THE SHOWER

By Ash Candella 

I sit down in the shower

the water consumes me 

My left arm begins to burn 

With regret and shame

The white scars remind me

I’ll never escape it 

My pencil makes a self portrait 

I draw myself inaccurately

No scars, no imperfections

just clean, aesthetic skin

So i sit in the shower

As my mind lays bare

I feel nothing at all

A surprising flaw 

and as I sit in the shower 

I begin to sob 

I clutch my knees in desperation 

praying to an invisible god 

I’m going to die if this feeling won’t change 

I’ll cross out my self portrait 

the accuracy improves 

if I’m not here, my arm proves it

AVOIDANCE

by Jacob R. Moses

I’ve been incredibly silent

For the past few weeks

Haven’t had the words to

Formulate, for fortitude

Exists not in my words

It wanes periodically

Depression methodically

Invading, pervading

My senses, whether the kind

I can feel physically or

Psychic phenomena

I’m hurting right now

And I wish I wasn’t

Used to this anguish

Another poem settled upon

This landscape of the mind

One I’ve been struggling to

Write, sources I’ve been

Struggling to cite, divorced

From relationships I

Once held dearly

Last night I couldn’t sleep

Tossing and turning upon

A bare mattress, lost

My yearning to breathe

Fostered the burning

Making me simply

Want to leave this

Lofty establishment

Will I have a rock on my finger?

Will my love be redeemed by God?

I want to answer these questions

Thoroughly, long to embody

Confidence, yearn to get out

Of bed with certainty, but

This internal hellfire is

Burning me, three degrees

Of separation from my soul

It’s time to wake up and face

Another day, hoping the walls

Don’t collapse around me

And the roof covers

My head in reverence

To a God I struggle

To worship daily

I am ailing each

Of those times

I could be praying

Am I dying alone ... or are

We possibly dying together?

UP & DOWN LIKE A YO-YO

By Martina Teeny Collender

I am thirty-four

and tired in places sleep can’t reach,

my bones a metronome of yesterday’s momentum:

up,

down,

up again,

pulled by invisible strings

like a cheap yo-yo in a child’s impatient hand.

Some mornings I rise electric,

a script half-written in my blood,

ideas sparking like matchheads

everything possible,

until it isn’t.

By noon I’m knotted inside myself,

caught in the yo-yo’s tangled twirl,

the high already slipping from its own shadow.

Up,

then the drop

sharp as hunger,

familiar as breath.

I spin between chapters,

between confidence and collapse,

applause and empty seats,

ink-heavy nights and blank-page dawns.

It’s thrilling, and it hurts.

I tell myself balance is coming

like an act break,

like a curtain slow to fall.

But I’m still jerking

on the thin thread of expectation,

wearing my strength like mascara,

pretty until it smears.

Here I am, dizzy and stubborn,

still rising,

still falling,

still dragged between fire and quiet,

storm and sigh.

A yo-yo, yes,

but one that never gets to land.

ABOUT MARTINA: Martina is an Irish, Working-Class, Queer, Disabled, Award Winning, Published, Playwright, Screenwriter, Poet & Writer living and working in Waterford City and County with her beloved cat Ellie.

WONDER

By Anonymous

Why shall I live

When there’s no purpose to give

I wonder and wonder and wonder

Until I can’t wonder but rather suffer

I sit in silence through the misery

Wondering is my existent is worth a victory

I wonder and wonder and wonder

until I cant wonder but rather suffer

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