Letting you go

I wrap you in the
Sweet sad soft 
Buds of my love 
A short goodbye hug
Clumsy tender embrace 
Started too late 
Finished too soon 
I catch the dagger-bright flash 
Of your final smile 
Before I walk off 
My world darkening fast
My cracked heart dripping 
A maroon trail 
Of aborted memories 
Tracing my path 
To hollowness 

Remembrance Saturday

I lay dead, imaginary
Flowers
On the grave of your 
Memory
Slowly trace 
The stone cold letters
Of your tombstone 
With a middle finger 
That I will keep raised 
A little while longer 
Just for you 


B F Jones is French and lives in the UK. She has flash fiction and poetry in various UK and US online magazines.  Her poetry chapbook, Last Orders, and collection, Panic Attack, will both be published by Close To The Bone late 2021.

https://punknoirmagazine.wordpress.com/2021/02/28/insomnia-by-bf-jones/A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with…

Author Bio:

Amrita Valan is a writer, and a mommy to 2 teenagers. She loves observing their antics, and those of human nature and Mother nature, collecting rocks, stories and memories. Her published books are Arrivederci Fifty Poems, of love and loss, and In Between Pauses, a collection of 17 low brow vignettes/ slices of life tales.

Pandemic

 I
 Last Day of 2020 December snorts, grunts, Thirty first, the last day, Two years of global pandemic, On the streets, silent orisons Under Paget moon. Cold wind wrangles, Insides mangled Rain laden sleet Pitted trenches, Sleek oil caped roads Obsidian reptile, Lone motorbike, Headlights flicker, In hair spray rain. Pins and needles Dappled diamond paned. Quarantine broods. Quarantined moods. The heart races on Cavalletti course. Lower the bar and I shall cease to bother, Jump the threshold. Of wind-battened door. On the floor, bare Feet, glide indoors Afraid to…

Bio: M.S. Evans is a poet and photographer currently living in Butte, Montana. Her debut collection, Nights on the Line, was released by BlackBoughPoetry in 2022.

Evans’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Ice Floe Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, Green Ink Poetry, and Cape Magazine.

Instagram: @seanettleink

Hi-Line Towns

We pass small towns,
far apart; worn
wood beads on a 
sparse string. 
 
Signs along tracks announce 
names,
Time to hide. Children 
spot us. I wave
 
so they’ll know,
you can leave this way,
someday. Even girls. Upturned


Fresh eviction,
personal possessions 
spill out
 
the gate; a hernia. 
 
Children’s toys form 
a burial mound
 
beside an 
upturned sofa. 
 
I mumble 
prayers of protection. 

New Jersey 1 AM, stifling heat. Wedged on a bed between my grandmother and her portable TV. My voice, thin as vase-water. Here’s, loose river rock. We hefted words smooth skipping stones. The TV made…

Bio: HilLesha O’Nan is a blogger, writer, photographer & marketer. She is co-editor/founder of Fevers of the Mind Poetry & Art. She runs the blog tothemotherhood.com for over 15 years

In the depths of your soul, you hate the man you see in the mirror. Each day, as time dwindles away, you confront a reflection that embodies everything you despise. The face staring back at you is a cruel reminder of the choices you've made and the person you've become. You live to make others' lives miserable, relishing in their pain as if it were your life force. The thrill of causing suffering fuels your existence, pushing you deeper into the darkness that engulfs your heart. You sit outside and wait, plotting your next move, seeking your next victim to harass. In your twisted mind, you've built a fence, a barricade to shield yourself from the consequences of your actions…

I’m delighted to invite poet, Zoe Brooks, over to Patricia’s Pen for the first time. Zoe has come along to chat about inspiration for Fool’s Paradise (Black Eyes Publishing UK) so without further ado, it’s over to Zoe.

Inspiration

Zoe Brooks

I have written poetry for as long as I can remember – my first published poem was in the local parish magazine when I was 8 years old. Over the years I have written about many subjects: nature features prominently and of course relationships, but there is often an awareness of the larger context – of our place in time and history, of myth, politics and spirituality.

In early 1990, only a few months after the overthrow of communism, I visited Prague with a Czech friend of mine. She had fled her country in 1968 and was returning at last. I found the visit profoundly moving…

*****

The editor of The High Window is grateful to the poet, Alan Jenkins, and Rory Waterman, at New Walk Editions, for permisssion to reprint two poems from The Ghost Net.

Review • Poems

*****

The Ghost Net by Alan Jenkins. £12. New Walk Editions.  ISBN: 9781739281205                 Reviewed by David Cooke

The publisher’s blurb for Alan Jenkins’ The Ghost Net informs us that this is his ‘eighth full collection of original poems and his first for a decade’. Since publishing five acclaimed collections with Chatto & Windus, between 1988 and 2005, and, in 2001, A Short History of Snakes, his selected poems with Grove Press, New York, it has been increasingly difficult to keep track of work that has been published by various small presses. One is grateful, therefore, to New Walk Editions for making available this memorable addition to the poet’s oeuvre which…

Bio: Matthew Johnson is the author of, Shadow Folks and Soul Songs (Kelsay Books) and his most recent collection, Far from New York State (NYQ Press). His poetry has appeared in Roanoke Review, Front Porch Review, Northern New England Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and elsewhere. Matthew is the recipient of a Sundress Publications Residency and is a three-time Best of the Net nominee. A former sports journalist and editor, he is an MA graduate of UNC-Greensboro and the managing editor of The Portrait of New England and the poetry editor of The Twin Bill. 

Twitter: @Matt_Johnson_D

Website: matthewjohnsonpoetry.com

https://www.matthewjohnsonpoetry.com/book

If God Permitted Pirates on the Mississippi A poah man leans on his plow to rest in the Delta swelter, As his mule lies by the bank, Dipping its head in the muddy sweet. The flood had receded, And what was left for poah whites and poah blacks Was merely…

An Evening of Music & Poetry at The Root

featuring

Poetry by

Jinn Bug
Brigid Morrissey
Frogg Corpse
Skye Nicholson
Michael Duckwall
David L O'Nan
Elizabeth Nelson
Ron Whitehead

Music by:

Katrina Harper
Tommy Bays
Maddie Fitts

Thursday, August 24th  6:30-8:30 (et)
The Root
110 E. Market St. New Albany, Indiana.

The Root image by Brigid Morrissey

 *Post is from Ron Whitehead's facebook

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgm4amfr0TA&pp=ygUdcm9uIHdoaXRlaGVhZCBnb256byBmZXN0IDIwMjM%3Dhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ-2qJvZa6Q&pp=ygUdcm9uIHdoaXRlaGVhZCBnb256byBmZXN0IDIwMjM%3Dhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGx-_VC4Qfc&pp=ygUdcm9uIHdoaXRlaGVhZCBnb256byBmZXN0IDIwMjM%3Dhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkfhoBZFnK0&pp=ygUecm9uIHdoaXRlaGVhZCBnb256byBsYXN0IGdvbnpv

A Poetry Showcase from Frogg Corpse

A Fevers of the Mind Interview/Promo piece with Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate

Illusions

I stand up, my knee scraped, another stocking ruined. I rub my eyes. Was it really Paul, or simply my phantoms taking form?

Dawn is still a dream away. The newsstands are shuttered; the street’s empty except for skittering rats and weary nighthawks like me.

Soon the sun will rise and smile on the flowers. They will look up with open faces and smile back. But I remember trembling roses, their thorns no match for the monstrous mechanical birds we’ve created. London filled with rubble; Dresden destroyed. The giant cloud like a ferocious radiant rose, rising high in the sky, an Angel of Death that proclaimed, “for beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror.”

If only I had known. I thought we were seeding a garden, but it was a mirage. And now I’m haunted by ghosts and the figment of love.