One Poem by Hana S. Elysia

 

Heads That Don’t Turn

 

You don’t need to turn every head in the room 

I give you permission to be as ugly as you feel  

after losing your beauty—or what you thought your beauty was 

 

 

But I wouldn’t worry if I were you 

because someday the right head will turn, and you won’t even have tried 

no matter where you are in life, no matter how you appear 

 

 

He will turn to look at you as hearts pop in his eyes 

he will be enthralled by you 

and oh, he will love you.

Hana S. Elysia is a professional dancer turned writer with a keen interest in the dark and whimsical. Her writing has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, Confluence, Trembling with Fear, pacificREVIEW, and others. She was named the first place winner of the Duality: Creative Nonfiction contest in Cleaver Magazine and the 2023 Creative Writing Award in Confluence. More of her work can be found at hanaselysia.substack.com, as well as on Instagram @hana.s.elysia.

 

One Poem by David Alec Knight

 

FIGHTING FOR ROCK -- for Doro Pesch

    

"Fight for rock,"

she steel sang --

the diminutive blonde

Teutonic bombshell exploded

with scorch powerful vocals

as she prowled the stage pumping

her fist in the air, and bade

audience do same.

Simple words delivered

with such sincerity inferred loud

there was more to it

than there seemed

and so I felt.

"We're dying for rock,"

she voice bled, and so

we were in our ways,

whether suburban kids

working afterschool jobs

to feed record collections,

or musicians rocking hard

every night because it was

all they knew or wanted to do

and they had to pay bills

and to eat, just like the suits.

"Hear my message, don't touch

my music," she sang for us all,

and it was so much more poetic

than had she sang to f**k the PMRC

and tear up their warning labels,

that group run by the wives

of the "politician liars" that could

"set the world on fire" and burn

"East and the West" bringing

the back then realities

of Cold War politics

into a rock anthem

of solidarity.

Heavy Metal wasn't

just about movement:

it wasn't just about banging

your head in a mosh.

Heavy Metal could be

a movement:

and so I was moved

to listen to the lyrics

for meanings as I listened

to myself and looked

out at the world with

as much of my derision

as my desire.

David Alec Knight is a Canadian writer of poetry and short stories. He grew up in Chatham, Ontario.

David has worked at a gas station, in retail hardware, as temp labour, as a groundskeeper, and on the assembly line, among other jobs over the years. A return to college has led him to spend the last ten years in healthcare as a certified PSW.

In 2021, David was recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award for Poetry. His first book of poetry, The Heart Is A Hollow Organ, soon followed. His second book of poetry, LEPER MOSH, was published by Cajun Mutt Press in 2022, the first time his artwork was used for a cover.

Recent work has appeared in Verse Afire, Night Owl Narrative, Tickets To Midnight Volume 2 - It's Human, Starman Oddity Anthology - Poetry And Art Inspired By David Bowie, and Stormwash: Environmental Poems.

David sees dark and light around him in equal measure and explores that in his poetry, whether exploring working class themes, neurodivergence, addiction, urban living in conflict with Nature, and the effects all these things have on each other.

Five Poems by Connie Johnson

 

Spilt Ink  

 

I pick up a pen 

I let your love guide 

my hand 

 

What you told me 

this morning is worth 

preserving   

 

What you told me 

in between cigarettes 

is the poetry that 

writes itself  

 

spirits improvising  

in between the lines 

 

secrets 

told freely  

even if they’re  

only for an  

audience  

of one 

 

 

 

 

My Latest Description of Us 

 

 

Your eyes are perplexed, forgive me when I say  

there is jazz in everything that you do. Our mingling  

of souls and energy, there is an undercurrent  

 

of harmonic complexities in everything that we say.  

I can’t believe you don’t feel it! I am the breath of your  

repertoire, the moonlit stars on the tip of your  

 

tongue. All of our punctuations…swinging!  

You encompass all of the idioms that describe us.  

We stride, we transition into bebop. (Are you telling 

 

me you don’t feel that?) A jazz staccato of all  

understanding, it’s a mournful language…but why  

try to muzzle me now?  

 

You are my jazz personified  

and I’m forever high as you  

follow me like the moon. 

 

 

 

 

I Am Amber Beads Sold in Jackson Square 

 

Brazen, wildflowers and birds  

And I ask         how shall I see you  

                        thru my tears?  

 

We are atoms of lust and subtle aftermath  

of understanding, and I’m no scientist.  

 

I am the beads that adorn your throat and wrists;  

I am the murmur of faith and all that is predestined. 

   

I want to be more than just a barren notion of love  

and a wasted aesthetic. You are a phantom of time  

 

that wanders Jackson Square and I remain  

haunted. Rainswept! A spiral of stars and  

weightlessness. 

 

And I am the one  

who sings         how shall I see you  

                        thru my tears? 

 

 

 

 

Blues Medicine 

 

I thought if I put on some Sun House I’d feel better,  

this version of a blues cure being unmistakable.  

Now I only feel worse, tattered sunflowers  

bursting forth from my Victrola, uninvited guests  

with their whims and appetites.  

 

Black and shiny grooves, this is where certain roads  

take you because the blues can’t cure everything.  

 

All of these jagged notes are self-inflicted.  

 

blues scrawl of understanding 

traces of a Mississippi mugshot  

 

And this is what I know for fact:  

the same Sun House who tried to make me  

his black-eyed Susan is the same man  

who wears my heart on his sleeve. 

 

 

 

 

What I Interpreted 

 

 

Emblem of the blues  

sweetening of time and legacy  

the quasi-bebop of your smile  

and your stance  

 

I knew I was going to like you  

when I met you: purely personal  

roots of understanding  / what you offer  

in your hand is pages ripped from  

a lyric sheet  

 

a reflex of survival / blues epithet! 

I need a photo of us as we step off your tour bus 

vintage salvation / sepia tones / a remembrance  

of the night you were born in Columbus, GA  

 

memorized lyrics 

undulating /  jazzy precision  

floating in blues / drowning  

in bass notes and fluency  

 

I speak your language  

you’re everything I was brought  

to the world to say

Connie Johnson is a Los Angeles, CA-based Pushcart Prize nominee whose poetry has appeared in San Pedro River Review, Syncopation Literary Journal, Cholla Needles, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Voicemail Poems, Toasted Cheese, Impspired, Hudson Valley Writers Guild,  The Rye Whiskey Review,    and Writing in a Woman’s Voice. Everything is Distant Now (Blue Horse Press), her debut poetry collection, is available on Amazon; In a Place of Dreams, her digital album/chapbook, can be found at www.jerryjazzmusician.com