Tag: prose poems

Three Poems by Mark Hendrickson

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Mindful

My therapist says I should light a candle. So I light two, equidistant on the windowsill, four if I count the reflections. It is not enough. I add a stick of incense. She says I should choose calming scents; but lavender and chamomile gag me, so I go with bergamot. I imagine the smoke is steam rising and that life is Earl Grey. The tea grows cold too quickly. Outside my window it’s still raining, also grey. Someone in the apartments across the way is watching me watch them. My therapist says be mindful. I imagine the end of everything.

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People Like That

I don’t like people who are too loud. People that don’t pay attention to their surroundings. Angry people who only see the negative side of everything. I despise it when someone is manic one minute and depressed the next. I don’t care for bald people or those who work out all the time and still don’t lose weight. I have no time for intolerant people. I can’t stand introverts or anyone who can’t manage simple small talk without making it awkward. I don’t like people who take pills just to get through the day. No, I don’t like myself at all.

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The Leaving

Father drops your hand and shames you into leaving childhood. Voluntarily. ‘Big boys don’t carry security blankets.’ This was never true. Innocence was a home you couldn’t wait to run away from. It remains fashionable to claim you miss it. Then came parents. Friends. Lovers. You left them before they left you. You leave all you were willing to die for. You scream regret to the car in the garage. Soon you will circle round to innocence and childhood again. They will drag you from your home and leave you nowhere. Strangers fail to notice when you leave yourself behind.

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Mark Hendrickson is a gay poet and former psychiatric nurse living in the Des Moines area. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, his work appears in McNeese Review, Vestal Review, Variant Lit, The Ekphrastic Review, and others. Follow him @MarkHPoetry or visit markhendricksonpoetry.com

Two Poems by Howie Good

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Au Courant

Just because I smile doesn’t mean I am happy. “All of life,” Buddha said, “is sadness.” Birds return from the hot countries full of excited chatter, unaware the Doomsday Clock has crept even closer to midnight. I keep up with the headlines as much as a person can and still remain sane. Minds have corroded, splintered, flamed out. For every opinion shared in the blogosphere, there is an equal and opposite opinion. I hope for truth to recover its legendary authority. Meanwhile, a tomato is also a child’s balloon.

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Shadows and Ghosts

The CT scan machine is shaped like a donut. I am lying inside the hole of the donut on my back. Bugs lie on their backs when they are dying. I was injected only moments earlier with a special dye. A burning sensation immediately spread through my body. Now the machine, with a brilliant flash of light, scans my torso for new tumors. In an adjacent room, techs are monitoring the images on a screen. They see shadows and ghosts. They see mounds of rubble. They see the screams trapped in my lungs.

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Howie Good’s latest poetry book, True Crime, is scheduled to be published by Sacred Parasite in early 2026.

Two Poems by John Amen

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Hide & Seek

I was the golden boy. I bolted for the woods, running through ferns, past the sycamores, hiding behind the well-shed. The birthday song faded, my parents boarded their boat, leaving for a new life across the ocean. When I emerged, I was no longer the golden boy & my friend, who was supposed to be looking for me, had given up, married, he had children, grandchildren, houses scattered across the globe. Our lawn had turned brown, the roof was heavy with moss, our driveway littered with mannequins & car parts. I watched the Uber driver as he hauled the roast into the cul de sac. I stabbed it with my Swiss army knife until it stopped howling. That red juice flowed across the pavement, neighborhood, the county. I waited for the moon to appear, but no one was working the strings, at least that day, & like a train that’s leapt its rails, the night just never arrived.

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FMJ

It happened again by the diamond highway. A satyr wearing a Budweiser cap put a bullet through a windshield & disappeared into the sunlight. Police arrived, dogs sniffed the tarmac, detectives found a casing with an inscription that read love is salvation. The highway was barricaded, cars & trucks backed up to the Standalone Gulf. Someone said, we’re in a loop here & smiled a terrifying smile. The day of the funeral in Chicago / in Manhattan / in Omaha a million people flooded a Zoom call, chanting until the FBI wrapped a trailer in Musgrove, a kidnapped baby sobbing on the back porch. The satyr in the Budweiser cap sang “Amazing Grace” through a bullhorn, then turned himself in. At the trial, he waved his beautiful hooves, declaring he’d heard voices in the forsythia, his angels ordering him to spread the holy word. An hour later the judge lowered his gavel, a long sigh unrolled through the city. The satyr’s hind legs were chained, his horns pared to a nub. A bailiff dragged him from the courtroom, mane shimmering, teeth bared for the folks back home. Someone said that night & that night only, they could see every star in the universe.

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John Amen is the author of five collections of poetry, including Illusion of an Overwhelm, finalist for the 2018 Brockman-Campbell Award, and work from which was chosen as a finalist for the 2018 Dana Award. He was the recipient of the 2021 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize and the 2024 Susan Laughter Myers Fellowship. His poems and prose have appeared recently in Rattle, Prairie Schooner, American Literary Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, and his poetry has been translated into Spanish, French, Hungarian, Korean, and Hebrew. He founded and is managing editor of Pedestal Magazine. His new collection, Dark Souvenirs, was released by NYQ Books in May 2024.

Two Poems by Michael Robins

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Keep Mississippi Beautiful

All the way until the magnolia state to finally see the cows hotfooting
their field & we too were undoubtedly grateful having missed the
accident by minutes, livelihoods & lifetimes bent in the awkward
angles. A hundred miles earlier, the kids wanted to know if driving is
hard. I did my best, which feels like the middle lane when a tree falls
across the interstate, no one waiting around to say, When you next
travel this road your wife of a decade will be dead, your children will
have grown, you’ll mostly leave what you thought you’d love for good.

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See You Next Time

Whispering to the hours among the corners of grief. Like an animal
curled in the middle of the floor & such symbols everywhere, wishing
but rooms with separate bowls of ice cream, just kids & some six
hundred miles apart, a long shot if we ever met. Early morning
showers, even the fish taking sides by skipping meals. I miss you, &
later these late goodbyes until there’s nothing left to say. A little
hungover, I know, & a single strand of hair. The half-eaten cicadas &
enough. It’s been a rough summer, I think aloud before writing it down.
To be everywhere at rest. To be at once. I mean September flying.

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Michael Robins is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently The Bright Invisible (2022) and People You May Know (2020), both from Saturnalia Books. He lives in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where he teaches in the MFA program at McNeese State University and serves as editor of The McNeese Review.