Chantarelle's Notebook

After almost twenty years

I.

in your orbit I realized you were never the sun—
or that maybe I was actually now in some distant
galaxy and you had become a red giant surrounded
by gas planets. Light years away, I developed rituals
to stop worshiping fading stars, found something
more sacred. You always praised a person’s evolution.

II.

Here is the moment of truth: One winter morning I woke up.
I knew I couldn’t attend another party where you and your besties
eager to be sucked into a whirlpool of booze, shared stories
of shitting stars after a weekend bender on ecstacy and cocaine.
It occurs to me, your ex was the more interesting one at your parties.

III.

You present us with Barbie birthday cake—a cake you and #becky
both dreamed about, coveted. Some jokes have the same punchline.
Barbie has been defiled, is now drowning her youth
and reality in whiskey and vodka. Barbie is vomiting
sprinkles onto purple fondant. Barbie is smeared makeup,
from sweating and purging. Barbie is a glutton for alcohol
and the dizzy mess it creates. Barbie is a true mirror.
Your Barbie is another flashing warning sign.

IV.

On the drive home, I tell our friend, next year
I will prepare you a feast, and we won’t have to pick
at the fast food your bestest orders mostly for herself.

The menu:

prosciutto and sweet pea crostini
rack of lamb with figs and pomegranate glaze
sticky apricot chicken thighs
ratatouille tart with dollops of goat cheese
semolina, pistachio and rose cake

Upon reflection, I wanted you to see me.

V.

My therapist asks if I enjoy being a spectator.
Not really.
I courted loyalty over the years:
unfriended those who fell out of your favor,
tolerated your sycophants. Wondered why
you kept such insipid fools around.

Realization is a switch:
Their adoration a banquet; you have a never-ending
appetite for constant, desperate displays of worship.

VI.

Memories of slights and offensives
stack up: birthdays you didn’t show up for,
never came to tea at my house, or visited—
I want to say, we are both at fault here,
but I don’t like lying to myself.

VII

I am sickened by the narcissism of one of your followers,
(for years, I wondered how you never noticed their patterns).
I am spitting seeds of truth: another friend is submerged
in grief, here comes the navel gazer to interrupt the conversation,
take detours to show how they minisculely can compare, they lay
a thousand subtle insults at the feet of the anguished.

Others notice, but say nothing. One of our friends encourages me,
but will not enter the fray. No one dares spark your wrath.

I have just learned to let my voice carry beyond the confines
of my throat; I am learning how not to be afraid.

VIII

You send me to the corner to think about my words,
Let the scheme continue.

I see the root: this is not my home; I was always a tentative
guest. I book a train ticket, a room on a spaceship to speed
through the universe.

IX.

You believe you are a master of shunnings.

Leaving me alone in silence always gives me clarity.
Others have made the same mistake before you.

X.

Tell me how you didn’t see this coming.

XI.

After I walk away, I dream. Versailles is a metaphor:
Beautiful. Glittering. I’m invited to stay the night.
I leave; it’s filled with too many ghosts. They remind me,
courtiers used to piss and shit in marble hallways.

XII.

Maybe you will never say my name again. Let me be forgotten,
never brought up. Maybe your grudge will be buried deep
in the pores of your bones, working—eating its way through
them like osteonecrosis. Maybe there will be reconciliation,
though I doubt it. I prefer to exist thousands of light years away.

 

Marisa Silva-Dunbar’s work has been published in Dusk Magazine, Querencia Press’s Winter 2023 Anthology, and Not Ghosts, But Spirits Vol. 2. Her second chapbook, “When Goddesses Wake,” was released in December 2021 from Maverick Duck Press. Her first full-length collection, “Allison,” was published by Querencia Press in 2022. She is currently working on her third chapbook and a hybrid memoir. You can find her on all socials @thesweetmaris. To check out more of her work go to www.marisasilvadunbar.com

Moon Landing
for Jason Ryberg

it’s taken me eighteen months
to get you to understand
how with only one eye
i need twice as much light
to read a book
or catch the outline of a girl’s face
on a wide screen tv
after the sun has gone down
how going to the movies
is almost too much trouble now
after i spent the entire summer of 1988
sitting in the dark
in uncomfortable wooden seats
just waiting for the lights to dim
my cousin amanda
always getting up to pee
just as things got good
the sound of her hand me down shoes
sticking to the floor
as if she was walking
on the moon.

 

The Nazis in Mayberry

jason & i joke
about the dark underbelly
of americana
andy griffith with a pillowcase
over his head
aunt bee
& the master race
cooling peach cobbler
on the window sill.

 

The Panorama of Her Fingers

her tiny body
waist deep in water
an orange blossom
falling into the sun
her soul dangles
her red hair burns.

 

John Dorsey is the former Poet Laureate of Belle, MO. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Which Way to the River: Selected Poems: 2016-2020 (OAC Books, 2020), Sundown at the Redneck Carnival, (Spartan Press, 2022, and Pocatello Wildflower, (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2023). He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

let me fall in love

autumn’s tongue
is already
licking september,

i am not sorry for it;

the warmth of summer
is often scalding like a
boiling pot on the stove
and it’s not enough to
sweat it wants to crawl so
deep down you want to unravel
your skin and walk around
in your bones—

let the pumpkins and the leaves
rescue me from the oppression
of heat and insects,

let me fall in love with the world again.

 

to kiss the clouds

between the earth and the moon,
suspended in a gasp of
burning stars;

i make a thousand wishes
for you—

maybe i needed a thousand
and one or perhaps i poured too many
oceans into the sky so the birds
have become fish that have forgotten
what it is to swim,

but at least they have their songs to
give them comfort;

i have this big, heavy emptiness
full of memories and desire and longing;
what am i meant to do with all these
pink sunsets and white roses
if i cannot surrender them to your loving arms?

maybe it’s time to build a ladder
to the moon,
i have known the thrush of silver before
so it will not hurt me;

let me kiss the clouds and perhaps
i can find a sun that is actually mine.

 

Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has twelve published chapbooks the latest being: Searching Stained Glass Windows For An Answer (Alien Buddha Publishing, December 2022).

The ascension of newer stories

That glassy-eyed spire
was pinpricking the sky
all day. Here, a window,

and there, a windowless
form, defying the horizon’s
function. For years the eye

caught only the eyesore
and a glare. There are too
many stories to climb. This

structure fools itself, is not
a mountain. No other building
dared to stand so bright

blue with cloud white squares
in abstract. Not here, on this
choppy span of the Ohio.

 

Give us this

Much
gratitude
to the gape
of windows &
the gasp of spring.
Fresh berries smile back
while we dine on their aroma.
Thanks to warm streams of water
drowning dishes & the sudsy applause
of bubbles that bob like baubles in slow slosh;
diaphanous life jackets in the tumult of these after-
noon sea voyages. Let’s lovingly acknowledge waves

of nausea and pangs of day as we grip life’s hip
and lean into it as though it was our grand-
mother. And we sail on the air of anxiety
in our body’s attempts to not be a body.
Nobody knows how long we float
before we are adrift.

 

where am i

in this gloaming of foam-
white underbellies
below grey clouds? i sit
assuming their silver
will ring umpteen
hallelujahs as the sun
slips its yolk out of over-
cast shell. blue whispers
to dusk, hums cicada
& my legs have tiny
imprints from concrete.

 

Finding a cure for small talk

A petri dish
of weather clichés
with no marked
response. Test
tubes filled
with answers
to “What do you do
for a living?”

Litmus paper
I’ve used to draw
my results: LEAVE
ME ALONE. I can
share this finding
with former class-
mates in public
when they approach.

Please just spin this
centrifuge, separate
me from political
discussions every-
where: waiting
rooms, drive-
thrus, pick-up
lines.

 

K Weber is an Ohio writer with 11 self-published, online books of poetry. K writes independently and collaboratively, having created poems with 800+ words donated by more than 300 people since 2018. K has poems featured in publications such as Stone Circle Review, Writer’s Digest, and Exacting Clam. Much of K’s work (free in PDF and some in audiobook format) and her publishing credits are accessible through her website: kweberandherwords.com

 

Got There: Real Color

I have heard the refrain of goals
& endings & burials of the burst
& I’ve gazed upon the great works
that have never ended hunger,
that have never taken away oxygen
from the rich & warring minority
& I must ask, is all this gray area
a white compromise? If it can’t be
the sun, then we must set the fires.

I am not opposed to an ugly ending.
I’m outraged by anyone that claims
a new beginning. It’s all happened.
It’s all still happening. The fight
is to know it all, to wake up known
& knowing, to hue the witness.

Be early in the morning with me.

 

 

Got There: It Would Be Better if I Had No Place to Hide

The nature of light is misleading. It’s all fire,
flame or no. The smoky walls are unworried
& are conditional. The body suffers. Ugly is
an advertisement for art to do better
with the smell of things. Beauty is a promise
that things will never get better. I tell two lies
& a purple silk appears. The curtains are cute.
Upgather the gradient of this world
with a story of the divine. Lock the ending?

The cement path is a trap. I am on the lines.
I’m on each side of the lines. Clearly,
you’re distracted by the lights. I want to find
something other than myself, but all these
questions are about me. Everything modern
hides. The custodians can only sterilize.

Be something better reaching back with me.

 

 

Got There – Peace or Quiet

Vanishing is its own genre.
The idea of the mark being
on the body, on attempting
to leave the body but still
be called flesh is an owl
in the morning hunting frost.
The beauty comes from feeling
& the loss of feeling. The rush
of a needless flight matters.

Yes, I want the same as you.
I want my name to be said
out loud, but I have no interest
in being there when it’s said.
If you are brave enough to say
I wrote this poem, thank you.

Be what happened last with me.

 

Darren Demaree’s poems have appeared, or are scheduled to appear in numerous magazines/journals, including Hotel Amerika, Diode, North American Review, New Letters, Diagram, and the Colorado Review. He is the author of twenty-two poetry collections, most recently ‘blue and blue and blue’ (July 2024, Fernwood Press). He is the Editor in Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living and writing in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.