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A sample of new Backlash Press titles arriving in September! #backlashpress #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #backlashcommunity #womenwriters

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#MichaelTyrell signing my copy of #PhantomLaundry at #BacklashPress event. (at Iron Duke Hotel)

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#writersofinstagram #writing #writingcommunity #bombingthethinker #poetrycommunity #poem #ohio #backlashpress

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Sample of new Backlash Press titles arriving in September! Pre-orders at www.backlashpress.com #backlashpress #poetsofinstagram #poetrycommunity #backlashcommunity #poetryisnotdead

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#writing #writerslife #writingcommunity #poetry #poetrycommunity #inspirational #backlashpress #community #love #hawaii

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#writersofinstagram #writerscommunity #writing #poetry #nyu #inspirational #empoweringwomen #mythology #pose #poetrycommunity #backlash #backlashpress #womeninwriting

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#Human | #Primrose

by Gretchen Heffernan

The following is an endangered word

#Primrose

Scent, like a sea

shuttles the bees

in tapping fleets

against my window

where the roses, even

with their thorns, grow

independently beautiful, perhaps

more for the thorn than the petal exquisite

like sorrow with a laugh in it –

The bees are dying,

but not without our flowers.

[gretchenheffernan]

Puncture

by Gretchen Heffernan

The unsaid

like net the air

fell over us.

We are careful

with our words,

those sharp arrows

we can’t call back.

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Our Children

by Gretchen Heffernan

Some nights I stand transfixed

in reverence and terror at what we’ve done.

Good God, I think.  We can make people.

And all I have to give you

suddenly seems useless

inside the earth you’ll inherit.

But I don’t really believe that,

though I’m not sure why,

which is the definition of hope.

Hope is always blind

like the best parts of a poem

before they hit the page, the truth is

that truth is slow to reveal itself.

In the beginning,

I found it hard to be so needed

and poems dipped upon me

like swallows skimming a pond.

I lost them, so many.

With time, I’ve realised, that they are my gifts

to you and when you leave me

and we both break

to open anew,

they will fly and land

upon your shoulders

a large flock of choruses

ready for the catching.

Know this.  

while I

kiss and kiss

your knees.

[gretchenheffernan]

Book of Dirt

by Gretchen Heffernan

But the truth about dreams is that once they’re believed in, they’re already half fulfilled, so faith in impossible things is vitally important. It’s crucial if you want to evolve and the pearl longed to reach its full potential, yet it had come to a point where it found it could advance no further on its own. And so, another truth was shown to the pearl, the truth that none of us are truly independent of one another, of the world, none of us can act alone.

We need others.

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#Human | #Ash

by Gretchen Heffernan

The following are words that are endangered

#Ash

Fear felled me

and I became a stump.  Stuck, I

ran my finger over years

both wet and lean.  

But memory was no medicine

and fires came to test me with their devils.

Ash had a different

meaning then, not a tree,

but a thin dust

that words could scatter.

The choices were gather or disseminate.  

I used this labour to invent branches.

They weren’t real (at first)

though thoughts can behave like molecules

and before you know it

inside your fictions

a leaf will appear.  

An honest bud of progress.

And yes, it will fall.

It may even be ripped from you,

the challenge is believing

another will grow in its place.

The understanding is this:

stories survive longer than we do

and we survive because of their

ability to rise out of our ashes and fly

from mouth to fire breathing mouth.

What we are told is the only real.

[gretchenheffernan]

Nostalgia for the Beast

by Gretchen Heffernan

By God

how we miss you

in our primate hearts

though our brains are too big

for us to admit it – we create

our own predators now –

would you believe

we hunt one another?

What is instinct against

self-inflicted progress?

Mere wind to the seed,

simple diagnosis,

a pending

condition.

[gretchenheffernan]

The Carving Circle

by Gretchen Heffernan

Mathis Beaumont was a photographer because he needed a layer between himself

and his obsession with grizzly bears. It worked like glue inside a crack. It united and

divided the fact that he was both man and bear. The lens allowed him to filter. It

wasn’t until after Mathis had disappeared, that Jacques began to fully comprehend the

use of his father’s filter and how you can grow one, like an invisible fingernail, in order

to tolerate yourself.

[gretchenheffernan]

His love of photography did not have such obvious origins. It couldn’t be pinpointed, but almost certainly dovetailed with his relationship to light. Light and its ability to replace words. Unspeakable, unfathomable words that stitched his memory with radiance. Indeed, his memory was held together with light.

Gretchen Heffernan, “The Carving Circle”

[gretchenheffernan]

Pickpockets

by Gretchen Heffernan

Memory slips my hand inside

avoids the seam

or touching

what I don’t want to keep.

Sometimes, I invent what

I find: a letter or a picture that explains it all.

You hate photographs

because you like how time

allows forgetting.

And you never write,

perhaps you know

that by now, I’d resent it.  

It’s the resentment that keeps me living here

inside my terrarium

like some dutiful insect

content with what you throw me.

Rationalizing, we all have atmospheres

that can choke us into someone new.

I don’t believe I am nothing to you enough

to make you nothing to me.

When I practice letting you go

I watch you leave me

like someone watches a storm

travelling over a prairie.

After the fury,

you become distant.

But so far away, too intensely silent.

A magnificent problem for someone else

that I want, so remain trapped

by the glass you forged,

while you, warp and warp

what is seen (and how, when)

until we are both stuck inside performances.

Cue daughter.  Cue father.

Or love of any kind that falls in-between

what might pass for humanity.

Homeless, like beggars.

Wards of illusion, like pickpockets.