Art Contribution One-Eyed Jacks from Raegen Pietrucha

(c) Raegen Pietrucha

Bio: Raegen Pietrucha writes, edits, and consults creatively and professionally. Her chapbook, An Animal I Can’t Name, won the 2015 Two of Cups Press competition; her debut poetry collection, Head of a Gorgon, is forthcoming with Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in May; and she has a memoir in progress. She received her MFA from Bowling Green State University, where she was an assistant editor for Mid-American Review. Her work has been published in Cimarron Review, Puerto del Sol, and other journals. Connect with her at raegenmp.wordpress.com and on Twitter @freeradicalrp.

My Brother (Lays dead under the Hickory Tree) Inspired by Anne Sexton by David L O’Nan

My Brother (Lays Dead Under the Hickory Tree)

There he is 
I see him under pelts of hailstones
A riddled mind and diseased by doctors
the icy rain pulsing little cuts 
All over and over again.
I'm still in a quiet thought
We always felt the ending.
Or at least I have seen this ending.
In nightmares every night
The men festive from the jail.
Mother, a stereotype. Needing an exorcism.

There he is
My brother, a little hushed baby of 25.
Shoes as split as a peeled banana.
His coloring of blue, like the river nearby.
Like the breeze that blows through his long haired, daredevil boy.
He was hideous in his battle
Popping firework amphetamine pills, dragons watch the alleys.
The abusive and abused in corners and in jars.
Oh, lonesome traveler
a blood kissed jewel.

Some crows sing in their broken voices, they sit atop the bells.
They fly in the air, they congregate in the tree above. The sick hickory
I watch with no blink as they rescue him from the cold ground.
For only a few long hours and then they just return him back
to give him a comfortable dirty sack.  
Underground, where they'll whisper out your sins to each other.
We can't escape the gossip.  
Gossip clumsily falls like a slinky missing a step along the way.
The steps that are missed however, are remembered for coming up with the best stories.
Your best demise. 

Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.

Poetry Inspired by Photography by Kevin DeLaney @kpdela Poetry by Matthew Freeman, Vipanjeet Kaur, Lesley Curwen and David L O’Nan “The Empath Dies in the End”

The Empath Dies in the End

So I find myself alone after a night of separation
A Black night lit up over our green chairs.
Now empty, no longer filled by our bodies
and our conversations, sits like ghosts
My God! this night has moon lit on fire.

I was the first to vanish from your anger.
Your white lightning skin wrapped in the moon rays,
as you paddled insults to my heart.
You will never let me feel the honey.
To let my lungs wrap up in the stickiness.
The mosquitoes and the bees begin to sleep with a thirst.

Will a new man let you swim in that undertow?
The Chimes they cling together by the swirling winds.
The clashing waves pour onto your cracked toes from Lake Seneca.
Several hours of dancing some unnamed waltz.  
On your hideaway beach that wasn't hours. 
That is what the prophet tells me.   
Stabbed in waiting while the hymns carry my ghost away from my body.

I listen with dim sleeping eyes.  The boats in the distance belt out 
tunes.  I drain in this loneliness.  The weakness, rustic in scowl.
Blood over the beads of rocks.  Listened to the wind blow once.
Listened to the wind blow twice.  It was a disguise.
Converged pure from my polluted brain.  The narcissists was wiry and sudden and overtook my neglected heart. Infested a brain.
The Empath dies in the end.

Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.

The Tranquil Sun by Vipanjeet Kaur

The sun sits tranquilly 
over the western horizon
at dusk,
His charioteer slows down
and pauses for a while
After traversing the whole sky.

While riding the chariot of dusk,
He smiles a last fading smile –
A farewell gesture;
A token of eternal love;
A parting kiss 
to the dying day.

While folding millions of his
imponderable arms of rays
that pervade the world
throughout the day,
He draws the blinds of 
his effulgence down
before night,
Like a mourner,
saluting the passing day.

Beyond the picket fence
of my mansion,
The one-eyed overseer
rings the bell of repose
and looks at me 
through crimson windows,
imparting a rosy aureole 
to my dormant hopes,
and like a dreamcatcher 
promising vernal dreams.

A fervent plea in his closing eye
to release the unrealised dreams of 
the dying day: broken, dead and decayed
in the autumn of dusk.
Let them burn 
on the pyre of the setting light,
Let the sombre red embers
reduce them softly to ashes
with the deepening darkness of dusk,
Let them dissolve in the darkness of night,
Let the cremains of despair be immersed 
in the flowing silver moonlight

before a new dawn begins
a new chariot ride. 

Bio: Ms. Vipanjeet Kaur from India is a poet fond of writing poems on various themes like nature, women empowerment, self, spiritualism and life.  Her haikus have been featured in the international online journals like Haiku Dialogue of The Haiku Foundation, The Haiku Pond, The Cold Moon Journal and the Scarlet Dragonfly Journal and her micropoetry has been published in the Five Fleas (Itchy Poetry). She has also read research papers on the topics of Literature, Human Rights and Women Empowerment in a few national seminars and international conferences. 
She can be followed on Twitter @vjpoeticmusings.



Fevers by Matthew Freeman

And I’ve said there’s no difference
between the streetlamp and the moon.
And that’s still true, but now
in late September as everything wanes
I’m sitting outside my sister’s apartment
with my diet soda and my cigarette and my iPod
watching the crowd get thin at Ted Drewes
and every little thing we believed in fall apart.
Someday when the sun burns out you’ll ask yourself
whether you stayed true, really true, to your
feverish desire.  

A Poetry Showcase by Matthew Freeman 

Moonage by Lesley Curwen

Haloed lunacy floats crosshatch beam
through umber cloud and bulrush-crown.   Bleak horizon swallows photon-feed
down continents of eyeless waves.

Landward, pines guard empty chairs 
against moon's threat, a pump-song
chuckles chlorine,  muddles jets
of aquamarine gems.

Poetry based on photography “The Lone Road to Moloka’I” from Maggs Vibo
 Poetry based on photography Challenge from Ankh Spice pt. 1




Another poem by Clive Gresswell inspired by Leonard Cohen

another glory poem or untitled by Clive Gresswell

another glory poem 
along the glory road
the golden sun is rising
the golden tongue explodes.

& in your rising daydreams
the dreaming of your past
the golden gate of conscience
where golden memories pass

i see your twinkling presence
in the holy time of spirit
i hear your uplifting songs
in the presence of the minute.

& long may you glimpse over
this bejewelled landscape of green
the highlands & the byways
the golden beauties theme.


A Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Clive Gresswell  

More Poetry Inspired by Leonard Cohen from R.G. Evans & Clive Gresswell 

Poetry Showcase: Poems DNA by Clive Gresswell
 

2 Poems from Ethan O’Nan : Dysphoria & Lake

Lake

Cognitive of the day
We tumble ran to the lake
Tripped off pants
Slipped down dress
Frantic laughing to the water 

Control lost, no play cool
Wet lips pressed, slick
Summer hot skin, steam
Dripping lake from strands
Pushed from our eyes

Lure me under again

Dysphoria
originally published in Fevers of the Mind Presents the Poets of 2020

I was told this is what I had to do
So my eyes seek a shape, pattern – fixation
Numb the mind
Climb inside the dark circle of the paneling
Twist into the loops & swirls of the curtain
Trace the maze of the tiles on the floor
It will all be done soon
This is what I was told I should do
That body isn’t mine
But I lug it around
And with it a persona to puppet
Who was I with her?
How did I behave around them?
No one really knew…me
I can’t say hello to you of five years ago.
I took this skin out & we spoke words that had meaning then, maybe
I don’t remember them now
How forgetful, unthoughtful, you’ll think
Who was I? How much of me did you really see? 
Better to burn the past than pick through splinters
I suppose this life is akin to living in a suitcase
Taking out this being, this flesh to engage
A misfit to the mind
Desperate to love, but moments of love felt like terror as well
Numb the mind
Find a shape
And if I were to change this skin
Receive stitches and sutures to be a more fitting form
You might be perplexed
You might think it a joke
Those who felt closest
May just deny, grow angry, grow sad
Call on the name of ghosts now gone
But a puppeteer’s arms grow heavy & sore 
After half a lifetime of shows
And once the rubble of the mind is cleared
The choice must be made to live life’s remainder 
In a performance for others
Or to stop staring at patterns


Ethan O’Nan is a trans man living in North Carolina, he has a wife and 2 children. Ethan only 
dabbles in writing these days. His whole life has led to the last few years fully understanding what to do 
to make him feel on the outside like he has always been on the inside. The older brother of EIC David L 
O’Nan, Ethan is a business owner along with his wife Kristi. Ethan enjoys 80’s music, art, crafting, 
making soap, & comedy.