on and on and on

leigh we are all plucked flowers, every one of us follows from @gravitvs

[calculating--stars]

11.2.2018 || e.l.

[qq-riri]

tonight is a night for miracles

[ragewrites]

          magdalena penitente by domenico tintoretto, painted c. 1598           fragments of a self-portrait by lianna schreiber, august 2018

[fluvii]

after a year of writing and revising, i’m publishing a seven-poem preview of my chapbook, lesbos in berks! you can name your own price to download it at https://gumroad.com/l/lesbosinberks.

i’m a low-income college student, so whatever you choose to contribute will help me continue to develop artistically! what’s most important to me is gaining readership and receiving feedback, though, so please let me know what you think if you take the time to read!

[ragewrites]

      eden is not a garden;       eden is the lining of his ribs — dark,       fragrant with flowers.

      athanatos  (n.) deathless, immortal       a veiled God, a brazen maiden — this is a story of love, a procession of lilies, a marriage told in fifteen poems. say; why don’t you tie on your corsage and your dancing shoes and join us for the ceremony?       buy it here  •  pay what you can !

[neongodsnetwork]

“We are mosaics. Pieces of light, love, history, stars. Glued together with magic and music and words.” — Anita Krizzan 

neon gods network first collective chapbook: Mosaic 

you can download a copy for free here 

featuring work from Shazi, Kavi, Joey, Lauv, Aya, Lor, and Angelea 

cover art: Joey and Divya

[tenderbeasts-deactivated2019101]

                                        BY THE SKIN OF YOUR TEETH        A new chapbook by Joey Potter that features 6 poems and illustrations                                                 Free to download!                                     

 On one side, sea monsters, on the other, an army with rotting dreams,   above us, giants and below us, a million hungry monsters. In this world of   strange creatures and carnivorous plants loyalty burns bright and   somewhere in the midst of all of that is God and all his warrior saints,   eyeless prophets and fearsome giant slayers. 

[sunsounds]

do you want to be a person or not? darling, do you want to be dead or not?

Visceral, written by Kavi Kshiraj, is a chapbook containing 12 poems on personhood, rebirth, and sacrifice.

Contents include:

gutted birds

deicides, deifications, all the deities that were

a dream, a desert(ing)

poolside conversations

dusts, wants

sinking between your bones

the game has a name, but you can’t figure out what it is

of sameness

of butterflies and their griefs

texts between pinocchio and a nameless girl, a girl-less name

the river & all it’s been

her, painted with blood

Download it here.

[calculating--stars]

self absorbed || e.l.

[prcserpina]

LOTUS BLOSSOM

fifteen poems about being an alien girl, a desi girl - always half at home, half at sea in the monsoon rain.

read it here for free

[calculating--stars]

I AM A WOMAN, she says, and it means that i am -

looking through the lense of seven colors at the complex thing that is femininity: a woman, but sometimes just an adjective, but sometimes more than everything.

FEMININITY IN COLORS is my second chapbook. i want to thank @kaafka, @thermonous, @smallepics, and @avolitorial for helping me edit and format. i also want to give another massive thanks to @kaafka for helping me find much of the art that i used here. i finally want to thank my friends, family, and everyone at @inkflowsnetwork for their unconditional love and support. without you, this chapbook would not be possible. 

pay what you want on payhip

[aikaleegrave]

@poetryclub13 week 3 prompt kintsugi

[calculating--stars]

a poem for each week i’m 19 || week 17 || may 8-14

[solenelmar]

last summer was the first time i felt happy in such a hot weather going topless to the beach like what are you staring at yes they’re mine yes they’re small and they’re not all round and i’m done with hiding the fact that i’m more semi-abandoned valley than busy planet there are no skyscrapers here if you’re going to touch me please do not close your eyes no light is going to hurt your retinas, not here. the boys at the beach don’t want to touch me anyway more body hair than woman, more poppy than rose did you know poppies are considered bad weeds i have a rose tattooed on my upper right thigh maybe i should consider getting a stick-n-poke poppy on my smallest boob. so the boys at the beach will never touch me and i’m happy and kind of sad too that i’m happy because touching is probably my favorite thing i spent years yearning to be touched by men whose hands stung like bees now i know i’m into girls whose touch is a lot more like that of snow so i stop being sad because we’re lying on your bed all sweaty and exhausted by the heat of our two bodies that are both tiny and huge for this world and we stop touching for a while and just stare at each other until winter is back again what magic is this, the coming and going of seasons of the year depending on how close we want to be. so who cares about the boys at the beach, right my therapist cares more about my depression the insides of my chest care more about you i still care way too much about the shape of my chest maybe that’s why i wrote insides of my chest instead of heart it’s scary to realize there’s a heart below all of this poppy flesh i’m afraid I’ll never be a rose and you’ll never love me but my therapist says don’t settle for lovers who do not water your petals, who only want you there to clean up the dirt on their soil that’s a lie my therapist just told me to stop loving abusers but i had to make a metaphor out of it because the truth hurt way too much. the thing is summer’s back and depression seems to be gone what will i talk about to my therapist now i worry, how much will i miss her if i stop needing her depression was never gone but last summer i was finally happy to be a body to be a lesbian with a body that drags itself across the sheets of other young women’s beds i think this was the first time i put the word lesbian in a poem i’m way too fond of metaphors when it comes to hurtful truths, i guess, however i’m a lesbian with a body and I finally can say yes I’ve known shame but mostly it does not live inside of my chest anymore.

happy summer. (via solenelmar)

[solenelmar]

pride sits on my tongue like an unwanted guest like why are you here like who brought you here like where’s the home in all this car scrapyard. i sit on my mother’s lap like an unholy child she loves me, she loves me not her name is Margarita which is Spanish for daisy so i pluck the petals until i’m left with just thorns. my mother sits at the family dinner like an unexperienced activist when did Christmas Eve turn into a fight it’s not my aunts whom are fighting it’s me fighting against my inner will to silence her mom it’s not homophobia it’s just the saucy snacks, you eat them before you can digest love, remember? love never comes first for those of us who grew up wondering whether home was just another word for graveyard of honesty. the words of younger lonelier more unfortunate lesbians sit on my tear ducts like why do i even cry at least i do have a home at least my mother is proud but all this body’s ever known is second-hand shame like yes i do cry because hating yourself out of ignorance shouldn’t be a longer name for lucky thanks mom for being proud of me please teach me how to be the same.

pride. (via solenelmar)

[solenelmar]

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: comfort zine!

there’s a huge community on Tumblr focusing on improving personal mental health & general well-being, taking pictures of stuff that makes you feel happy inside, making art about your own feelings and playlists that help you cheer up, and sharing life advice with unknown people.

i could go on and on for ages: there’s a huge collective need for better relationships, healthier living and rejection of numbness, and i feel like some people here on the Internet are trying to fill that void be it with poetry and writing that inspires them, pictures of flowers, clothes they love wearing and food they enjoy eating, edits of tv shows and movies that make them feel less alone in this world or just selfies they upload in order to feel more loved and take pride in their own bravery for attempting to love themselves in such a cruel environment.

that’s the reason behind the Comfort Zine: putting together all those kinds of things that help us comfort ourselves when a more or less rough day comes to an end. praising happy, meanwhile understanding and accepting that in order to feel happy, we ought to feel sad, angry or scared many times too. so in this zine no content focusing on so called “negative” emotions or feelings will be banned; it’ll just be understood as one more step towards taking back our lives and hearts. hope and positivity are key, but there’s no way we can stay hopeful and positive without making some room for our “uglier” moments.

so that’s it! if you’re interested in having your playlists, original music, original artwork, fanart, writing of any kind, edits, pictures, or advice text posts be part of Comfort Zine, please mail me at [email protected] or message me via Tumblr in order to talk about contents, deadlines and more information! 

[sunsounds]

the pool casting rippling silhouettes over her skin, the smearing of shadows between the bones of porcelain hands. a parabola of a body cuts itself into water, and names it a drowning - death - salvation, a millennia of words. my skin is dripping poolwater onto tiles, onto her bared limbs.

we are stumbling against one another, syrup pale golden on our tongues and high on it. it’s a new moon night & i’ll become a flock of crows like this, wings spread, fearful.

i can’t think now, words caught in my larynx, brushing against my sternum, and i press dried flowers into the gaps of her clavicle, call it a kenning for the way she wraps fingers around the stem of wineglass of molten black & pushes the wet mouth of it to my lips until my throat is slick with ink. maybe tonight i will be heaving, kneeling, hair a cascade, & flower petals will caress my tongue like the dead things i hold against her skin.

the bones of this abandoned house groan, fluorescent lights flickering, and she catches fingers against my ribs, my vertebrae thrust against a wall. i finger the rose-gold of her earrings and she pulls me closer, telling me we’ll be bulletproof here, tonight, in this bedroom, streaked fireflies on her cheekbones like achilles branded with warpaint

THE NIGHT BURIES ITSELF IN ME // written for @neongodsnetwork prompt week 4 & for @undercelestialstars