Anti-Heroin Chic

Here’s another piece from the not-too-distant past that was published in @antiheroinchic.bsky.social back in 2021. I truly hope this zine comes back from its indefinite hiatus very soon because it is missed!

Poetry by Sara Mae SashaW   CC Moon Roof Gothic  In temporal drag, I press a blade of grass  to my palm & call backwards. This time I do not  return but bring that small child out from hiding,  our voice...

you can read a couple of the pieces from the collection here, in @antiheroinchic.bsky.social:

The nightmare of grief - flashback to a father on chemotherapy. Originally published by Anti Heroin Chic @antiheroinchic.bsky.social

Poetry by Brooke Harries Nicholas Erwin   CC Content  It was third grade when my mom was taken from a rose garden where she had wandered hallucinating through a pale stone path.  They put her in a straitjacket,...

"Tonight I contend that she died, but I lost her
earlier. Like the time she took me to the grocery store so late

at night I rubbed my eyes, pretended we were on a trip,
each day I decide who to be, for or despite, my queen.

Such quests, each memory. Painful as emerging form."

Poetry By Jessica Whipple Sovraskin   CC Sometimes I Google You   There are names I know like a stairwell knows an echo poems I can’t write   an echo in a stairwell is a poem: footsteps on pavement   footsteps...

Sharing again for #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth, from my poem called "Sometimes I Google You" in @antiheroinchic.bsky.social

"we stormed that brutalist column
you have to see it up here now--
there’s so much open air"

It's here: heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/poetry-...

Poetry by Alison Hurwitz Rich Carstensen   CC Lichen Marriage Decades on, we texture surface in a spray of tiny trumpets. My algae threads your fungus in a symbiotic chord.  Our story’s spored on pelts of moss,...

"Is this not the way of everything?
See how these trees allow the wind to strip away
their leaves. They raise bare arms in praise of letting go.

Will you join them? Will you answer
when your heart is shaken wakeful by
the tremor of a shift?
...You, too, can modulate

your life into another key."

Poetry by Marjorie Tesser Nicholas Erwin   CC MOOD INDIGO     some babies are born with the blues, souls tuned to the minor or diminished fedoras permanently askew.   some babies are born to the blues, pale eyes...

"some babies are born with the blues,
souls tuned to the minor or diminished
fedoras permanently askew.

some babies are born to the blues,
pale eyes like searchlights or dark
eyes like pools read sagas in cloud

striations or the patterns
leaves make against sky.
some babies are born for the blues"

Poetry by Gregory Smith Neal Wellons  CC BANDO!!!   I’m listening to Bando Stone And The New World and reading a Donald Glover interview and he says really, I feel sorry for y’all, you really didn’t even get...

"Sobriety is waking up every morning
Looking at the burn scars on my arm
Like a constellation.
Tracing the stars
and piecing together the plot."

NEW POEM #228: "So Bound is Creation by the Cry of Trumpets" by Matthew E. Henry (@mehpoeting.bsky.social)

"creation groans for the time
when it’s not fit outside
for man. when the cities
have been cast down
and all is unblemished"

stonecirclereview.com/so-bound-is-...

#Poem #PoetryCommunity

Poetry by Kika Dorsey Stephen A. Wolfe   CC Poetry tilled land at my feet sowing seed writing with eyelashes dipped in moonlight their curve my closed mouth I’ve closed my eyes for you I’ve gathered...

"to be a writer
is to garnish an ache
of the blossom
and how it breaks
to rise and open
to a temporary light
to be a writer
is to dissect
that very ache
and build a muscle
over the cold, hard bone"

Poetry by Naomi Madlock Vincent Parsons   CC GUTTER DAYS She used to dance on broken glass, used to peck, every morning,  her own feet from the glue trap. Sometimes the only way out  is through a wound. And...

"You’ve made a habit

of asking before entering
your own room, forgotten

how to don a red apron and swing
out of the weather house. Look

how the spiderlings cast themselves
on threads the colour of wind

into the unknown. I’ve heard the sun
can grow an oak, the robin

testing every note it knows."

Poetry by Faith Brown Nicholas Erwin   CC When He Lays I watch my father lay in bed  fetal and pale. Like a newborn baby, like a chick in egg shell. He lays in his nest made of sticks, springs, and sawdust...

"I watch my father lay in bed
fetal and pale.

Like a newborn baby,
like a chick in egg shell.

He lays in his nest
made of sticks, springs, and sawdust —

made of malt, sweat, and ash.
I wonder what his dreams are made of...

and I witness how fast we wane."

Poetry by Romy Rhoads Ewing Heath Cajandig   CC full fat Ten in the morning,  Barely, weeping over the Ways to feign something. I read from an incredibly unreputable Source that there are Ways to make your cat Feel...

happy birthday to this piece in @antiheroinchic.bsky.social :")

heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/poetry-...

Poetry by Pam Sinicrope Dan Finnen   CC Nocturne with a Peregrine Falcon Another night bracketed with pain. Should I abandon sleep’s helium balloon, untie from the dream where I unhinge  the hingeless door....

It’s Your Choice

to unfasten your lungs,
to breathe gentler air beneath

despair, to fill every branching alveoli
like the whispering trees—to feel

crisp winter and glacier your wounds,
to lose time’s cusp and find

a ten-point buck in moon glow

Poetry by Susan Kolon George Bremer   CC ​ What to do while your mug of tea reheats  Watch the mug you stole from Waffle House spin to nowhere on the turntable. Picture the red leather bracelet with the...

"Every kid is born wanting to play Freeze Tag and Marco Polo, to look in the mirror and say, I like you, I really like you. Squint at your reflection as the glass panel beeps, You’re it."

It’s beautiful in DC right now. Peak bloom from the cherry blossoms and petals drift by wherever you walk, blown in from some distant or nearby tree.

When I first transitioned, they were blooming, years ago.

On this Transgender Day of Visibility, I am yearning for our own spring to return.

What are you doing Wednesday night? Come hang out with me and these 2 awesome guys!

Poetry by Patsy Creedy ​Rich Carstensen   CC They Were Talking About Transformation When they complained about the fire Wanting to know who did it was the tragic flaw in the argument Tapestries, lines of...

"Every heart that is and remains
Must be split open

Cracked like the crust of your being
When you know what it is to be born"

Poetry by Liz Alani Justin Meissen   CC REQUIEM FOR FUN “I never got to have enough fun”  Sighed my quirky jewel of a mother With such profound loss That fun became a stone in her mouth  In her German...

"You are a pageant of opulent flaws
Not drum-tight and lush limbed and dewy
But scandalously at home in your skin.
You have the wisdom to marvel at your totality
To rhapsodize the endless wonder of you
To find your way back to that pink-tulled five-year-old
and grow young again."

Poetry by Jennifer Maloney Tim Vrtiska   CC ​ Sacred In the bookstore parking lot two weeks after I tell him no I just want to be friends he follows me to my car screaming words that when I repeat them    try to...

"I still go there sometimes
not at night not alone
but it’s where my friends hang out and just now I saw the advertising for the zenn-y little poetry group he leads there they call it a journey of sacred community and it’s hard when you finally understand what you are and what you’re not"

Poetry by Heidi Spitzig Tim Vrtiska   CC Ausa Vatni She wants to change her last name when her daughter turns 18, Having already gone through her Phoenix stage she’s moved on to water, to where the ash of her...

"listen, little child. Terrified fawn. I got us out.

I know your greatest fear is to be left behind,
forgotten forever. But now I’ve eaten you up
like you’re medicine, my sweet little venison.

You live in my belly, my chewed up savior,
once swallowed down to hold their favor"

Poetry by Julie Novak-McSweeney George Bremer   CC Angel Life        1. My early taste for cigarettes and vertigo crouched me in mom’s bathroom every dirty morning locked in against questions exhaust fan on loud...

"Up I grew
became
close personal friend
to grape and grain.

No singing now.

Sparks flew.

Nights got later.

Forty years
of days shed like ash
of putting my fire
out."

Poetry by jim bourey Paul VanDerWerf   CC ​ An Observation on How the Passing of Sixty Years Has Changed the Social Dynamics of the Class of 1964 I’d like to tell you that as we walked  down the path to...

"I look for loners,
those of us who often stood aside
observing, criticizing, hoping
to be noticed. Today I’m surprised

by our numbers. Perhaps being an outsider
is healthy. And today, with strength
in our numbers, we have become a faction."

Poetry by Bob King Nicholas Erwin   CC What It Takes to Solve a Crossword Puzzle I don’t know. Seriously, I don’t let myself do crosswords because my day disappears when I can’t come up with the...

"My mother has this thing
where she brags about family members to
other family members, but rarely actually tells
the actual object of her admiration how proud
or amazing or intelligent she is... if you have the power
to give someone rocket fuel, why wouldn’t
you want to count them down to launch?"

Poetry by Siân Killingsworth ​ Øyvind Holmstad   CC ​ Ouroboros Fever A shaking venom moves in my hours. Time feels too long. I granulate  my emotions, spend  each grain, miserly. Else be mired...

Two poems of mine, featured in @antiheroinchic.bsky.social a while back:
heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/poetry-...

Poetry by Elizabeth Posner Nicholas Erwin   CC Sliding Door  It's possible  this whole thing will come apart.  A Boeing dismantling mid-air,  pieces scattered for miles into unrecognizable  fragments of what we...

"I know something about that,
about splitting yourself in two
but to save your own life.

He’s coming at me again
with that not-right look in his eyes.
I know what comes next.
Part of me is someplace else,
not swallowed by his darkness.

That part goes on like a whole person."

Dancing Backwards Towards Pluperfect A Hybrid Poetry Collection by KossPublished by Diode Editions, Oct. 30, 2024ISBN: 978193972866148 Pages, Perfect Bound$17.50 including shipping to the U.S. U.S. Only!!! Please read more below about…

Since I'm new here, going to share some "previous" things including that I have a 48-page chapbook out from @diodeeditions.bsky.social. You can read about it on my website and purchase a signed copy (or buy from Diode)... bit.ly/DANCING-BACK...

Ukraine I open my arms and satellite bombers buzzing like bees, fluff of pollen gusting in wind, this gray creaking spring. You are falling onto cold streets and across steps, puffer coats still puffed, dappled all over with lambent red. My cousins, so removed your skin is burned, the pollen is fire, springtime fronds and forced sprigs--artillery bursts. Your wounds bloom bright like sunflowers, arterial, your songs spinning out of you like silk.

My poem "Ukraine" from my chapbook Hiraeth. The other half of my family is Ukrainian.

Poetry by Katie Kenney Vincent Parsons   CC Cambridge  It’s Friday and I can’t remember what It’s like to love something  the grocery store is lined with     pumpkins  again the season is      mums...

"It’s Friday and I can’t remember what
It’s like to love something
the grocery store is lined with
pumpkins
again the season is
mums plum purple,
tangerine like childhood again. You
are elusive again, golden-haired
satin like holiday ribbons"

Poetry by Suzanne Edison Dane Van   CC Doctor’s Notes Found After A new mother razored her wrist, marooned herself in a white ward with residues of baby blue pills. Her face, like sea glass shimmering in sand,...

"I crawled onto the wasteland
of mother’s bed

and brushed her hair—
almost unaware

a little too hard—because dammit"