2009 A Recovery From Her Spiderweb It had been 10 years A cold February Kentucky wind Through a panic call I guess united by fears Silence, on a dark night drive Clarity, lost through the wires Arrivals to the death of Indigo. A foolish man falls prey To a Jekyll and Hyde constellation Her screams, her pills, her knives & blades threatening I have to be bare like the roses Or else, And now throw me to the pond, Leave me a fish wanting to die. In obscurity, floating with a manic dead mind. You tried to weaken me, with words, with threats Used me, Driven me away to a trail of trauma Like a long walk into a viewless forest. Planted seeds of fire to my heart. Trust comes on like impulsivity now In a fright, For what is real And what is a monster with soft skin I blister to my hands from a false touch. That spreads like a virus. “Before the Bridges Fell” by me David L O’Nan Poetry book is out today on Cajun Mutt Press Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren Bending Rivers: The Poetry & Stories of David L O’Nan out now! Fevers of the Mind founder bio: David L O’Nan (WolfPack Contributor)
Category: The Trauma Letters Online Anthology
Poetry by David L O’Nan : Where Do I Leave?

Where Do I Leave?
I met you in the death to skin fires In sticky pits full of fallen stars A dark red-curtained nauseous room with the moonlit hissing Your room is a dying egg shell white bleeding angel artwork, the Mona Lisa convulses off the walls. You broke my eggs to the Dirty Three the yolk is a permanent black crisping to wet dirty cement, Breathing up from the ground To paralyze me to this memory Pause, run, running I feel homeless Fainting to your lectures You fed me pills and secrets You harshly took my heart out, and drained it like a sponge. I have to escape this, I have to escape this, I have to escape this, These claws that grip I have to escape this, I have to keep running from this, I have to escape this, So fast from the macabre The claws that rip The hands of knives want to purge me into the holes, To fall in, and smell the sourness of a body That sweats away the alcohol That dances out all her dirty arrogance. The few that swim out The feeling I have to swim out I've got to swim out, This drowning, This drowning, Is closing in, I'm forever changed by your tattooing Left me in tears Leave me scared Leave me feeling sick and departed From my mind Leave me blushing in with fevers and leave in a hypnotic taboo. I drove away When you didn't want me to I drove away Because I had to I drove away From this Kentucky Mountain Medusa In an alcoholic veil Mentally bruising Mentally washed Mentally forever wondering Mentally i'm ashamed When you were the one drawing all of the lines. In my car I try to scream But I can't In my car I try to breathe But I can't In my car I drive faster than the speed I drive into the black hole eyes of the road. Like chaos in the melting snow and the violins play louder "I Knew it Would Come to This" Again Paralyzed when the sky blackened The road feels like a lost tunnel with these, dim lights. “Before the Bridges Fell” by me David L O’Nan Poetry book is out today on Cajun Mutt Press Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren Bending Rivers: The Poetry & Stories of David L O’Nan out now! Fevers of the Mind founder bio: David L O’Nan (WolfPack Contributor)
Border Crossing by Andrea Lambert
Border Crossing
I was born in Los Angeles. November 2018. The sky is white. My skin is brown. The air dips below freezing at night. I carry my passport and birth certificate in my purse. In case I must prove citizenship. There are checkpoints all over Reno. Those who cannot show the right paperwork in time? Caged. The only stamp on my passport is a honeymoon in Tulum. 2005. Despite immaculate paperwork, a Border Guard in Tijuana refuses my return crossing to the United States. With my parents. After attending my father’s friend’s baby shower. In a black velvet floral party dress. Red lipstick. Heels. California summer tan. The Guard thinks I am a Mexican prostitute this swinging baby boomer couple picked up for a threesome. Preferring poly fun in their own waterbed stateside. Counterfeit passport for the whore. Fear eclipses multiple levels of ick in lizard brain. I speak very fast. In unaccented English. Give exact dates and locations for my birth and education. My words spill like water. I am a woman of ambiguous heritage. Mixed race. Whether I’m white depends on who you’re talking to. My words mean nothing to the Border Guard. He does not believe that this plump pink man could possibly be my father. Believes him to be simply a John. The Guard asks me my father’s birth date. I understand how tenuous my position to white America in stark blazing lights. “January,” I say. So I can go home. Land of the free, my ass. Fevers of the Mind Quick-9 Interview with Andrea Lambert Andrea Lambert is a queer writer, artist and filmmaker with Schizoaffective Disorder. She lives in Nevada with her four cats. Site: andreaklambert.com
2 poems by Coby Daniels: Suicide Notes & Possibilities
(c) Margarita CSilva (unsplash images)
Suicide Notes (possible t/w)
There are days when all I want
Is to get out of my body
And stand outside of me in silent
OBSERVATION
of this tragically beautiful,
broken being that is myself
And yet,
Like a stay of execution;
The weight of hope weighs down on my soul
and stays my hand.
Hope steers my head clear off thoughts
On how peaceful, eternal silence would be.
My free spirit strains at the chains
this world binds her up with-
I feel my free spirit choke on a pain
much more intense than the agonies
borne by a woman in labour.
My skin
Is another oppressor
in this playbook:
She holds me by the scruff of the neck
And pulls me back into helplessness.
I look around into the faces of many
that I, time and again, stood behind.
They watch me from the corners of eyes,
Mock pitying but condemning my soul
into eternal damnation.
I send a strongly veiled:
'Hello, how are you?'
in hopes someone would read between the lines
But no;
Nobody really cares.
I turn to the last strains of happiness
Floating around in my beserk mind.
They are worth nothing but straw
in this swiftly churning current
that sucks and carries without;
Everything that stood once proud,
beautiful, unbroken and full of life
But then I ask my mind to hold still
Just for a moment
Tell my body to fight back
For I am a mountain
Strong and immovable
And when tomorrow comes
Here I will stand
Whole and unbroken again.
Possibilities
Maybe, just maybe:
I’m chasing fleetingly after the wind
And when it rushes out of my sails
I’ll come crashing to reality.
Maybe,
This castle I build in the air would not crumble
And then I can live an enchanted fairy-tale with her
Only, it may so suddenly end.
Maybe, just maybe,
Dreaming big will finally have paid off
And I’d be able to stop sighing
Because then, I would have found you.
Maybe,
It’s all a mix up in my head
From the knocks I got for being a bad boy
From the long-gone moments of my childhood.
Maybe, just maybe,
You are not meant for me
But trust me;
It’s you I see when I close my eyes-
This vision makes me drowsy
every single moment I’m awake.
Maybe,
We are meant to play different roles
And by luck,
our paths crossed at this point in time
But is there no way to reverse the fates?
To choose only one path, and make it ours?
Maybe, just maybe,
There’s a lot more left unsaid
Of heartbeats fading like bright colours
under the sun.
This could be real and yet untrue:
Maybe, I deserve a punch to knock me out of this intoxication Because maybe, now I'm lost; Searching for a needle in the haystack. Bio: Daniel Asamoah Yeboah is a Ghanaian poet, educator, novelist, spoken word artiste, University of Cape Coast alum and former president of the Creative Writers Club, UCC. He has contributed to several zines and journals. He is a volunteer, nature lover and reader. He says poetry is a gift that when not given back to society, haunts its creator, the poet, that births it perhaps for the power it wields in changing the ways of men.
Trauma Letters Online Anthology: Poem “Embroidery” by Vanessa Maderer
(c) Joanna Kosinska (Unsplash)
Embroidery Bruises embroider Fragile fabric, like Little lilac flowers dotted with Violets too, smelling sweet like Violence too. I feel as if Your needlework favors More floral flavours because Their fresh scent masks so nicely That fragrance of spilled Ink blots staining canvas skin; but A rose By any other name Would still have thorns With which you sew your name Into me, through The means of rose-coloured Embroidery. Twitter @madererv Look for Vanessa's debut chapbook "Cusp of Dusk" https://allauthor.com/book/58635/cusp-of-dusk-a-collection-of-moments-in-transition/