Peter Taylor

Words

 

I want to say thank you
for welcoming me into your healing homes
even though all I do is dishes
and then I break a few—
eleven, I think; maybe six.
They are buried in the usual places.

I want to say thank you
for teaching me useful things again,
like eggs that have more than chickens
in them, frogs, cooking spices,
playing cards, and how some walls
that are hard and immovable
can be beautiful, too.

I want to say thank you
for listening to my poems
even though they made you cry,
and trusting me with your car,
and offering me kindness
I could not find on my own.

I want to say thank you
but dream, this is family.




Peter Taylor’s poems explore how time and imagination shape our perceptions of the world through creative expression. He is the author of three books and his poems have appeared in literary journals in Australia , Canada , the Caribbean, France , India , Romania , Sweden , the United Kingdom , and the United States . He lives in Aurora , Canada .

 

Sophie Waring

Bring Battle



To hasten the clouds that

charge the west in the dark. Light

of the red apple that peels

itself from the caterpillar

and crudely turns crimson.

Where are the babies now?

Are they turning flash west? Coconut

bluebells of African descent are folding into tulips –

a clown of great importance, an eel

in the bath.



She was a north-westerly,

diacritic situation, bringing gingerbread

to the house of Eden,

rubbing rosemary on her thighs.

Orange fever, bring me the children.

Let me feed them

my home, my sanity

in its own right. Great golden houses

with little yellow men. No crowns,

no leftover rivers

or open wound sores.





Sophie Waring: I am twenty-one years old and live in Palmerston North, New Zealand with my fiance. When I was eighteen, I plummeted into a dark and dangerous world. I was in the prime of my life, having just recieved dux of my highschool. I was studying towards a double major at Massey university and finished my first year with straight A's, but I was holding a dark secret. Following self-harm, substance abuse, overdose and a very close suicide attempt, I spent seven weeks in a psychiatric ward. I left hugely medicated and sedated and the next year was quite a battle. However, I feel like just now my life is getting back on track. I felt unable to write (though I had a massive output while unwell) until recently, and although my studies never resumed, I have just started a new position training to become a pharmacy dispensary technician. I am also engaged to my soul mate and feel like I am finally happy. For someone my age, I feel like an old soul. I probably know myself, as well as the ins and outs of life, more than a lot of people. My values have completely changed, but what's important to me now is family, love and happiness. 

Thomas L. Vaultonburg

Bus Station


Please don’t steal my bag.


Please don’t steal my blue bag
With all my poems in it.


Please don’t try to to steal my
Blue bag with all my poems
In it and a bag of pepitas
And the number for my caseworker
Then feign confusion when caught
Because you, too, have a blue bag
That says Downtown Mental Health Center.


Please don’t try to lift my blue
Bag with all my mom’s cancer poems
And the name of my caseworker in it etc...


It’s far too heavy.



Beaten


Every face
At the bus station
Is a torn
Lottery ticket.





Thomas L. Vaultonburg is from Rockford, Illinois, United States. He was diagnosed with both Schizoid Personality Disorder and Major depressive Disorder at age 16. Most of his adult life has been a battle against these disorders. Poetry has always been one of his great solaces. His poetry has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Chiron Review, Caliban, Bogg, Gargoyle, and others. 

B.Z. Niditch

Understanding

What signals
when eyes withdraw
their masks
and you notice
a light twinkles
on a mushrooming
face with expressionism
rebounding to thought
of choreography
covering themselves
in the air
of conversation
in ideograms of language
hidden from awareness
that only a poet
would comprehend. 




B.Z. Niditch is a poet, playwright, fiction writer and teacher. His work is widely published in journals and magazines throughout the world, including: Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Art; The Literary Review; Denver Quarterly; Hawaii Review,; Le Guepard (France); Kadmos (France); Prism International; Jejune (Czech Republic); Leopold Bloom (Budapest); Antioch Review; and Prairie Schooner, among others. He lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.