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This week’s featured poet is author of the chapbooks Stovetop Ghosts (Femme Salve), Girl / Mirror / Wolf (Bullshit Lit), and one of my personal current favorites, Postcards from Ragnarok (Alien Bhudda). Please enjoy the following three poems by this fine poet, Katy Naylor! Thank you, Katy, for allowing me to feature your work. Social Creature You try to reason with medusa carefully explain yourself you should go She just stares each head hisses a different refutation you keep your eyes down but she must have got to you, somehow that's why you can’t bring yourself to leave your feet must be made of stone Terminal Grief and jet-lag have a lot in common. They're both a sort of time travel. We were the first ones at the desk. It was still closed, roped off, our connecting flight not yet on the board. We waited, tagged and ready, heads swimming slightly at the new time zone, our bodies protesting that we belonged six hours ago. You read a book to me, played i-spy, while I sat on a suitcase, pop-socked feet dangling. The tired lines around your eyes told one story, our laughter, another. You're gone now. And I'm unhitched, that little girl again. Groggy at the hours the rest of the world keeps, when I'm still somewhere else, though my body is here, sorting through your dresses. I'm lost in the terminal, watching for the connection. Other people's luggage rattles, echoing and I'm standing in front of those ropes, staring at the boards. Each departure is your name and I'm too late to make the gate. Fret The mist is cold, cotton wool gentle. It hangs in shining droplets from the dune grass and soaks soft into our skin We sit with the rounded pebbles and the seagulls, ice-white and grey. You clutch a shell tight in your palm. This moment is meniscus thin. A single word could burst it, send it rolling salt down our cheeks. The mist is low. We watch the sea and sky resolve their differences, and kiss.  Katy Naylor lives by the sea, in a little town on the south coast of England. She writes poetry, fiction, and games and has been published through venues including Black Bough Poetry, Ellipsis Zine and Emerge Literary Journal. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfictions and Best of the Net and is EIC of interactive arts mag voidspace zine. Find Katy across social media platforms @voidskrawl and @_voidspace_zine and online at: www.voidskrawl.uk
By Brian Fugett's estimations, he is "perhaps the most insignificant American poet to have existed in the 21st century," and although I'm sure many of us feel that way from time-to-time (count me, as one!), I hope this feature will help in some small way to show Brian his work IS noticed and appreciated. :) Please enjoy his two pieces, "5th Avenue" and "Special Night." He is on Instagram @brianfugett. Thanks, Brian, for allowing me to share your work! 5th Avenue all up & down 5th street there is sex god pick-up trucks & fresh tattoos that glow on the pale february bleached flesh of girls & all the skinny caramel lattes are clutched too tight even though they are hotter than the august pavement & everywhere you go the cell phones are screaming to be released from all of the pockets, purses, & glove compartment coffins & all the yellow slowly leaks from the sun as i sit in the café murdering myself one cigarette at a time. Special Night   Welcome back, poetry fans! Today I welcome Fred Shrum, Editor of Skyway Journal, into the spotlight. Fred writes from his home in Florida. Please enjoy his moving piece, "October 24, 1996," with thanks and first publish credits to Punk Noir Magazine. October 24, 1996 There was a riot in the streets and it makes me sick While we’re proselytizing about unity We’re burning down our own community Car lurches forward and shots ring out Self defense the cops had no doubt But the citizens did not agree So they lit the fuse of anarchy I know that a riot is the language of the unheard And we have a lot to say tonight But this type of justice I cannot afford Helicopters miss no beat National Guard rolling down my street Our block turned into an inferno My brothers fall asleep in their cells The cops return to their homes The reporters return to their homes The politicians return to their homes Tomorrow morning and policy stands Neighbors sifting ashes through their hands This used to be my store But insurance deductible means I’m here no more
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SHINE - International Poetry Series
From the international poetry community, we have a "luxury of stars," as Sylvia Plath might say, and it is my honor to provide a home for their words through SHINE Poetry Series.
NOW IN PRINT!
Stars Over the Dordogne
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