This is Gonna Hurt Me (by Jami Tillis)

Jami Tillis

“This Is Gonna Hurt Me

more than it hurts you,”
is what Mama used to say
when I misbehaved or didn’t
listen to the admonition I was
given by my “loved ones.”
After the lashing, I fell fast
asleep. Before the lashing,
I pretended to be asleep—
attempting to escape hurting
Mama more than she hurt me,
as she said, my brother
giggling like a little school
girl and, to my surprise, my
Grandma too. There are two
sides to every story, and I wasn’t
always wrong, like when my Peeps
were tossed into the wind from
a moving car because McDonald’s
wasn’t junk food and my Peeps were.

* * *

“This Is Gonna Hurt Me” by Jami Tillis comes from her 2014 chapbook In Bold Blackness: Selections published by Crisis Chronicles Press.

Jami Tillis is 24 years old. She graduated from Northeastern Illinois University in May 2012. Her field of study is Secondary Education with a concentration in English and history. In college, she belonged to a variety of groups—Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority Inc., Sigma Tau Delta English Honors Society, and Pi Alpha Theta History Honors Society.

Jami has a 6 year old daughter named Chayse who is her current inspiration for writing. “All of my poetry and other written works are derived from real life experiences that I have witnessed and survived before and after she came along.”

Jami lives in Chicago and works as a 5th and 6th grade reading and writing teacher in Chicago Public Schools.

Cover features a Steven Smith photo of an Edward McKnight Kauffer illustration in the Borzoi Poe

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The Vigil (by Shelley Chernin)

The Vigil
by Shelley Chernin

The Vigil © 2012 by Shelley Chernin
front cover art © 2012 by Jessie Herzfeld
first published 5/24/2012 as a small chapbook
(CC#24) by Crisis Chronicles Press

 

1

Lord Buddha attained enlightenment in Bihar
near ISM, the Indian School of Mines, in Dhanbad,
eastern Jharkhand state, Damodar River valley,

“The Coal Capital of India.” A city at the heart
of the coalfields of Jharia, its pulmonary veins
carry blood money to Tata Iron and Steel Company

Ltd. Its ground exhales the smoke of coal fires,
burning in the viscera, perpetual dyspepsia in
the second most polluted place in India.

2

In West Virginia, the Sago Baptist Church was founded in 1856 by Lucy Henderson, Hester Summerville, and others. Seventy years later, historian E.R. Grose would write:

This church has wielded a large influence in the lives of the Sago people. It has never been large in numbers but has stood faithfully for the best things in life; and only eternity can tell the influence it has exerted.

That’s a long time to wait, congregate. Youngsters in the first Sunday school competed to memorize scripture. L.B. Moore once recited two chapters of Matthew, left no time for the other children. At age twenty, Moore entered the Union Army, fought with Company B of the Tenth West Virginia Volunteer Infantry for three years. Wounded on the last day of the Siege of Petersburg, he returned home on crutches, joined the Baptist ministry ten years later. Company B lost fourteen to injuries and disease in the war. Moore founded a temperance society, preached against hard cider. Others went out as ministers from Sago Baptist, which first held services in the old log schoolhouse, on the river bank, at the chestnut tree. Many hearts beat there, and in the 1873 white painted church-house that became Mr. Burner’s barn twenty years later.

3

Rutajit studies mining engineering at ISM, plays
cricket on collegiate fields. His stomach growls
on fasting days; he snacks on sabudana khichdi

made from sago, pith of cycas revoluta, pearls of flour
leached of natural toxins. The recipe is simple:
Soak the sago overnight, melt ghee, brown chiles

and cumin seeds and maybe potatoes too, add soaked sago,
cook until crisp. Garnish with coconut and cilantro.
Do not cover the pan or the sago conglomerates

into one lump. Sago thickens like tapioca and plots.
Despite popular myths, white sago is no purer
than the light cream variety. Rutajit feels full. 

4

Sago Baptist Church is the point where trapped miners’ families gathered on pins and needles to wait for their loved ones to surface. Neighbors brought glazed hams, potato salad, and homemade black walnut apple cake with vanilla icing. The children ate. Red Cross workers brought cots, blankets, and Tylenol. Pastors Day and Barker, joined by Pastor Murrell of The Way of Holiness Church of Buckhannon brought hymns and scriptures, read Romans 8:28:

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

Families watched the mine entrance across the street. President Bush offered his prayer: May God bless those who are trapped below the earth, and may God bless those who are concerned about those trapped below the earth. Bush, Murrell, and Day asked us all to pray, so prayers circulated like oxygenated blood down through the national arteries, branched into our capillaries, in search of miners’ cells.

5

Rutajit’s name means “Conqueror of Truth.” Hindus permit
debate on the existence of God. His parents congratulate
their future mine safety expert. A “mining accident”

is any accident that happens in a mine. If five or more
people die, the accident is called a “mining disaster.”
Rutajit loves science and his girlfriend, not words. His heart

pounds, but he does not pray the first time
his class enters Bagdigi Mine. Twenty-nine men died
in a flood there in 2001, he learns. Inside the mine are signs

of concern: Coal dust hai kahtray ki naani, is mein chheeto
hardam paani. (Coal dust is the grandmother of all dangers,
always sprinkle water on it.) Dust and ashes

are cognate. If footprints are visible on the mine floor,
fine particles can explode, produce 200 mile per hour winds,
dispersing additional dust from walls and overhead

beams. There can be secondary explosions, fires. Anything
that can burn in bulk can explode when powdered
and mixed with air. Coal, wood. Churches.

6

Westboro Baptist Church is down in the basement of Reverend Fred Phelps’ home in Topeka. Twenty members trekked to West Virginia for the miners’ memorial service. A holy pilgrimage. Their leaflets blasted Sago Baptist Church

for blasphemously misrepresenting the sovereign, predestined providences of The Almighty in the Sago Mine matter.

They proclaimed God’s absolute power to cause or prevent tragedy, abused the bereaved for the sin of failure to rejoice in God’s tragedies. Human compassion ignores the logic. At the core, faith is thick and dark as a coal mine, burns like fossil fuel. When the dead miners’ families misbelieved that all but one lived, they celebrated their miracle, danced and sang. Pastor Murrell said after that it was like they had experienced The Resurrection.

7

In the month after the Sago disaster, four more
miners died in mining accidents in West Virginia.
Like miscooked sago, the flow of names congeals.

Rutajit knows a story. On May 28, 1965, an explosion
and fire in the Dhori Colliery in Dhanbad killed
more than 400 miners. Deep inside, heat blasted the mine

to darkness, blew off eyeglasses, burned off brows. The air
coagulated. The men died in denseness, unable to see
their own hands. Thick in prayer.

Shelley Chernin is a 59-year-old freelance researcher, writer, and editor of legal reference books. She lives in Russell, Ohio (aka Novelty, proving that the US Postal Service once had a sense of irony). Her poems have appeared in Scrivener Creative Review, Rhapsoidia, What I Knew Before I Knew: Poems from the Pudding House Salon-Cleveland, the Heights Observer, the 2010 through 2012 Hessler Street Fair poetry anthologies and the Cuyahoga Burning edition of Big Bridge. She received the 2nd Place award in the 2011 Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest and Honorable Mentions in the Akron Art Museum’s New Words Poetry Contest in 2009 and 2010. Her latest book, Oct Tongue -1, (2014, Crisis Chronicles Press) is a collaboration with Mary Weems, John Swain, Steven Smith, Lady, John Burroughs and Steve Brightman,  Yes, of course, Shelley plays the ukulele. Who doesn’t?

At the Ceiling (by John Swain)

At the Ceiling

Moon of lights
on the dark walk
in the tall grass.
A girl in furs
with black flowers
in blonde hair.
I secured balance
in tree movement,
stars dripping.
The dogs bay
in rage at silence
and a trespass
into the fearing.
I struck with fist
at the ceiling
of this red dirt.

 

* * * *

“At the Ceiling” (c) 2013 by John Swain, from his book Rain and Gravestones (published by Crisis Chronicles Press).

John Swain of Louisville, Kentucky, is the author of several acclaimed books including White Vases (2012, Crisis Chronicles) and Ring the Sycamore Sky (2014, Red Paint Hill).

Miming (by Martin Burke)

Miming

Show me red by pointing to not-red

direct me north without a compass

Blind up my eyes and show me pure light

use every word to speak silent

Point at the wood to show me a road

Talk of snow at mid-summer solstice

Summon the living and summon the dead

describe one to the other

 

Bypass one and two and count to three

where musicians are miming their parts

Show me by shadows the hand on a page

writing what the page requires

 

* * * * *

This poem is a selection from Martin Burke’s 2014 Crisis Chronicles Press chapbook, YES, but…..

Martin Burke was born in Ireland (Limerick) but lives now in Flanders (the northern Flemish speaking area of Belgium).  He has published a number of books in Ireland, the UK, USA, and Belgium.

Red Dust (by Ryn Cricket)

Red Dust

“A rooster can eat a snake, you know.” Li told the older boy in the school yard.

“No, it can’t.” The boy countered. “The snake would kill it before it could even try.”

“Each animal has its own strength.” She insisted. “And if the rooster were provoked, it would kill a snake.”

“I don’t believe you.” The boy taunted.

“Alright, you go get a snake, and I’ll get my rooster.”

The boy ran off into the trees behind the school and Li crossed the dry, red, dirt road to her house on the other side. Her parents weren’t home, so they wouldn’t know that she had taken “Sawan,” her father’s prized rooster. She had to be right.

They met back up in the dusty school yard within minutes. “Alright,” the boy said. “When I count to three, we will both drop them in front of us. Ready? One…two…three.” And the boy almost threw the snake on the ground and it started to slither until Li released Sawan.

Sawan started squawking as if he had already been caught. He ruffled his feathers and flapped his wings in a frenzy. The snake just watched quietly and hissed; watching and waiting. Sawan almost caused himself a heart attack in his noisy display, but he must have known that if he ran away, he could be swiftly attacked.

“Come on, Sawan! Eat him!” Li half-cheered and half-pleaded. Sawan started to calm down. The snake was not attacking him. Maybe he was safe. And in that very moment, the snake lunged, biting Sawan perfectly on the neck. The rooster collapsed almost immediately into a mound of flesh and feathers.

Li fell on her knees in the dry dirt next to the bird and her little mind began to connect the dots.

They found her body floating in the river hours later because she understood that she would always be the victim of snakes.

 

* * * * *

“Red Dust” comes from Ryn Cricket’s chapbook In Circles, published in 2012 by Crisis Chronicles Press.

Ryn Cricket is a poet, teacher and mother raised in Ohio and now living in China.  For more information, please visit ryncricket.com.

Arisen (by John Swain)

John Swain [from book cover]

Arisen

Impossible day
we placed ancestor skulls
in a limestone cave.
We left our clothes
for nails driven
into feet and eyelids
before the adoration.
Red silk and perfume
covered the tomb,
I knelt onto
our locked arms.
He crushed a locust
into honey
for the untruth of my tongue
and the rot in my groin.
I wanted another night
to live ecstatic,
I believed in songs
of hidden meaning.

* * * *

“Arisen” (c) 2012 by John Swain, from his chapbook White Vases (published by Crisis Chronicles Press).

John Swain of Louisville, Kentucky, is the author of several acclaimed books including, most recently, Rain and Gravestones (2013, Crisis Chronicles) and Ring the Sycamore Sky (2014, Red Paint Hill).

 

Parental Indiscretion (by Cee Williams)

Cee Williams — photo by Chandra Alderman

Parental Indiscretion

I once saw my father lick turkey gravy off the back of my mother’s calf

she had on these black stockings
it was Christmas, maybe thanksgiving
maybe just a Sunday

I remember thinking, gross

how gross

my father just licked my mother’s leg and I just knew she was gonna slap him
but she laughed instead

my mother didn’t think it was gross
she thought it was funny, so did everybody, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins

everybody except me

I thought it was embarrassing
and after all the laughter they kissed

this is how I grew up

spontaneous grossness

Cosby shit without the sweaters, and the degrees

* * *

“Parental Indiscretion” comes from Cee Williams 2013 chapbook My America: 9 Poems for Sister Lucille, published by Crisis Chronicles Press.  It is available for $6 from John Burroughs, 3344 W. 105th Street #4, Cleveland, Ohio 44111.

Cee Williams‘ other chapbooks include 12 Poems [2012] and Bus Riders in the Storm [2013], both from Crisis Chronicles Press. He is the founder of Poets’ Hall – The International Fellowship of Poets and Spoken Word Artists, a community based venue for creative expression, which he operates in his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania.

A selection from Secret Letters (by j/j hastain)

j/j hastain 

 

Dear still unforeseen,

I recognize you in me by sound and image. I can feel your hands in your voice. I feel your various voices in my menstrual blood, speaking to me through sopping rouge. This morning I am bleeding in the meadow, trying to read my clots, to perform translations by way of them while on my knees.

I see lace ladders in the red. I want these lace ladders to be edible to you. Our relation is psychoacoustic. Tone turns the world. The world turning grays my pubic hair. So long without you in physical form means I am still without orgasm. I am a molecular color moaning: dusty, rough, a necessary linen-limen.

 

* * * * *

This selection comes from j/j hastain’s chapbook Secret Letters [2013, Crisis Chronicles Press].

j/j hastain is a queer, mystic, seer, singer, photographer, lover, priest/ess, and writer. As artist and activist of the audible, j/j is the author of several cross-genre books and enjoys ceremonial performances in an ongoing project regarding gender, shamanism, eros and embodiments. That project is called: you make yourself your own tilted stage.

j/j is the author of several cross-genre books including the trans-genre book libertine monk (Scrambler Press), anti-memoir a vigorous (Black Coffee Press/ Eight Ball Press) and The Xyr Trilogy: a Metaphysical Romance. j/j’s writing has most recently appeared in Caketrain, Trickhouse, The Collagist, Housefire, Bombay Gin, Aufgabe and Tarpaulin Sky. j/j has been a guest lecturer at Naropa University, University of Colorado and University of Denver.

cover art (c) 2013 by Marnie Weber

Vending Machine Profiteers (by Steve Brightman)

Steve Brightman [photo by T.M. Göttl]

Vending Machine Profiteers

Loud are the
vending machine
profiteers.
One quarter
one quarter
one quarter
clank clank clank
into the cracks
in the armor,
into the empty,
into the Lou Reed
skyline above a city
he never saw.
Loud are the boys
and girls yelling in their
nylon ripcord vocals.
Loud are the raw
and childish voices
of the new silence.

“Vending Machine Profiteers” (c) 2013 by Steve Brightman, from his chapbook 13 Ways of Looking at Lou Reed (published by Crisis Chronicles Press).

Steve Brightman lives in Kent, Ohio.  He is also the author of In Brilliant Explosions Alone (2013, NightBallet Press); Like Michelangelo Sorta Said (2013, The Poet’s Haven); Absent The (2013, Writing Knights Press); The Logic of Meteors (2011, Writing Knights);  Sometimes, Illinois (2011, NightBallet); and Forlorn Teeth (2010, Blasted Press).

He will be one of 60 featured poets during Snoetry 4: A Kulchured Winter Wordfest on 16 March 2014 at Guide to Kulchur, 1386 W. 65th Street in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

The Sleeping Box (by Sandy Sue Benitez)

 

 

The Sleeping Box
for Sophia Rose

Delicately stored away
in a potpourri patterned box
sleeps the memory
of a baby lost in time.

Swathed inside a dressing gown
with booties crocheted
by loving unknown hands
the ghost of what will never be
remains.
No heartbeat. No cries
persist in this makeshift tomb.

When I held her in my arms
she was a cherry blossom tree,
branches protruding,
cupped with buds
of white or pink blossoms
that had yet to appear.

Still,
she was beautiful
in her simple, pearl way.
I felt her long toenails
which had grown without abandon;
tiny seashells scattered along
a white sandy beach.

I should have clipped them
and collected them in a bottle
for safekeeping.

Two Summers later,
I have become the box’s caretaker;
dusting and minding for moths.
Careful not to disturb
the precious contents within.

* * * * *

This poem originally appeared in Big River Poetry Review.  It was included in Angel, a chapbook of poetry by Sandy Sue Benitez published in 2012 by Crisis Chronicles Press.

Sandy Sue Benitez is the author of Ever Violet, a full-length collection of poetry (D-N Publishing, 2007). She has authored four previous chapbooks: Beneath a Black Pearl Sky (Flutter Press, 2009), The Lollipop Club (Victorian Violet Press, 2010), Petal Storm (Flutter Press, 2010), and Postcards from Iraq (Books on Blogs, 2011). Sandy’s work also appears in two anthologies: Lilith: A Collection of Women’s Writes and Postcards from Eve, (both Fortunate Childe Publications). She is also the Founder & Editor of Flutter Poetry Journal and Flutter Press. Sandy’s poetry has appeared in over 130 print and online poetry journals since 2006. She resides in the Inland Empire, California, with her husband and their 2 children.

Angel cover photo by Kim Newberg