National Poetry Month
“Each year, the Academy of American Poets partners with award-winning designer Chip Kidd to commission a poster in celebration of National Poetry Month. They distribute more than 120,000 posters, which are displayed in classrooms, libraries, and bookstores, from coast-to-coast. This year’s poster was designed by National Book Award finalist Roz Chast and inspired by Mark Strand.”
To request this year’s poster click HERE!
GOT POEM? SEND YOUR BEST TODAY!
National Poetry Month was introduced in 1996 as a commencement of poetry and it’s vital place in our culture. In honor of the largest literary celebration in the world, PureHoney Magazine, in conjunction with coworking space General Provision, will post a fresh poem each day this month with credit to our respective websites and social media accounts.
Please send the following to: poetry@purehoneymagazine.com
1) Poem with Title and Authors Name
2) Web URL (optional)
3) Square image to accompany
READ about O, Miami Poetry Festival 2015 April 1 – April 30 throughout Miami-Dade.
4/30/15 Serein by Leidy Fuentes
Boxed in concrete.
And this garden perplexed in these garments, hands made of meat.
Shadows befriend me, I stalk them, subtract’em.
Tailor me in curls and naps vexed in narcotics.
I succumb to thee.
As you wish I oblige.
Drape skin, hair, bones…
Teeth and nails before you unfold and mold to please.
Stay uncompromised for I forsake my maker and crown thee with adoration.
These are dark hues that paint me faceless and over-drenched in cognitive cataracts.
Mother mercy and her patience.
Father time and his absence.
I am the Devil’s keeper.
The baphomet of disguise.
Drawing arms to self, the self beguiled into wreckage.
Save face and exit proudly.
No shame in abandoning the guilty.
I have portrayed your flesh, and hung up for all to see.
I have made it cost me more than limbs.
Telescoping your impulses & intuitions that lack the madness.
What forms of such do you live by son?
What forms of such..?
4/29/15 Sweet Teeth and Heart Ache by Rachel Veroff
I miss the warm molasses feeling
Of Texas afternoons
The expansiveness, and the horizons
Sweet water, sunflowers and bicycles
I miss the wild critters that used to scamper through our
Unkempt garden
Brinkley, the little white dog
And the country boys
Who came over to play guitar for
Anne-Marie.
Remember the Pink House on Duval? I miss the creakiness
Of old prairie houses. Watching the sun set from the
Comfort
Of worn porch steps
Like a big, lazy watermelon, sinking
To the west and leaking its juice across the sky.
The South has a deep and
Ancient kind of power, the power to teach us patience,
And an appreciation
For life’s more quiet pleasures. Writing is a quiet
Pleasure. It has taken me all this time to realize, Texas is
A beautiful place to write.
There is space to let your thoughts rise up
Slacken, float—and grow. Thoughts washed an amber
Color and
Slowed
By the glowing rays of summer. You don’t need much money to be
Comfortable, in fact
It is hard to worry about money when you have such languid
Weather. Clear skies and wide
Open fields of time that call to you—daydreamer.
Feathers, grass and chimes of
Distant laughter. You are able to relax
In the calm of afternoons
And deepen
Into your craft, like a swimmer into
Liquid—or water into earth (!)—in a way that is
Not possible in the bigger cities.
I recently stumbled
Across an old song of Anne-Marie’s, that’s what got me
Reminiscing, I
Used to listen to lovely, moony Anne-Marie
Practicing her gypsy blues, all day long the blues
Through the wall between our bedrooms
Twanging melancholic gypsy scales and
Drifting rifts of dreams.
I’ve never known anyone so
Devoted to her art form, so oblivious
To distraction—or anyone less interested
In getting rich and famous.
She has a way of coaxing soft,
Enchanted little melodies
Up and out
The heart
Of her aching old guitar. She teases life and
Color into them, and then she yanks them firmly
Round the ceiling with a
Skillful, sassy pluck of string.
Her music is both cerebral and
Hypnotic, and I love to watch her play
Wrapped crescent-shaped and long-
Legged around her bewitched guitar
Hair streaming
Flouncing as she strums
Her eyes are different colors
One green, the other brown—she is my muse, I think! There is no sweeter
Sound. That was a long time ago, the Pink House on Duval. Anne-Marie’s tastes
Have sent her drifting
West since then, to chase the watermelon sun, and me,
My restless, marching feet have led me upstream, here, to a very different
Place, on a very
Different
Journey… lately, though, my most
Interior, my most quietly
Refined of selves has been unfurling
Little tendrils along a reverse current, back
To simpler times
Back to campfires
Bandit hats and banjoes.
4/28/15 Vacuous Room by Lauren Costantino
My shoulders are draped in a rug made of 100 % pure Zebra skin
So I apologize to PETA by spilling pomegranate tea on
only the white stripes.
Jack’s knife sits on your bedside table
Maybe because it’s masculine.
Maybe because it’s ironic.
Maybe because it was stolen?
Maybe because nothing you have defines you
and knives speak sharply without intention
splitting hairs is not why I’m here
On top of satisfactory twenty-something hobbies
you still want me in the bravest way;
yet you’re cowering over cracks in the kitchen floor,
squirming over elephant-eared pages in books that aren’t even yours
and bitching about the foreseeable sexism in Leggos.
…LEGOS
I told you not to waste my time.
Take me apart –chipping paint from my flaking face.
Unravel my left leg.
Drink me wholesome and selfish.
Take me anywhere you’re going
and I’d be better there than left undead.
Go ahead and be the posters on your wall
That taunt you with their perfect font at night
You, who locks your life in pretty glass cases.
I, who sits alone in this dusty room, content
Counting the things you left unsaid.
4/27/15 What We Deserve by Jalaine Davila
What might have been has never tasted so sweet
As the lips you kiss
not out of love but the absence of that very feeling
Wanting nothing but,
and having everything but
that very feeling
that tastes so sweet
Until then we’ll take what we can get
What we deserve
4/26/15 Your Ghost by Alacia Holt
The dress in my closet keeps playing peek-a-boo.
Like the ghost at the top of the stairs.
Or the one peeking over the shower curtain as I wash my hair.
Out of the corner of my eye I catch just a glimpse.
Assume it is another inanimate object.
Or is it you I keep seeing?
Can a person see thoughts?
Manifested into everyday peripherals from my mind;
I cannot escape you.
In a subconscious state I sleep
With constant slumbers of a love that never felt warm.
Maybe that’s why I catch its presence,
Here and there, cold.
Like a ghost.
At the top of the stairs,
And peeking out of my closet.
4/25/15 Rose, on the Wind by Matthew Hershoff
A few months after
my mother died,
Rose told me
to forget
those things.
She’d been married
to my grandmother’s brother
many years,
and I heard
she treated him
badly.
But I didn’t know
much.
I only saw
outstretched arms
and bent fingers,
too bent
for the wheel
of her car.
At my Bar Mitzvah,
I called her the
chandelier of the family,
and she made a point
to remember it
always.
And I may forget
Rose’s red cheeks slope
to her eyes like small cracks
in the face of red cliffs,
that her skin drips gold
to her sad wide smile,
but tonight I remember
what Rose said,
“Those fights you had
were words on the wind.
You loved each other.
Remember
that.”
4/24/15 Two Thousand One Four by Joan Mayorga
The first time I saw you, I knew our souls had met before.
I drank of your nectar, then I remembered.
We use to build pyramids in the depths of the ocean floor
Underwater we would spend hours,
Creating societies governed by righteousness.
The only rule of the land was Love,
There was no other.
This was a time long ago,
When there was no heaven and hell.
Before man was ruled by his ego.
Our creation was perfection.
It was made with the innocence of our youthful imaginations.
The Gods of the earth and sky envied our powers
To separate us,together they would conspire.
They had to remove us from the ocean.
Their strategy was put into motion.
The frighten Sun would hide.
The angry Moon would bring us up with the tide.
Our adolescent bodies would wash up on the shore.
Our world would exist nevermore.
They did not conceive that the plan would be foiled,
By the hands of nymphs whom in the woods toiled,
With spells of Hymns to Pan
From which one day our estrangement would be spoiled.
As a fish back to the sea you went.
As a lion to a mountain I was sent.
Centuries passed, we both forgot.
The Summer Solstice briefly united us.
The Winter Solstice once again will divide us.
We’ll meet again in a dream one day.
We’ll swim in that ocean of blue and gray,
Filled of my tears, from that very first day.
4/23/15 The Big City by Jessica Chung
The big city is a pretty girl in fancy clothes.
She dazzles you
With her smile.
Her eyes are bright.
It would seem
There’s always something going on in that pretty head of hers.
She’s tall and her hair is perfectly styled.
It has a magical glow to it.
Eye contact with her
Makes you feel special.
She’s so well-liked.
You love the big city.
But the big city is metal
And plastic
And cement.
She has a past
You wish to ignore.
She still has sinister parts to her that you never hear about.
She’s loud.
Very loud.
She never stops talking.
She’s never actually looking at you.
She’s looking for her friends.
She’s vapid.
Self-absorbed.
Shallower than a kiddie pool.
Her eyes are like a jungle cat’s.
Slitted.
Unforgiving.
Searching for prey.
Looking for doe-eyed people to crush.
The big city
Isn’t who she says she is.
She is a predator
Waiting to eat you alive.
4/22/15 Beautiful Too by Matthew Hershoff
At once I felt compelled
to write every perfect word.
They came
floating towards me
with a silent gull’s glide
to alight on my shoulders
and adorn my breath.
I tried to catch them,
be them,
create them
myself,
so for one
still moment,
I could be
beautiful too.
And when they left,
I watched them fly
on the wind’s salt to save
another sad,
estranged lover
of this brutally
beautiful world.
4/21/15 Inamorata by J. Phillip Wilkins
Follow me, beloved flame
o’er this mordant, solitary sea
Leave the sands in your cup
phantom tides in your tea
Hark, a holy choir among the grains
drowning angels in swallowing dunes
You feel the pull of inamorato
o’er my ardent, solitary plea…
4/20/15 Revolution, Let Not Be Gone by Zach Young
May the souls be damned and castaway
As they search to find their final day.
They rest not in peace, nor do they hide
For it was the rules they did not abide.
One by one they feast upon
Revolution, let not be gone.
Souls, search no further for I have found
A place to call our holy ground;
It lies between heaven and earth
Where all is forgotten but sinful mirth.
Come one come all, see the dawn.
Revolution, let not be gone.
Here we lie in purgatory
Upon the scaffold for all to see.
In their riches they sit and stare
For not they know they’ll soon be there
As we were baptized in the pond,
Revolution let not be gone.
More and more are joined by few,
What will happen in the final score?
Will thy love, or lost one more?
But less and less have a clue.
On my face lies a past yawn,
Revolution, let not be gone.
4/19/15 Mirrors! by Bethany Fair
The anorexia girl walks every day
and she is everywhere I am
In front, diagonally left, up
down.
Trapped in the university she strolls
past the window at 8 a.m.
2 a.m. she gingerly steps across downtown
always in cotton shorts, big shirt curly dirty hair
always a sack of skin.
Once I saw her eat three trays of cereal
and a bag of brownies in the corner
and at this I cried a little, as she probably did too
but for me at my flask and my salad.
She was lacking and I
I always get too much; and
I cannot find refuge from that terror
of yellow hair
and I wonder what feature
of mine myself
haunts her too when she avoids me.
What word fills the margins
of post-its
or books or notes
I must be only a word.
oh god I see it now…
there it goes deep
YELLOW.
12:50am
picnic table on my third cigarette
she jogs towards the lake.
I hope she does it this time.
4/18/15 Love in the Early Hours of Dawn by Isis Miller
Day split open
like fallen fruit
its sweetness exposed
suddenly alive
and already dying
the newness of this
tastes like the past
the past tastes like salted rain
and all the senses are confused
ears seeing
what eyes smell
what fingers hear
on your skin
browning like avocados in open air
I remember things lost
when I kiss you
so I’m already saying goodbye
things like you
never last
so I place the memory of you
in my mouth
under my tongue
and hope you’ll dissolve
into my blood stream
because that is the only way I can
keep you
4/17/15 Groundless by Ryan Sirois
Following through the solitude
Of us without self without purpose with sacrifice
A statement of independence felt
Bone chilling rattling summit
All is calm all is bright
We are together and together we connect but they don’t know
They know what they need and they laugh but we
we know truth
Or your truth where mine stays lifeless beyond recognition
We are young
We are love
We will find reason to move on
To forget words, to recycle a name to
blame me for what is what was
And so on and on it seems to go
That I know what I’ve got cuz what I’ve got I want gone
And they talk they talk they talk on again while I sit and I type and I play till they end
I love you
I love you
This isn’t real
I’m not here anymore
I’m not here anymore
I’m not here
4/16/15 Axis by Nicole Jimenez
My mind blurs as it goes blank
Staring at the page with hopeless thoughts of wonder
What of the world to come?
The answer doesn’t come easy
It feels as though the world is turning and running away from me as I try to grasp the light
A sense of breathless lungs pushes me back and leaves me in the shadow of the moon.
4/15/15 Become One by David C. Pulgar
Let everything
That divides us
Burn away like
Meteors in the
Atmosphere.
This Earth is
Our own and
Its only salvation
Comes when we
Unite as one.
Good and evil
Are constructs of
Mortal design.
Light and darkness
Are benign aspects of
This natural world.
We are alone,
Bound by gravity
To this mote of dust.
No one will save
Us from ourselves.
Let’s join hands,
Let’s stare deeply
Into each other.
The same universe
Exists in all of us.
That we judge
What’s different,
Let that be evil.
That we learn to
Be understanding,
Let that be good.
4/14/15 Half Pound Heart by Emily Dwyer
It has been half
a year since I held you,
told you not to be scared
(I knew you understood),
and held you closer than
I had ever held anyone
in my entire life.
You only weighed 4lbs-
maybe even 3.5
with a half pound heart.
your eyes had become seaglass.
I held you up
& was afraid of what would happen
if I didn’t.
You deserved so much more
than this ending ripe with
false rationality &
guilted justification.
And in the final moments,
when you
slipped away without complaint,
you were more human to me
than I was to myself.
4/13/15 Portrait of a Friend by Naomi Wallen
You tantalize like stained glass on water,
every glance bringing a different shape into focus.
Colors clashing like a cascade of river-bound jewels
rimmed by a sea of murky purple.
But the lemon light of the hopeful sun
peppers your eyebrows and
the creases of your mouth,
burning burgundy and crimson
balancing on your cheeks and
dripping down your jawline
as your lips are varnished, words sealed
forever behind that dim green line.
Staring through the haze of this pebbled purple isle
are twin emerald eyes, lasting un-drowned
despite your submergence in mystery.
Calling serenity, serenity through the rivery veil,
transmuting deep philosophy without
ever parting those verdant mountainous lips.
4/12/15 Clara by Anton von Nickel
My teeth feel extra crooked today; flawed,
ugly,
unfitting my desires;
my desired form.
Like the pimples on my greasy forehead next to the strands of moist short hairs;
split from the frizzed and frayed ends of my despair.
I can feel the loose fabric clinging to my body in all the wrong ways;
keeping keenly aware of my motions,
my self,
conscious or not;
I hate it.
I want to rip it away and tear out my hair and plunge into depths of unknowing;
to be fresh and clean and cool and new again.
The pale nothingness of purity lying in wait;
Beneath the caked grunge and sweat and grime;
of unwanted pastimes with these passersby.
I long for thee sweetest freedom;
behold me,
save me from this wilting,
this withering….
Save me from myself.
4/11/15 September Sunrise by Jessica Desouza
Spin Spin Spinnings words like Vodka
Put me in your New York Public Library
I am a broken ring
I am a balding screw
Take my call in morning dawn
and I’ll tell you,
“You are infinite”.
4/10/15 Vagary by Zackery Fleming
A wild sea in windy fields of his memory,
The milky way in the distance of her revery.
Though for what for,
She’s never sure.
Now it’s time to sit face to face with me,
Away from sight,
Out of mind,
Empty.
From morning until night,
Under pale moonlight.
Wondrous mysteries woven into,
Blind colors.
The sun and moon,
Deaf and dumb,
Trace each other.
Life in a dream,
As real as it seems.
4/09/15 Milk at Midnight by Jennifer Talesman
my grandmother is a lunar eclipse.
i was raised, nestled closely to her predictions,
her lilacs, her conversations with god, and
i tried not to ignore her secrets
unfurling beneath her tongue, and there
in the sweetness of her maple-stained robe,
her bruised knuckles from kneading soil.
she planted messages in those home-cooked
spanish dinners, like, “it will be
stale berries when you bite his neck, but
you will decide to love pungent flavors.”
my grandmother hung a cross on the wall
that cannot fall down, no matter how hard
you slam a nearby mosquito. blood stains.
she forgave me for all the sorrow my
small hands would hold before they knew
my mother would somehow become pregnant.
it was in the way she moved her wrists
that i learned about the secret message
carved deep into my own heart, using no words.
i should have known that no recipe could
make a meal cure an illness as hers did.
i should have known that her garden
was not born resisting gravity –
the power of her words –
weeping to her flowers, and
most people do not know what it means
to water them.
4/08/15 Lioness by Ates Isildak
Hornet’s nest between her legs
Barely buzzing
No honey just hive
Lioness in a pilling Goodwill dress
Light going lighter blue
Stretch marks
Despite her little breasts
Frown lines, family stress
That holy mess of home
No tunes on the radio
Just neighbor’s dog barks
Distant television glow across the street
Lioness in a Goodwill dress
Watching over her own
4/07/15 Lighter by Diana Moon
I wanna see you smirk.
Your dark gaze sends my mind shivers.
Pour your India ink syllables into my ear.
I want your black magic lakes bubbling.
Make me warm.
Breathe your charcoal words onto my neck,
Work me up, twist me a tale of fantasy.
Use your writer’s fingers, touch my
Letterpress buttons, I’ll print a novel
Made of steam and sharp edges.
I wanna see you smirk.
I want to taste your tar, clean you up.
Let me look at your oil-spill ocean.
I’ll submerge in your grey waters.
I’ll soothe your shadows,
If they hold me right.
Make me warm.
Your sly lips are the lighter to my cigarette.
Strike me. Light me up.
I wanna see you smirk.
4/06/15 If She Left by Isadora Spangler
She doesn’t think of true love as exclusive
and she only likes sex when deer stampede
from the bed, stealing sheets away on their antlers.
She has dreams of going blind from staring at the sun
and she hits my spine with her palm to wake me up.
I want to never see her again, but if she left
I’d be an ugly old treasure chest—my gold lost
to a band of pirates who drink while they plunder,
dancing on the graves of the dead.
4/05/15 The Midnight Scramble by Copper Pauper
Nothing good ever comes
after 2 A.M.
Except the saccharine
sizzle of skillets.
Most gracious holy land.
Doors open to all;
Devils, deities, drunks,
door to door salesmen.
Any and all are welcome
if they can cover the tithe.
Always are altars set.
Paper menus, forks,
knives, ketchup, everything;
All at the ready.
And as you settle in;
Butts sunken in pews.
A clear, clean, coo, caws forth.
“What’ll it be honey?”
“Oh angel answer my prayers!”
“Black coffee and scrambled eggs.”
And while you eat and drink you do regale
the yolk of the night’s fervorous exploits.
Locked in a pocket of time.
Immortal as the Nighthawks.
4/04/15 Untitled by Marissa Provenza
Grey to red and back again —
Ashes to birth, blood to Earth
And large knives
For tomatoes gleaming in the sun
The sun weening off the tops of buildings
I imagined dying here
How beautiful to succumb to the fear
In a red dress
And mirrors reflecting rivers
Of blood
But how this prison now heals me
Effervescently
And all the leaves yearn to fall
With the changing seasons
And all the little children reaching
Reaching for the apples
Knowledge is a glass half full
A rotting apple core
The compostable heart heaves forward
And forever
4/03/15 Swallowing Nightmares by Carly Gates
I awoke and lay still, spooned
tight against his back, face
shored between his shoulder blades,
palm pressed flat against
his chest, trying to pull
him into me.
My mind was quiet
with dreams that slipped away
like fog rolling down
to the caverns of the unremembered.
When his face turned,
pale and wet with fear,
I drank the bitter salt
of his nightmares, dreams
in which I grew tired
of spending forever with him
and pushed him away
with frost-bitten feet.
I held his face in my hands
until we fell back into sleep.
I didn’t know then
that the salty nightmares I swallowed
would grow in my own eyes,
swimming like fish down my cheeks
and into the flooded river.
All I knew was that moment
which wrapped itself in the spiraling
arms of the galaxy
and lives on, permanently,
remembered or not.
And now I lie in bed, spooned
tight against another back, nose pressed
against another shoulder blade,
fingers curled in the bristly hairs
of another chest, trying to pull
him into me,
my mind quiet
with the fear of future dreams,
nightmares curling their tails
into my waking life.
4/02/15 Pencil Burst by Jet Hudson #jethudson51
Drawings Burst out of my pencil,
Writing Bursts out of my pencil,
My pencil is a hand held printer,
My pencil is now Bursting,
It is Drawing,
It is Writing,
My pencil is going crazy,
My pencil has broken.
I have ben broken,
Me and my pencil are Bursted…
Open.
4/01/15 On Green Acres Drive Part II by A. J. Leigh
When I am not too busy
drowning
in my dreams,
I’m walking
down a set of wooden stairs,
squeaky and crooked, with no handrail.
They are flanked by
windows,
fingerprint stained
spiderweb strained
panes.
Through the dusty glass
I see
a Dvorak symphony
of color–
vermillion meadow grass
acrylic electric sunflowers
stormy silver Poseidon sky,
and the silence is too much
to bear.
