All posts tagged with poetry

June 22, 2020

“Up There” — Three Poems by Chad W. Lutz

Up There this one goes out to anyone that’s ever made me feel I wasn’t enough or felt they were too good & drifted away I remember we fucked in the auditorium your idea & how carnal & playful you were wore a skirt and it hurt but I’ll admit I wasn’t ready here’s to the loves that didn’t last couldn’t last it’s all in the past now but I still daydream time to time Acan Glaske big border you know what that means government shutdowns partisan bickering sniveling banter back and forth we go the first settlers built walls around their encampments wanted to keep the threats out the Lakota the Apache the Comanche they lived on the open range in communion with nature …

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June 18, 2020

Poetry and Prose to Honor Juneteenth

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

We at The Fictional Cafe are shocked, dismayed and angered by American policemen gunning down American men of color. We assume you feel similarly. Times of great stress, like the COVID-19 pandemic, bring out both the best and the worst in people. It is a time in which we must be patient, calm, understanding, even forgiving, even while we protest for change. We have no way of knowing what strife and pain, or growth and joy, await us in the endless days of this pandemic. All we have is today to be the very best humans we can possibly be, and that today, today, is Juneteenth when the world bows its head to remember the end of slavery in America, circa 1865. Of course, we know it wasn’t the end and that racism still runs…

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June 11, 2020

“Silenced,” The Poetry of Joan McNerney

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Silenced What is never spoken of and pushed down becomes mold crawling over hearts. Strangling our voices, it scuttles through corridors, tunneling, warping each day. My body . . . this swollen thing carried by legs too thin and crippled to uphold it. Pushed down, tightly clamped in now full of pain, gasping for each breath. Smothered, silenced. street corners enveloped in exhaust fumes slate-like formations wait for light to change her carbon dress his face of ashes crushed within this granite body we eat grey food pulling empty air through narrow passageway to ink stain train smudged along blurred landscape of city inside myself searching a designer one clear line of perspective which distinguishes buildings from streets & points to where the synthetic sky…

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May 7, 2020

“My Girlfriend, the Narcissist,” Poet Natascha Graham

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

My Girlfriend, the Narcissist She’s called Gillian. She’s got brown hair, and eyes the colour of a bleached winter sky. She’s about 5’5″, but she’s tough. My girlfriend was a narcissist. She didn’t like me having friends, or seeing family. So, I didn’t really. Gillian stuck around, though. In fact, that’s when I first met her. A few months in. I met her on the school run. She was standing in a driveway nudging gravel with the toe of her Converse. I asked her if she’d lost something. Her wedding ring, she said. Not that it mattered. He was a cheating bastard. We walked to school together, her black wax jacket similar to mine, though I envied its collar, and the zip doesn’t work on mine. It broke on Melton playing field when I bent…

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April 26, 2020

“Carson McCullers,” Poetry by Abigail George

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Carson McCullers I will always love music, she said to me. Turned her face away and became a sad ghost like all the people that I have loved in my life. The sad ghost, dead snakes, the religious, the ordered hide mischief in plain sight. The geranium has a tongue and the sky appears to be falling. The moon walks wider now. It curls up. The red-haired sun does not know how to travel lightly in summer. She swoons. She will fall at your feet if you remove articles of your clothing. I travel light in these heavy years. Waving earlier to the good women who pass me by. With their white teeth and their sweet breath. Bread to the soul. And the wind is sunburnt from the form and shape of the river, to the…

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April 16, 2020

“Mythomane’s Truth,” Poetry by Sanjeev Sethi

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

Mythomane’s Truth If we could retrofit ourselves? I would not be me nor you, you. Imagine me without infirmities. I would no longer be po-faced, pudgy and potbellied. My eyes wouldn’t swim sans Adam’s ale. If any of this gladdens your gut: I reckon, you aren’t for me. ** Flux From entanglements of existence I’m in firmament of my own. In roll-call of needs anamnesis mitigates. Past is polished with coats of one’s inner complexion. Peeps are like diaries different page different piece: same smell. ** Vision When you unself from a situation or skein: you deliver lavish dividends for yourself. Opportune distancing mends the ache: of the eventualities of our exploits. Propinquity bedims the perspective: leaving us to lust after our parakeet or pelt. *** Sanjeev Sethi is published in over 25 countries. He has more than 1200 poems printed or posted…

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April 6, 2020

“‘The Misfits’ Revisited,” Poetry by Stephen Mead

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

“The Misfits” Revisited* When you chased, lassoed the mustangs, tying hooves to necks of down weighed by tires heavy as trucks, you wrenched the galloping out of me till I found my rage… Butchers! What is the spirit if not these horses wild first to last, these zeniths, comet- tailed, free as the sage, the mountains, the thousand miles of it? That is me down there in the dust. That is you who cannot see yourself for the sign of dog food dollars, a cowboy’s wage, the dream gone to blood. Put my blood on your fingers. Lick clean. Let whiskey drown the taste. The taste will come back, the beleaguering fever and freedom here truly trotting beyond your ropes which shake and shake. Lost boy, lost cow poke, I will…

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March 19, 2020

“The Woman of Kutch,” Poetry by Jonathan Lloyd

Posted by Mike Rochester in Writing

The Woman of Kutch The woman of Kutch, Living in grasslands Favored by raj And ibis, flees  The earthquake and Monsoon that leveled The Gujarat Three or four  Thousand years ago. For this occasion She wears a dress Embroidered in red And yellow cotton An aba covers The sakral which Begins the stem  Of a sunflower rising  To a shower  Of light, all in Mirrors, surrounded  By grassy fields. She carries three Steel pots of water On her head and  With her left arm She caresses another. With her right arm  She shields her eyes  Against the sun, Into which she races. ** At  the Track She crosses her legs, this girl of twelve, her hat A crown, brim bouncing in a breeze. She reads Her book, maybe–maybe not–lost in thought Or reverie, a boy…

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March 15, 2020

“The Boggart” and other Poems by Julia Franklin

Posted by Jack B. Rochester in Writing

The Boggart There used to be this boggart in our house. Not a big thing, really; actually quite small. Of course, we didn’t used to see her that way; There was a time when we were the ones that were small. She had a row of teeth for every bit of flesh we bore. She’d bring them out, all neat and sharp and small. One day we stared her down and brought our own teeth out, And the growl that stirred in her throat was small. The night passed without incident. When the sun rose, We found footprints out the door. We thought, “Now who’s small?” I heard she found another house to haunt, Its occupants each Bambi-eyed and small. ** The Truckers It’s a world that…

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March 12, 2020

Our New Baristas! Welcome Michael, Amanda & Yong

Posted by Mike Rochester in News

Please join us in welcoming our new baristas to The Fictional Café! These three talented additions to our staff have rolled up their sleeves to help us brew the tastiest “fresh java” this side of Pluto. Michael Piekny has joined our Editorial Board, which also includes our editor and all-star submissions manager Ruth Simon and our editor and anthology barista, Mike Mavilia Rochester. As an Editorial Board Barista, Michael brings a robust enthusiasm for editing based upon years of practice, and the work he does at his own company, Hub Edits. If you’ve recently been published on FC, you’ve surely enjoyed working with him. Our new Visual Arts Barista is Amanda Grafe. She’ll be curating our visual art offerings, which includes anything from paintings to sculptures to photography. An artist herself, Amanda’s passion for art…

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