Author: chantarellesnotebook

Antebellum Echoes

“This is something that is a local matter
and that’s something that we feel
should be left up to the local
authorities at this
point in time.”

– Sarah Sanders

Aunt Marthy
sold biscuits in
Edenton;
she laid by,
little by little,
pennies, nickels, dimes
to buy freedom
for her displaced
children.
Commodity handed down,
generation to generation,
and wealth retained.
That money, laid by,
instead, credited the
candelabrum.

And at Twin Lakes
central Florida,
home of alligators,
Zora Neale,
and Mickey Mouse,
a coward stood his
ground.
And Trayvon lay
deadful dead.
Seventeen years,
Sybrina and Tracy
Drowning in tears.
The coward
carries the
candelabrum.

“Four hundred years
the white man has had
his foot-long knife
in the black man’s back…”

The mentally
disturbed,
lone wolf, white male
shooter
needs sympathy
and forgiveness,
but none for
Tanisha.
Killed while cuffed
near the car.
Whose lives
matter?
And Cleveland cops
carry the
candelabrum.

Big Mike
shared his songs
on Soundcloud.
At eighteen years,
he was going to fix
air conditioners.
At eighteen years,
he was blown down
on the streets of
Ferguson.
And Mark Twain
rolled over.
And Jay Nixon
passed the
candelabrum.

“…and now the white man
starts to wiggle
the knife out,
maybe six inches!…”

Lead in the waters
of Flint.
Lead in the waters
of Baltimore
where Korryn Gaines
met her end.
A puddle of blood
and a five-year-old son.
She licensed herself,
but Baltimore County
Police,
Sans body cams,
Licensed themselves.
No cam shots of the
candelabrum.

Rodney King lived
to watch Reginald
pulled from his truck
and stoned.
But Motown’s own
Malice Green,
with skull on the sidewalk,
was holding eights and aces
as the peace-men
played their clubs.
And Alton Sterling
and Dee Dee Dodds,
no charges filed,
never saw the
candelabrum.

“…The black man’s
supposed to be
grateful?…”

Then lonely Mya Hall.
“Out here,
you can be
attacked.
You can be
raped.”
Looking for that
connection
in the darkness,
Mya wandered while
TSA met
with loaded guns.
Jeh Johnson
secured the
candelabrum.

Armed but with a
telephone, twenty shots
in his own backyard,
in his own holy city of
sacraments.
Stephon Clark will be
forgotten too.
Another Ferguson.
Another Charlottesville
With bad folks
on both sides,
James Alex Fields
handed to unnamed
officers in Sacramento the
candelabrum.

“…Why, if the white man
jerked the knife out,
it’s still going to leave a
scar.”

So shout their fucking names
from the rooftops
and from the hillsides
and from the mountains
of the world.
And Malcolm
never touched the
candelabrum.

(Originally published 2/2/21 by Big Whoopie Deal now defunkt)

When War Broke Out

On the edge of the gully grew
three old apple trees,
stately and gnarled.
The remnants of some
ancient
grove or orchard,
at one time sweet and juicy,
now the size of golf balls
and sour as the day was long.
We climbed and ate none-the-less.
Hours we spent
in those trees.
Hours we spent hiding
in the leaves.

In spring, the blossoms bent boughs
and filled the air
with our stately perfume.
Like snow after a
blizzard,
white blooms blanketed the canopy
and consumed creation
with autumnal nectar.
But it was in summer
we climbed.
It was during those long,
golden days
we perched with robins and jays
atop the greenery.

We were drawn to those lofty treetops,
all of the children
in the neighborhood.
Compelled to make it
higher
than the day before,
higher than our friends.
Some were giants
while others were a tangled mess
of honeysuckle or lilacs.
We conquered them all,
Hand over hand.
But those twisted apples
always beckoned.

Sometimes, in early fall, war broke out.
Ten kids within the trees;
ten in the adjacent field…
and the apples were
launched
volley after volley.
Hours passed
as we played at combat.
No winners or losers,
just bruised children
and bruised apples.
In the end, mice and worms
would feast as we were called
home at dusk.

(Published 1/26/21 by The Great Lakes Review)

Andre F. Peltier (he/him) is a Pushcart Nominee and a Lecturer III at Eastern Michigan University where he teaches literature and writing. He lives in Ypsilanti, MI, with his wife and children. His poetry has recently appeared in various publications like CP Quarterly, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Provenance Journal, Lavender and Lime Review, About Place, Novus Review, Fiery Scribe, and Fahmidan Journal, and most recently in Magpie Literary Journal, The Brazos Review, and Idle Ink. In his free time, he obsesses over soccer and comic books.

Twitter: @aandrefpeltier

Website: www.andrefpeltier.com

The Bitterness of Nineteen

fog & car alarm lullabies, take note of this unrealness.

these are the end of your teenage years & you are wasting away like all lonely teenagers do.

mirrors are terrifying portals to the black holes around your eyes,
to your hollowing neck.

you, falling angel. you, fallen angel.

something dark & silky has found home in your body but this is not the first time you have had to share your home with a foreigner.

all the moments of unexplainable shame buzz & flicker when you think.

you want to love yourself but the mistakes keep finding you & keep finding you & keep.

What I mean when I say I have a dissociation disorder

I mean my brain likes to kamikaze when the pain is too much for it to bear.

I mean I have never been able to be one person for too long. I mean strangers are hiding in the spaces between my teeth & they like to hijack my body.

I mean you cannot be in love with me because I don’t even exist. Like a helium balloon in a child’s sweaty fist, I am slipping away from this body.

I mean time likes to play tricks on my mind. She bends & folds, tears me away from the present and forgets me in the past.

I mean my entire existence is sometimes a fever dream & I have to help myself remember my name.

I mean my memories are sandcastles I don’t remember making stuck on the shores of an angry sea.

I mean I am superhuman. Watch me dissolve into my sheets. Watch as I exit the plane you are tethered to. Watch me become my mother, my mother’s mother. Anybody but myself.

Adedamola Olabimpe is a writer currently living in Lagos, Nigeria. They think white bread is one of man’s greatest inventions and will probably fall apart without headphones. They have works published in Rattle, Anti-Heroin Chic, Sub-Saharan Magazine and others. You can find them on Instagram @borednigeriangirl and on Twitter @lilbrowneyedfae.

3rd floor dining

Blue haze washes over my throat whenever I put on Is This It

Remember

All the hours out in the city, starlight swimming over all the metal like the kudzu I was worried all my life would eat us all, floating over the humidity like a cartoon bear smelling a pie cooling on a windowsill while we drank tall boys we got from the gas station over by Criminal Records where they didn’t ID long as you paid in cash then stole a bit of bliss beneath the haze out in the historic graveyard full of decaying racists so many among us revered as heroes and the thought of the fury they would’ve felt of gay sex happening the six feet above their oak coffins made it even hotter before we drove home with the windows down letting the low air cooling us off like wild dogs as Julian Casablancas sang of the good old days

as Julian Casablancas sang of the good old days a blue haze washes over my throat

Remember

how gentle your rough hands could be

Delivery Driver off the balcony

Fog of the dead
generations sway beneath
factory lights

I see the spirits
from my mom’s car
as I wait for dad to
come pull up

the flavor of the
Double Bubble
left around the time the last sunlight
dripped down over the pine grove

I learned
long ago
not to tell
anyone
about the ghosts

no one
believed me
& just enjoyed my
“over active imagination”

I tell my therapist
about it years later
& asks
if these may have
been stress dreams
tied to
my parent’s divorce

I immediately start
to weep

so glad
this is over
the phone

3 windows

I went to the beige hell
all for nothing
beneath the death
of all my memories

I watched my dreams bloom &
float away from the bed of lavender
just out my window

I went to the beige hell
all for nothing
beneath the death
of all my memories

fluorescent hum
was my own
funeral march

Clem Flowers (They/ Them) is a poet & low rent aesthete. Poetry editor of Blue River Review. Pushcart nominee. Nb, bi, and queer as hell, living in a cozy apartment with their wonderful wife & sweet calico kitty. Found on Twitter @clem_flowers

Kintsugi

Once on the reiki table,
a healer saw through me—
could see the patterns
an obtuse young girl
carries in her veins and skin.

Her soft hands on my shoulder—
the master whispered every
time your heart is broken—
it heals, becomes stronger.

In the end, I didn’t fear
the damage you caused.
Once I left, I finally let the gold dust
and lacquer fill the cracks, chips—
spaces. I mended myself.

I am still filled with life and beauty.

Cavoli Riscaldati

Once was not enough. Tell me how lonely you must be—
how your life unraveled beyond recognition that this
seemed like a good idea. They are a mold you invited
into your life; they will not shape-shift into daisies
bursting with color and freshness. You know this.

You must savor the facade they’ve created for now;
swallow it down with a latte, and brioche. Wear
matching outfits so that you can believe you are one—
a soul split in two. Why else would you give them
a second chance? There is comfort in the lies you whisper
to yourself before sleep. Make this repetitive mistake count.

This is a beacon, a warning. You like the easiness—
retreat when you are asked to grow.

Self-deception

She’d return every Mercury Retrograde,
unaware of how closely she tied herself
to the stars—how the constellations wrapped
themselves around her. She was shackled
—just like the rest of us.

I anticipated her arrival every time
the Swift Planet spun backwards
through the heavens. I tracked
her path across the sky—
plotted her patterns with pushpins.

She pretends she ignored his siren’s call—
how she couldn’t resist one more chance

to woo him, make him swoon with desire.
She acts like she didn’t show up unannounced,
undress and spread her thighs asking for one more time.

Scarf

Sure footed in a brown corduroy bomber jacket,
slouchy boots, and teal scarf—the curled ends
of her dirty blonde hair, bounced with each stride.

And yes, this was still her mask, her fancy dress.
Chin up, and bulldozed those in her way. You’d expect
her to be the mother friend, the problem solver—
let me give you a pep talk to take on the world.

But it was a facade, and sometimes when it slipped
I saw this beautiful, young woman—messy and unsure,
but who knew she loved the scene where Amelie melts
into a puddle—a girl who will giggle and hold your hand

as we ran down the streets at night trying to catch
the bus back to our flat. Other times, when she was worried
we might steal her shine—she would give a sly smirk
just before her verbal jab pierced between the ribs.

At twenty, I couldn’t hold a light in my palms and whisper
I see you, and your fear. There is light enough for all; let us
illuminate one another and mend each other’s wounds.

Marisa Silva-Dunbar’s work has been published in Pink Plastic House, Sledgehammer Lit, Analogies & Allegories Literary Magazine, and Dear Reader. She has work forthcoming in ArLiJo, and The Bitchin’ Kitsch. Her second chapbook, “When Goddesses Wake,” was released in December, 2021 from Maverick Duck Press. Her first full-length collection, “Allison,” is forthcoming from Querencia Press. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @thesweetmaris.