Posts for June 19, 2026

Category

Poem

Until

I heard a song today
“I come from a long line of bitches”
Which brought thought to my mind
There are two very different lanes
The women in my family drove in
There was the straight and narrow
Where everything was neat and clean
Prime and proper, the wildest hair
Was from rising from the altar on Sunday
Full of light and love and a lot of pretending
If Stepford Wives had a magazine
They would have surely made the cover
Then the others were full of grit and vinegar
With their candles burning at both ends
Firey curls, rarely tamed even near the fire
They were the tenders, the bootleggers, the runners,
The feral and nocturnal primal spirited queens
They were the ones who taught me everything
Everything I know about how to survive.

Shelda

Category

Poem

6/19/26

Entreating

Once, sister & I saw a mother ghost
coaxing her children from
our bedroom, a gentle floating

to our parents’ room across the hallway,
hovered near them, huddled,
the sight awakening a new

thrill at seeing past the now
through a quiet slip of light
into an opaque window world

Momma rose, shushed & calmed
us, and the spirit family faded
into the dark corner

I asked mom years later if
she remembered
I’d taken all the stuffed

animals & dolls from your bed
to wash them, so maybe that’s why
you saw the ghost family

But, I can still see Mother ghost
circling her children close, leading
them back to their cloudy home

Eric Morris

Category

Poem

6/19/26

Pageantry

Drama, one might think,

would lend itself to pageantry,

curtains obscuring actors obscuring actions

obscuring meaning obscuring purpose…

but people build stages so hollow

to allow the audience to fill that space

with versions of themselves that don’t exist.

Pageantry fails when one of the links

in the chain of being upon which one builds it

fails due to faulty forging.

For example, as competitions go,

competitors rarely question why they are there;

for winning as a goal does much less to fulfill

if the actual results has little to bear

on the destinations awaiting you later.

Pageantries hide the achievement

as one’s words hide one’s thoughts

as one’s points hide the purpose

as the purpose hides our ability to act.

If someone were to rip the dull pageantries down

to see what remained behind performative action,

that person might be horrified to realize

there would be nothing left there.

Words like tradition bury the places we found meaning,

burying the people who had found it useful before,

beneath always done like this and annual

and sacred and revered and first and last time

until the act itself becomes pageantry

to support pageantry’s effort,

rather than ars gratis artis.

Rip up the script,

and see what words come to you first.

McKenna Carter

Category

Poem

6/19/26

boomerang

and when the love comes back
            as though it never left
it could return to me
like a tulip bulb
            hidden but grown
                        but known
the pinks so familiar
reds like a warning
but when the love returns
            and it will
I hope you return with it