

I receive images and

translate the transmissions

into paper logic

same time next week then?

thank you, doctor. 

Jade Wallace is an M.A. student in Social Justice and Equity Studies at Brock University. She currently has two chapbooks available for sale through Grey Borders books (http://www.greyborders.com) and has recently been published in (d)ead (g)end(er) magazine (see: http://deadgender.blogspot.com). She also has two blogs: http://madamedechevre.tumblr.com (her literary blog) and http://lasciviousort.blogspot.com (her silly but serious Star Wars-inspired blog). Also, Jade really likes her new eyeglasses.