Featured Poet - Aviva Lilith

CIGARETTE GUTS

there’s something so precious about childhood delinquency,

ripping off wings of innocent things still flying pretty in the air.

why do kids destroy the delicate, 

the breathing bodies of inchworms

gutted on the playground, 

caterpillars given autopsies on the curb.

the thieves of breath.

but when faced with something already dead by nature’s hands

kids run screaming shielding eyes or poke with a stick, 

why can’t we dissect the deceased

instead of kill the living?

during recess time too many insects die by the hands of the curious child.

we graduate to teenage years,

trade soda pop for Pabst Blue and Natty Daddy.

recess becomes after school, but we still gather in a circle to play,

some kids leave their killing years behind or some still curious,

trading insect carcasses for other vices, iced tea butchered

with vodka rum and whiskey, principal banned water bottles at school.

but Davie and i were the kids who only operated on the dead.

ninth grade after school we rode skateboards fast,

eyes peeled for the discarded, collecting every cigarette butt

from school to my house found on the dirty wet road, sliced them open, spilled their sorry guts to smoke from my bong at home, the taste is still unmatched, moist garbage dirt fluttering through my lungs.

a sort of metamorphosis,

cigarette to butt to sloppy guts,

inhaled deep by two kids with the best and the worst intentions.

we did no harm by gutting butts and smoking their insides,

together we never stole, lied, or took a life from a full-bodied

Camel, Marb, or Newport.

Davie and i, the cigarette butt experts,

maybe the most genuine friend i never realized i had.

always the friends you look back on who you realize were truer than

you thought, Davie made me laugh at a time when i was crazy, 

but he still rode home with me collecting butts to dissect,

curious kids at recess.



ALICE

I left my city for San Francisco

And I'm writing from the Golden Gate Bridge

But it's not going as I planned

I took a free ride off a billionaire and brought my typewriter

And promised myself that I would stay but

It's just not going the way that I thought

It's not that I feel different, and I don't mind that it's not hot

It's just that I belong to no one, which means there's only one place for me

“LA Who Am I to Love You” by Lana Del Rey

in a way,

you were the only best friend i’ve ever really had

i know we can never go back to high school

when you

when we

never left each other's side

night after night day after day

it was different from any other friend i had back then

because you

because we

wouldn't just drink and take Xanax, smoke weed,

or live only to fill a void like everyone around us was,

in search of medicine that does not exist

but you

but we

would write poetry, light incense, do spells and laugh 

you made me laugh until i would cry and Alice

i cried so much with you

i remember

the way i couldn’t sleep

i’d toss and turn, spend all night on the roof chain smoking

without you

without us

you were the best friend

and the worst heartbreak

i think i’ve ever had

Alice, i remember when things went bad,

Brion’s rape allegation

spending the entire snowstorm at his house by his side

how you

how we

were there for him til the bitter end

went to every hearing, started fights online, stood strong

even when the cops found pills and semen

and you

and we

believed our friend,

cause we put loyalty above reality,

which is all we’ve ever known

i saw all of your relationships

i remember Jaden

how he hurt you day after day

i remember you

i remember us

crying in your blue car parked at the beach for hours

looking out at the magnificent world, but

only seeing as far as the fog in your headlights

how you

how we

were never taught that kind of wrong from right

but suffered from love every day, us both,

he to you, physically, she to me, emotionally

how i

how we

were always going through the same things together

we couldn’t see it this time, through veils of tears and love

that our town had failed us

maybe you failed me

maybe i failed you

Alice

i can never come home to you again,

too much has happened

between you

between me

when i got jumped, Rue, Gemma and Sami who said they wanted

to smoke, picked me up but i felt the air, please can we pick up Alice

felt safer as soon as you were by my side, held my hand tightly

i knew

you knew

what was coming my way

you did all you could do Alice

but they were bigger, stronger, meaner

i hurt

you hurt

and maybe we were never the same

i got a concussion which took memories away

nowadays we don’t talk like we always did and

i wonder

if you wonder

if it left you just as hurt as it left me, though invisible pain

maybe we were both left there in that parking lot

broken and bruised together but alone

i wish i took better care of you

i wish you took better care of me

Alice i want to come home,

back to the days when one look was an entire conversation

back to when we’d answer each other’s phones, sound identical

you and me

me and you

the strip teasing duo on the Insta feed

best at smoke tricks and big hits leaving the boys vulnerable and alone

we were the ones who always knew who to hit up for alcohol at two a.m.

Alice i want you back

i want your

i want my

beautiful suffocating destructive nurturing chaotic realistic small town

toxic dependent imperfect wild inseparable

once in a lifetime friendship

Alice i’m lost

and you were once my home.

THE NORTH COUNTRY

the North Country so far away

where my home will always be but i’ll never stay

i hold clusters of roads on a map, 

the wind from the north howls, pulling me back

but marked are the veins running through 

my hands showing me the way home to you

the North Country so far away

if the blizzards in my mind recede one day,

i’d drive those roads in snow or iced over

my lungs as gas pedals, take a deep breath if it helped me get closer

down highways i’d forge of my own flesh and bone 

finding my way back home

the North Country so far away

i run from city streets to our mountain range

my blood from my heart to my feet

the lake, islands, warm clear and deep

behind my eyelids, rainstorms rush while fog rolls over the lake

hands come together to pray, waves hit dirty sand and stone far away

in the North Country my home

ODE TO NATTY DADDY

i never liked you

but you remind me of true freedom

crystalline moon beam

glare sliding off your cyclical brim

stars and stripes,

you taste like rotten metal

Stewart’s, Maplefields, discounted price

and they don’t ID after midnight

looking down into your brutal gaping mouth

i think you once made me puke for twenty hours straight

there’s nothing like the glow of your cheap American blue

what it is to feel like, always gulped up then spat out

at a woods party, mingle with my peers as i flirt with you

the guys doing fire pit tricks, or

the crack of a lukewarm Natty in Brion’s basement

dirty cushions and ashtrays stained from this and thats

shotgun to keep up with the boys

spill a little too much on my white shirt

you reek of flavorless liquid mush

North Country staple, shining blue glory

you’ve really got us in the clutch of your popped open tab

your anatomy so elegant, so rough, sharp, make you bleed

you’re cleaver and we don’t deserve you

at your worst: piss warm in the beating sun in the Project yards

at your best: frigid, inviting, sip of a friend’s

under the light of a full moon house party, hangout, smoky air and loud

we drive our country roads fast, music of Natty cans at our feet, trees

dark and inviting under milky way stardust breath-taking drunk beauty

STOLEN MEMORIES

i don't remember

the way the snow, glittering and fresh covered up the Adirondack chairs

to their chins, tucking them in for the night at our home on Grace Ave.

i don't remember

the crisp leaves all over the yard, messy, loud, scrumptious,

neighborhood kids stop by to take a dip inside a pile.

i don't remember

us collecting dandelions which blanketed the soccer field in gym class

in pouches we made by folding our school shirts belly button high.

i don't remember

the liberating warmth of the nights under a mess of stars, laying in

our swimsuits on the trampoline in the backyard of our Broad St home.

i don’t remember

the beach shack, buying fries on a Saturday to eat on the warm sand

walking all along the frayed lake, finding special rocks to bring to mom.

i certainly don’t remember

breakfast at Michigans Plus, toast with extra butter or

Shabbat at Beth Israel, renting a DVD at the Redbox machine on Cornelia

i wish i remembered more

more of the ice cream flavors from Stewarts, names like supreme and swirl, more of the riding bikes around town, to the library for Whitman

i wish i could remember

all of the pink and purple sunsets, leaving my eyes tired, mind howling

my time spent happy, mom, me, our little town, our perfect life.

i wish, i wish i could just remember

the morning light rather than the dark moon’s glow,

all of the laughs made of vanilla rather than the melting snow.

i’m sorry, i’m so so sorry that i don't remember more

of these times that sparkle, that shine,

that should weigh more than the heavy rock i hold.

LOVE LETTER TO MY TOWN

Plattsburgh i don’t love you

not because you aren’t pretty, or cause your winters are too cold

but i don’t love you cause i can’t.

i can’t love the frozen embers lodged between your fingertips,

i can’t love your spirit, drunken and alone

you with all your heartbreak, all your secrets that you hide.

i can’t love the ghostly downtown streets after work on Friday nights,

stumbling into Bono for a slice or rolling grape flavor Games by the monument at midnight

Plattsburgh i cannot love you.

and it isn’t your fault, it never was, i’m sorry

i can’t be part of your confetti-lined streets on the 4th,

sitting on the big hill with the whole town for fireworks.

i never meant to hurt you, shame your name or pride

your good days are so beautiful, courageous, so alive

even on your bad days you keep a stoic face, as chilly waters rage over your beaten eyes.

Plattsburgh, i hope you don’t blame yourself, the way i tend to

you’re living the only way you know how

and teaching us kids the things you think we need to survive.

but Plattsburgh, i cannot be there, riding your streets like rollercoasters

walking along the train tracks in jeans, ripped, with no dreams

i cannot love you, Plattsburgh, and it’s not cause i haven’t tried.