Mari Deweese

Freebleeder

I used to think that 

bleached and processed

tree pulp would 

be enough to catch and carry

emptied contents

of my womb.

But I am older now,

accessing and liberating 

the wiser pain. 

I let flow a funnel

into the world, knowing

what I did not know, 

that words, like blood,

don't belong in a can,

and only cling to inside walls 

for so long before

the source goes septic.

Mari Deweese lives outside of Memphis, and dreams of a place with an actual autumn. Her first book, Kinky Keeps the House Clean, was published by Nixes Mate Books in 2017, and her next collection of poetry will drop from the gibbet in fall 2019.

Amy Holman

My mother made herself the deer with a broken leg 

We saw a deer through the pane into someone else’s yard.

The leg moved like a tube sock pinned to the hip 

and half filled with sticks. I did not like to see it suffer,

either. She was upset —my mother —that no one helped 

the doe. Was it a mother, too? As if we were the first

to observe the scene. We weren’t. All had been told to

let her be. My mother had suffered a destruction 

of the self, a divorce, and no one cared. That wasn’t true. 

We were grown, on our own. I agree it was hard. Yet 

in those moments of a cold November day, we watched 

a doe, disabled and enduring, walk across a yard and eat 

a hedge. I wish she could have seen it like that.

Amy Holman is the author of the collection, Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010) and four chapbooks, including the prizewinning Wait for Me, I’m Gone (Dream Horse Press, 2005). Recent poems have been in or accepted by Blueline, concis, Gargoyle, The Westchester Review, and Like Light anthology of Bright Hill Press. She is a literary consultant and teaches poetry and publishing workshops. 

Tobi Alfier

Loving Emily

I went to her house.

You were lounged on her couch

in a jacket I didn’t know you owned,

feet up on her shabby table,

reading in silence.

I said let’s call Emily,

swing by her man’s house

and all meet for dinner.

You said something

I don’t recall, and I went

for the phone. On the floor,

four perfect stapled pages,

lined like your beloved

yellow pads. The heading said:

“The Week of Loving Emily”

Four pages of poems I didn’t know,

sent off to journals obscure to me,

the last two to the army. I knew

Emily’s man, a caber tossing

roughneck of a bloke, did not

write these. I knew they were yours.

Emily answered quite chirpy,

got less and less so as she explained

that no, it would not be a good

idea, her man was playing music

with friends, did not want company—

I was sad, got more and more down

as she spoke. I knew you were

not coming home with me.

Emily had a Scottish accent,

you did as well. I just left,

I don’t know how I sounded,

just broken hearted.

Massage Chairs

Crumpled – dollars pulled out of your pocket,

thrown on the table with almost disdain.

The way you form your lips when trying to

whistle, crooked and crumpled.  How I

feel when I fold myself on the massage chair,

legs turned under like the wings

of a bird fallen from under the eaves before

learning to fly.  Palms up in quiet surrender

I let everything go, folded and breathing

while a man who I don’t know

lifts my hair once, twice, and

lays palms to places only lovers should explore.

You don’t go there.  Ever?  I can’t remember.

I share secrets I don’t even know.

Tobi Alfier is a multiple Pushcart nominee and multiple Best of the Net nominee. Her full-length collection “Somewhere, Anywhere, Doesn’t Matter Where” was published by Kelsay Books. “Slices of Alice & Other Character Studies” was published by Cholla Needles Press. She is co-editor of San Pedro River Review (www.bluehorsepress.com).

Dennis Mahagin

Asterisk

when the bongos 
go missing, some thief 
made of alter ego
and afterthought
brushes the yellow Cobain cowlick
out of his eyes, ducked down 
behind the side door of a Portland

pawn shop 
—this percussionist who sneaks around
wearing the torn 
to shit lumberjack 

shirt, holding on
to a fifty 
like a heart beat in the stiffest breeze,
and his guilty glance, simply a squeezed
frame, it says these beats 
basically the same, yet gone
now and forever 
gone, the beat like an add-on
that the dead can’t put their finger
on—go ahead, switch 
to castanets 
instead, I say, 
and bottle caps—tubular bells 
such as them that exist

in The Exorcist, a thousand little whispers 
like pop rocks from the backfire 
of a flame, and a hearse: they say
we missed you today

in church, we missed you we missed

you, astral 
projection that floats, 
couple inches behind a Venice boat
—dead reckoning in the star-charred 
emptiness of morning canal. 
Oh, sing, sing to be happy, what simply 
cannot be, the chorus to Love Her Madly, 
maybe, so awkwardly, banging 
there the anorexic air

in no known key

—take her in the arms 
of your mind
and dance.

Dennis Mahagin is the author of two poetry collections: “Longshot and Ghazal,” from Mojave River Press, and “Grand Mal,” from Rebel Satori Press. His poems have appeared in magazines such as Exquisite Corpse, The Nervous Breakdown, Thrush Poetry Journal, Juked, Absinthe Literary Review, Stirring, decomP, and 3 A.M. Dennis is the poetry editor for Frigg Magazine, and the owner of a music store in downtown Deer Lodge, Montana. 

Howie Good

Message from Unknown Sender

I’ve been trying not to die, but I got to be honest, it just adds to the amount of chaos. Every couple of weeks there’s the stink of decay everywhere, accompanied by mold-green shadows. The dog knows when it’s coming. He starts barking insanely and racing around the house. I don’t feel like I’m leaving this place. I feel like this place is leaving me. I was actually told, “It’s too late for old people to be out, anyway.” Oh, America, how can this be? You should have taken my advice a while ago and covered your webcam with tape.

Howie Good is the author of The Loser's Guide to Street Fighting, winner of the 2017 Lorien Prize from Thoughtcrime Press, and Dangerous Acts Starring Unstable Elements, winner of the 2015 Press Americana Prize for Poetry. His latest poetry collections are I Am Not a Robot from Tolsun Books and A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel from Analog Submission Press, both published in 2018.

Looking For Submissions Still

livenudepoems@gmail.com is the address. Send 3-6 poems and we'll consider running them. We're not big, but we mean well.

Thanks--

Rusty and Heather

Updates

Hi all. As you can tell, things have been quiet around here in the last six months. Heather and I have had the most exciting of lives--he said sarcastically--which has  hindered progress, let's say. We haven't gotten many submissions either, as I think poets assumed the market died. Nope. Still alive, just coming out of a lull. Look for more frequent updates going forward, as we expand back into poetry news and links from around the web as well as original poems from the small cadre of writers who follow us.

Priority list for LNP:

• outreach (finding new poets for us to publish)
• interviews with small press poets and editors
• curating poetry news (send your news to our email or PM us on social media)
• updating the Paul Blackburn page. You can follow my Black Mountain Poets obsession as I read my way through Blackburn's letters to Julio Cortazar, published last year by Lost & Found: The CUNY's Poetics Document Initiative.
•  writing on Joel Oppenheimer, Black Mountain poet and columnist for the Village Voice from 1969-84, and first director of the Poetry Project. He's a slightly younger contemporary of Blackburn (see how all my roads lead back to Blackburn?) and perhaps unjustly considered a minor figure. I've just begun considering his work, but it intrigues me.
• following the wind. By which I mean, we're going to do some fun and edifying stuff, and we hope you'll come along for the ride.