#burningword

[thygremlinboy]

heres the first of my idiot magic dragon group (once I make the guy that brought them all together ill explain how events that should be very rare have dragons all the same age)

First up is PrintSeer, a female nightwing with a spotted tear scale. She can see ghost like figures of where dragons in the past have been.

Then we have BurningWords born under a SuperBluemoon as a Night/sky hybrid and the only hybrid of this group. I still dont know what I want his power to be.

[finishinglinepress]

FLP CHAPBOOK OF THE DAY: Edge of Highway by J. A. Lagana

On SALE: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/edge-of-highway-by-j-a-lagana/

Set against a backdrop of #highways, #backroads, and #nature’s seasonal shifts, the #poems in Edge of Highway delve into how a long daily commute provides opportunities for #self-reflection, #reconciliation, and the sorting of emotional entanglements.

For over two decades, writer J. A. Lagana drove three-hours round-trip, five days per week, on her daily commute. Her poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Cider Press Review, Heron Tree, Rattle, RockPaperPoem, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry collection Make Space (Finishing Line Press, 2023) which explores the complexities of loss, family ties, and resiliency. A finalist for the 2023 Julia Peterkin Award in Poetry, she is also a founder and former co-editor of River Heron Review. J. A. Lagana lives in a Bucks County, Pennsylvania river town where she raised a family with her husband, Tony. Learn more at jlagana.com. https://www.jlagana.com

PRAISE FOR Edge of Highway by J. A. Lagana

J. A. Lagana’s spare and lovely poems find music and momentum in the slow lane or on the exit ramp, along a detour route, in a roadside cafe, even stalled before pre-dawn roadwork flares. Her language is by turns euphonious and honest, playful and pining, bemused and attentive, its rhythms of a piece with the goings out and comings back of the daily grind. Realizations take root, hopes find their terms, and questions get resolved, if tentatively. In each poem the natural world speaks through metaphor as a voice within that teaches. The compactness of these poems suits to the contained nature of the car, the lane, the poet’s sure voice, disinclined as it is to waste syllables or pad lines. Edge of Highway gives profound testimony to the fact that no stretch of hours in any given day is merely interstitial, that “there from where” and “there to where” are equally present in the journey forth—and the journey back.

–Terence Culleton, author of A Tree and Gone and A Communion of Saints

Edge of Highway pulls us into a contemplative journey, the kind that takes place alone on a daily commute. Lagana’s beautiful imagery braids the natural and built worlds, creating a liminal space where white center lines of a monotonous road become “rhinestoned,” and “dawn and sparrows lift” “like blankets strewn / across a lovers bed.” The act of reading these poems becomes the drive itself. Gently, they urge us to pay attention; they escort us as we sort out life’s entanglements in spite of the fact that “most mornings, / it’s tough to make the light.” I simply fell into these poems and did not want to exit.

–Katharine Cristiani, author of Preserving the Unraveled

Please share/please repost #flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry #chapbook #read #poems #nature #highways #backroads #seasons #life #reconciliation #reflection

[inparenth]

"Clipping Coupons" & "Too-Tight Shoes" by M. O. McIvor

"Clipping Coupons" & "Too-Tight Shoes" by M. O. McIvor

M. Ocampo McIvor was born in the Philippines, raised in Toronto, Canada, and currently calls both Toronto and Seattle home. Her work has been featured in The Bangalore Review, Pine Row Press, Burningword Literary, and others. She is the author of Ugly Things We Hide and Who Knows You Best. M. Ocampo McIvor has been previously featured by In Parentheses. Clipping Coupons Clipping Coupons My…

[eunoiareview]

mountain laurel...

mountain laurel father tells me what to do with his ashes Joshua St. Claire is an accountant who works as a financial executive for a large non-profit in rural Pennsylvania, USA. His poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Lana Turner Journal, Modern Haiku, Burningword Literary Journal, Delmarva Review, and LIGEIA Magazine, among others. He is a Pushcart Prize, Rhysling Award and Best of…

[shereewrites]

I'm going to be back in Burningword this July. "Milk Bomb" was accepted for publication. It's an important piece for me, and I'm grateful it found a home there. Thank you, Erik Deerly. #burningword #poetry #noracism #shereelapuma https://www.instagram.com/shereewrites/p/BwagR_ilQUw/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=xzwj0efirhgi

[snicklefrit]

The Very First Venus Flytrap by Dante Novario

Burningwords Literary Journal, July 2022

[marigoldjesus]

I hope you moan my name when you masturbate. I hope my body eats your imagination and my love is all over your hand.

[courtneyreloadedagain]

Surrogate father I nearly fuck

Left him abruptly - everything was too much

Talking to him in the couch

My favorite father - Angela and Lester

Didn't die they grew up

Now they're talking in the night

A connection past the border lines

[emberpoems]

I N S T A G R A M : emberpoems

[thinkstains]

incandescent

round the cul-de-sac slowly almost drifting through late afternoon sunlight, but fading, a little didn’t bother with sunscreen— too sad to care

hard to understand this isolation

new houses are being built empty plots and scaffolding dust and cornfields. quiet, shallow blue ponds undulating

want to wade into the water  and never surface

want to speed the decay and burrow deep enough

to vanish completely

[thygremlinboy]

This is Skywatcher, a full nightwing born during the same superblue moon as Burningwords. Due to their powers, their often spacey, Though I still dont know what I want the ability to be.

[imagetherapy]

If my hope were tangible I could easily say it lives in times of quiet blessed by a hummingbird beating its wings.

Penney Knightly, “Nature is Nurture.” published in Burningword Journal 

[eltravelventure]

I am in control of where I focus my attention. I am in control of what thoughts I allow to remain in my mind. At times it may be difficult to achieve, however I am in control. And I am grateful.

I just want to feel anything other than everything all at once.

my 21st summer ended like that / amazed by curiosity itself.

- L

04-21-19

[nauseateddrive]

I ALMOST KILLED MY FURBY by Kristine Brown

"One day, you'll say, 'I want kids.'"

Surely. Pfft.

"...so keep in mind that when you do have children, you know that..."

I find that when it comes to offspring, precedents are implausible. But, go on.

"When are you having kids?"

Thanks for your concerns, people older than myself. By the way, I'm twenty and I just moved in with the guy.

* * *

Many of these discussions took place in 2012. Today, I'm twenty-eight. A generous plenty say I look seventeen, twelve on days speckled with sunshine and free of humidity. I have not seriously dated a man in more than two years. Silence is joyful, and my bank account is calm. I should also mention that my vocal chords are so much less strained because I've hardly engaged in another argument about when to get pregnant, how many times, and who would perform tasks of necessity while the other did all the indoctrination. My first relationship - the only serious one I've had - was outwardly quirky in that Wall-E and EVE sort of way, but if anyone was our neighbor, he or she would tell a different story. My live-in boyfriend had a dogged coldness resembling Kevin Lomax from The Devil's Advocate, and my meltdowns were just as grating as Mrs. Lomax's pleas to just "make a baby." Oddly enough, he was the one proposing plans for The Spawning. I just wanted him to spend time with me more.

My opinion on kids? I would make for an unfit mother. Possibly because of maladaptive behaviors, my urge to crush Pepsi cans to bite-sized accordions, a desensitization to insults my friends would classify as "bullying." I couldn't possibly impart a set of ethics to foster happiness and prosperity in the life of a child. "Oh, but that would be my job, love bug." Let's assume that besides diapering, clothing, breastfeeding, and these advanced duties to follow, I couldn't possibly have any sort of influence on my child. Doubtful.

Sometimes, whether at work or in a doctor's office, I witness an angry child thrashing a baby doll, or a careless, soporific child who drags the tiny mannequin by the hair. The parent may reprimand the child, and might even say: "Look what you did to your baby. No, don't do that!"

I can't say I've had these experiences, at least at a very young age. I never took an interest in baby dolls. Now, I do remember having multiple miniature dolls either given to me by older children or found in the clamor of Saturday swap meets. I do remember the Ken and Barbie, not genuinely Mattel but sufficiently humanoid to warrant their being called such. And with the screech of cheap Velcro, their garments were gone, and Ken slept on top. Well, I thought they were sleeping, but adults were displeased with my mission in choreography. I never saw those miniature knockoffs again. Predictably, I was supervised as I played with the Native American doll set. The male was removed, and eventually, so was the horse.

The clarity of my childhood memories astounds a handful of people, partly because of my current tendency to gloss over details and fail to follow directions. I could readily retell the plots and messages of numerous commercials in the mid-to-late '90s, the older Generation X-ers nodding and smirking in a way that asks, "Why do you know all this?" I was especially terrified of public safety announcements. "Only you can prevent forest fires" disconcerts me as much as "Hi, I'm Chucky. Wanna play?” But one campaign I couldn't tolerate was the one with the shaken baby. The teddy bear etched in stone, the infant's screams in the background, a camera in a dance of epilepsy. Then you see the whole tombstone and something along the lines of "Our Beloved Child." I think I was five or six at the time, but that was quite a horror flick.

What the frustrated adult committed against the baby, I would replicate three years later. To my Furby.

We were better off then and at this point my parents had learned the rules of Keeping Up with the Joneses. But they didn't buy the Furby. Even now, I question the merits by which he entered our home. Oreo. That's what my babysitter's older sister introduced him as, placing the box in my twiggy little arms, pinching my cheeks because that's what people do to you when you're eight, chubby, and loudly pretentious. She was fired the week after. I still remember being asked if the Furby was supposed to be paid for.

So consensus states that Furbies are Satan's little mercenaries. Infantilized Gremlins, wingless bats with beaks, sorely mutated flying monkeys. Whatever they may be, and in whatever year they were manufactured and marketed, we know that each and every Furby could use obedience classes with S.T.F.U. Consulting (I suppose we should add "LLC" to this, protecting the venture from lawsuits should the classes not work). That little gem plastered onto their foreheads? I don't believe it was ever a sophisticated camera, or a recording device. I couldn't teach Oreo anything. If I couldn't make him dance like my friends could with theirs, how could my children follow simple rules? Not that I was making this irrational connection in 1998, but my friends often joked that as much as I carried that loudmouth around, he was "kinda" my baby.

Furbies have this creepy voice a bit too similar to that of an aggressive cougar you've either known or heard of with a burgeoning case of emphysema. Yes, I also remember some graphic anti-smoking ads. I think above all demands, mine's signature croon was "Hungry." I'd press my finger on its plastic red tongue to hear those simpering "Mmmm"s and so many "Hungry"s that wouldn't cease no matter how often I fed the damn thing. Frustrated, I'd bury Oreo beneath layers of blankets, chuck him in multiple pillowcases, wedge him beneath the wall and my mattress. His nighttime cravings annoyed us all. 

There was a point where I was reprimanded harshly for walking by Oreo during his "naps." We had had it with his shit.

We couldn't figure out how to turn the fucker off. Honestly, I don't remember anyone even taking steps to activate the Furby. He came into the world as is. It's eerily similar to those robotic babies they hoist onto high school freshmen in state-mandated health class. Abstinence only, this will teach you. And in those health classes I do remember some frustrated girls perpetrating acts of legitimate mannequin abuse. Kind of like those angry toddlers in doctors' offices. Oreo once again begged for food. I couldn't quite teach him to dance on cue. He never did anything other Furbies did in all the commercials. I knew you could rub them on the tummy and all, but I thought, "What if I turn him upside down?"

And he hung from my grasp, looking very much like an obese bat that lost its wings long atrophied. Characteristically, he screamed, "Weeeeee. Fun!"

My intention was to punish him. So I shook him.

"Weeeee. Fun! Tuba, woah! Do do do do do dooooo..."

(Oreo uttered this phrase multiple times. I could never really make out exactly what he was saying, but I am certain that he did say "Tuba.")

As my hands were too tiny for one to do all the handling, I tried to spin him around. Really, I churned the animatronic butterball in multiple directions, my arms growing tired, my frustrations projected.

"Woahhh! Woahhh!"

I continued with this odd punishment.

"Woaaaahhhh! Me scared!"

The cry was loud. But that "Me scared" was a bit unsettling. It was a mix between a coo and a gasp, like he knew what I was trying to do. But I continued in my campaign to silence Oreo.

"Whooopeeeee! Fuuuunnnn!"

Blatantly contradicting the sentiments expressed immediately prior. I continued.

"Woaaahhh! Me scared! Heeeee."

That "heeee" actually sounded remorseful. I felt a twinge of remorse. But it wasn't enough, as I did continue.

Repeatedly, he would cry about being scared. And suddenly, a snorting sound. And while he hung upside down, the base of his odd little person in the clutches of my white-knuckled hands, he spoke the awaited mantra.

"Wooooo. Wooooo. Wooooo. Something something. Cocoa."

(Again, it's often hard for me to properly recall exactly what that thing said. I'm pretty confident he said "cocoa." He had some decent taste.)

And silence. For a good two years. Despite several jabs and pinches in evenings to follow, Oreo persisted in his slumber. Or coma.

Twenty years later, and I'm ordering books on Amazon to better address my anger, impatience, and tendency to seethe. Babies, and children in general, stay absent in my plans. But really, no one would take the story of Oreo seriously enough in reviewing my constant fears. That day, I became a little scared of myself.

Kristine Brown shuffles between poetry, prose, data entry, and wishing she could properly fly a kite. She photographs strangers' cats and writes poems for them. You can find these poems on her blog, Crumpled Paper Cranes (https://crumpledpapercranes.com). Her writing appears in Hobart, Philosophical Idiot, Burningword Literary Journal, among others. Her novel, Connie Undone, will be released on March 1st, 2020.

[snicklefrit]

Phantom Hugger by Dante Novario

Burningword Literary Journal, July 2022

[marigoldjesus]

The sunflowers. The starry night knowing their pose. In a van gogh with cracks to let the light in against the balcony railing.