Totems to that absence

TheFeatheredSleep – Remaining haunted

TheFeatheredSleep

It isn’t my weft to self torture

but on occasion, often bidden by

emotions tumbling from rusted cage

I try to restrain them

overtaking my control

then, you are there

in the sunlight streaming through paper blinds

hurting my eyes so that all but a whiteness

is felt behind closed eyes

the unceasing wetness of tears

cause my skin to feel chaffed

even in summer

you would think eventually

they would dry up, but they never do

just as you would think I’d stop

remembering so accutely or

longing so intensely for

things near and far away and closed

as to not exist

except in my urging of them

the you, that you were

confident, slick, arrogant

I have never liked arrogance

but behind it

a soul and a heart

I wished to conquer with my own

urge gentleness out of you

like impatient bird who cries

before it is…

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Important Announcement Regarding Composition of a Woman

Christine Ray – Get it while you can.

Brave & Reckless

My first book of poetry and prose, Composition of a Woman, will no longer be available through Sudden Denouement Publishing as of March 1st. If you were thinking of picking up a copy, I recommend doing so soon.

Composition of a Woman will be available through Amazon, Barnes and Nobel Online, Book Depository, Indigo, and other major online book retailers through February 28th.

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Masterpiece

Stephanie Bennett-Henry – Her own truth and yours

Stephanie Bennett-Henry

I once found myself standing in the middle, daggers being thrown from left and right. I took each one straight in the gut, trying to save your heart and defend my own; I stood alone.

In the midst of the shade thrown over like gray sticking permanent, I learned how to stay in my light by walking away from the gray in the middle. The gray does not own me. It never did.

Those daggers were meant for me, but really only launched from a place of someone else’s self-induced pity turned pain. Well, let it rain. I will stand soaked in whatever pours my way, smiling and unaffected by a version of me told from the mouths of someone who never knew me, but thrives on stories told like gospel, hands up, praising rumors as if speaking in tongues, ear to ear, makes it true. I feel for you.

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Fog

TheFeatheredSleep – Fog of loss

TheFeatheredSleep

Light

Sieved from sky

Silence save the clock

False time

Gregorian or

Are you real?

Was it yesterday?

You told me and I believed

Using the last of my faith

Conserved for this

Waste

Blown down empty highways

Back to silence and strangers

Not my mother’s face

Someone I don’t recognize

How I wish it were her

With all my longing

Still

You cannot

Create worlds

From dust and indifference

It is cold

Without you

Telling me I matter

Validation

Shouldn’t

Be necessary

Yet oh it is

When you are alone

Listening to clocks

Tick down to menopause

The things undone

Lay without stitch

On cold tile

My cat is beneath earth

My car is sold

The seat still warm

Where I cradled your shining head

The smell of roses

Losing their petals

A crucifixion

Pull up your tights and

Leave the empty bedroom

The single pillow

Stark against

Inexplicable

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For All the Pretty Boys I’ve Loved – Kindra M. Austin

At Sudden Denouement, Kindra M. Austin poems the confession of a femme fatale.

Sudden Denouement Literary Collective

In consequence of
grand
transgressions,
bodies bob in
putrid
tinted
water.

I captained fastest motor boats
that ran on sweat and
seminal fluids.

I did not burn down
bridges,
rather,
I set fire
to marital mattresses;
then
we all
choked on
ashes.

Yes, I captained
fastest motor
boats that ran on sweat and
seminal
fluids—
tapped the bodies,
tossed ‘em back,
collected more
to feed my whore
heart.

I’m sorry for
all the pretty boys
I’ve loved
and left in
my epic wake.

---

Kindra M. Austin is a very sweary indie author and editor from mid-Michigan (you can find her books here). She’s also the co-founder of Blank Paper Press, a founding member of Indie Blu(e) Publishing, founder of publishing imprint, One for Sorrow, and a writer/managing editor at Blood into Ink, and Whisper and the Roar. Austin cut her poetry teeth in April, 2016, and joined the Sudden Denouement…

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Three signs of spring.

LuckyOtter – Spring?

Lucky Otters Haven

I saw some of these today.

Spring is my favorite season.   You know why, if you read this blog.  The best thing about it (besides the end of the cold weather and short days) is it spells the end of my yearly bout of SAD.

Of course, Easter candy appearing in stores (sometimes as early as before Valentines Day!) definitely hints that spring is on its way.   There’s also the days growing longer.

But today I saw the first real signs of spring.  In spite of the nasty weather we’ve been having,  I saw bright yellow daffodils growing in the garden of a neighboring house.   I looked at my own messy garden, full of dead vegetation from last year that was never cleared.  Poking up through the debris were the bright green shoots of my daylilies.    I was surprised because it’s been so cold, but I guess not cold…

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Unaided by light

At Hijacked Amygdala, Candice brings a poem she says is long. It is worth the time.

hijacked amygdala

I was not born for loving

doctor said; It’s a girl

nurse thought; What a shame, life is harder on them

psychiatrist thought; She doesn’t want to be a mother, but let’s not tell her

grandfather thought; Another generation to abuse, watch her grow, but not too much

grandmother thought; Turn your face away. Do not witness, then it never happens

mother thought; I never wanted you.

…

when I carried you

you reminded me of a rock

I wanted us both to drown

except I would lie and float above

whilst you gulped salty brine

and free of your clutch, hail a boat

take myself somewhere, far from children

I never wanted

trapped by circumstances

anything to escape the confines of my day

but how?

…

I told this story many years later

by then I was

much older than my mother had been

when she gave birth

and…

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“One Breath Around the World” (Guillaume Néry)

LuckyOtter shares some under water beauty.

Lucky Otters Haven

Another breathtaking, haunting underwater video taken by the freediving champion’s wife, who is also a freediver and filmmaker.   I think this is his best video yet.

It’s like a trip to another world — or a dream.

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A soft closing of words – Candice Louisa Daquin

Candice Louisa Daquin brings to The Whisper And The Roar a whispered roar.

Whisper and the Roar

When you are younger, everything is a challenge

I will not let them break me / I will fight back / I will survive!

as you get older you see

or you hear

or maybe it’s just a sense

in the air

or a turning of

light

changing

clenching your heart

sorrow wells up

a pool from nowhere

upon which you see

no reflection

only the insubstantial flickering

of someone

trying to survive

skate even

on cracking surface

too thin for the weight of

all those doubts

shadows without names

time piled high

playing broken records

and though you skate fast

and nimbly

there is numbness in your effort

as if you wish to finally be

caught

submerged

ice leaching your hot discontent

with page turned days

and ironed nights

into a drowning

of all the pain captured and glazed

within your center

where no-one looks

because adults are not

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feelings unnamed

Samantha Lucero – Mysteries in sleep

samantha lucero

we slumber 

pathetically, on each others

haystack-shapes. on your borrowed grayling shades

cupped on resoled leather in an elbow crook,

shoelaces the hometown pillow.

we slumber

pathetically, inside unmanageable whispers

whose grief for us to segment stars

that arc in the blind-sky, that

which night mysteries immortally disunite–

is yet unkempt; is insolvable.

we slumber

pathetically, in oblong boxwoods, in

close brumation to each other,

& we opine, to that cockcrow vapor stealing us,

feelings unnamed.

samantha lucero 2019 ©

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