I’m hangin’ in my room
Staring down childhood unicorns
Stuffed, postered, porcelain
From eight foot up
I’m five two
I’m hangin’ in
Throes of teenage heartbreak
Red-faced loss
Bulldozed breathless end
I’m crushed
I’m hangin’ by a thread
Stilled no longer swaying
Neck bath-robe belted
To a hook bolt in a ceiling beam
I’m frozen wide-eyed
I’m hangin’ out
In pieces from my PJs
Lifeless limbed
Unendingly broken
I’m beyond repair
I’m five-two
I’m crushed
I’m frozen wide-eyed
I’m beyond repair
I’m hangin’ in my room
I’m hanging
in
my room
R.J. reads "Thread Bare":
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R.J. confesses:"Attempting, in multiple ways over multiple days, to explicitly describe the drive behind these words has been a failure. Teenage suicide. Sad, so very, very, sad. Enough said."
RENA J. WORLEY s a Word Artist residing in rural Michigan. Previously published in The Five-Two on May 27, 2019.
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Richard confeeses:"This poen was inspired by a television news segment. A madam on Wall Street was
interviewed. She claimed most investment bankers were rash, fearful and arrogant. Risk was their drug and fear their baseline emotion. Embracing fear and risk made them think deserved success. Plus cocaine helped."
RICHARD SPILLMAN is the author of In the Night Speaking and of a chapbook, Suspension. His poems have appeared Poetry and Rattle, The Southern Review and Gargoyle, and lots of other places.
He got what
He deserved you say,
An FBI rat who lived
16 years off mad money stashed
in Santa Monica condo walls.
Bulger kept his beard trimmed,
his mouth shut,
loved his curly black poodles.
His girlfriend was a dental tech.
His brother was President
of U Mass, for chrissake!
Prison guards now
unroll the U-Haul-rough wool
shroud that binds
his 89-year-old body,
crushed in his cage,
unrecognizable pulp, tongue torn
from his mouth.
But wait!
Maybe he fingered someone else
to take the pounding.
Unrecognizable.
What you’d want if
you wanted to disappear
forever.
Jack the Ripper
DB Cooper
Jimmy Hoffa
and Whitey—
with some canned goods
and maybe a few
changes of underwear.
Etta reads "Whitey on the Lam":
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Etta confesses nothing.
This is ETTA ABRAHAMS's third published poem at The Five-Two. Professor Emerita at Michigan State University, she still can't identify the reason she's interested in crimes, criminals and writing about them, but she has tracked that interest in scholarly essays and fiction and more recently in poetry writing. When not reading or writing about those on the other side of the law, she enjoys the companionship of her life partner, Herb Greenberg, her children and their families and her two canine companions, Oliver and Little Dorrit. In addition to these pleasures, Etta and her colleague Jenifer Banks, have an editing business, 2 Write Better, LLC, and offer their services to scholars, students and would-be writers alike.
I remember that summer
when we were so careful
watching every car wondering
if it was him, waiting to
hear who the next victim
would be or what note he
might leave for the police.
It had gone on so long
since last fall and now it was
the heat of the July and
he was still out there.
Everyone was nervous
I was 13 and terrified
my cousins lived in Queens
and we were not far from the
city line so we didn't feel
safe either in that awful
sweltering summer of
murder arson and despair
when the City had turned to
shit and there was graffiti
everywhere and in the
middle of that
the lights went out
25 hours without power a
dirty hot sweaty night people
in the streets singing, helping,
looting, hooting, dancing
sharing, shouting
but come daybreak
the City hadn't burned down
and the Son of Sam didn't
kill anyone that night.
The power came back on
and we knew that if we could
live through that we could get
that bastard and in less than
a month he was behind bars
and everyone could relax again.
John reads "Summer of '77":
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John confesses:"I was inspired to write this poem by thinking about summer crimes. It brought me back to the summer of ''77 with the fear and the heat and the sensational Daily News and NY Post coverage that scared us all half out of our wits. And then in the middle of it, the blackout. It was just an awful summer punctuated by horrible, random shootings. Everyone was on edge until they found him."
A natural history photo editor by day, JOHN KAPRIELIAN has been writing poetry for over 35 years. In 2012 he challenged himself to write a poem a day for a year and self-published the poems in a book, 366 Poems: My Year in Verse, available on Amazon. His poems have been published in The Five-Two, Down in the Dirt Magazine, New Verse News, Naturewriting.com, The Blue Nib, and Minute Magazine. He lives in Putnam County, NY with his wife, teenage son, and assorted pets.
We all loved Jonathan, “Yonathan,”
The new night watchman.
Our rented casa had been built by a drummer
With the Grateful Dead,
And we were sure he too would have offered
Sopa de pescada on the patio.
Played something-- drum, cards, charades—
With a new friend as young
As my grandson, who shared with Jonathan
An interest in martial arts.
How strange, then, when my daughter spied
The sweet boy creeping along
The hall leading to our bedrooms, “buscando
Un intruso.” Quizàs, he said,
The one who’d nicked a hundred US dollars
From my grandson’s wallet
The day of the sopa de pescado? The rent agency
Said watchmen were nunca
Permitido to go inside las casas. My daughter
Showed us the loot
Jonathan had abandoned at a side door
in his hasty exit.
It still breaks our hearts to think of it:
A banana and a pear.
Clarinda reads "Intruders in Akumal":
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Clarinda confesses:"I had a profound sense that in many ways my family and I were intruders in that gorgeous place near Cancun where only narrow strips of land separate pristine bays and lagoons. We all ended up feeling terribly sorry for the young night watchman we thought we had befriended and who did, indeed, turn out to intrude and rob. (It later developed that in fact it was he who had stolen $100 from the wallet of his "new friend," my grandson. We still felt sorry for him.)"
CLARINDA HARRISS is a professor emerita of Towson University. She has overseen BrickHouse Books, Inc,, for almost 5 decades (going strong).
The mellowdy he thort of
Was formiliar—he said, “Sort of.”
Though he mantanned the muse was with ‘im,
He was accursed of playgiarhythm.
A loresuit then was filed
‘Gainst the singsong he turnstyled
By the copyrightful orner,
Which made his moot forlorner.
His daze in quart arrivaled
When he was sworn and bibled.
The twoons were side-by-sided
While the oddversaries bided.
The deafendant’s testymoany
Was flamsy if not foeny:
“They’re similark, but to be fair,
“Mine’s in a mynah key there.”
“I dessert a piece of piecrust,”
The complaintiff said, “and I must
“Be awarted for the folly
“Of that cracker-stealing Polly.”
The eggspurts then conclueded
The toon o’er which was feuded
Was ribbed off by the sue-ee
Despite his clayme of phooey.
The mealody he lifted
That coursed them to be rifted
Was popularge all over
And kept him livering in clover.
So now he’d hab to share sum
Of the royaltease he urned from
His flaygrant playgiarhythm
And that fauxny muse once with ‘im.
Jim reads "Playgiarhythm":
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Jim confesses:"This was inspired by a drawing I did of a running masked thief who has a musical staff and notes trailing out of his pocket. In a kind of reversal, I wrote this poem to illustrate the artwork."
JIM GEORGE is a writer-artist-songwriter-musician from Reading, PA. His fiction, poems and artwork have appeared in The Sea Letter, The Ear, Fleas On the Dog, Praxis, ANON, The Disappointed Housewife, Hock Spit Slurp, Queen Mob's Tea House, and The Five-Two; his interviews have been published in Playboy, Cinema Retro and Best Classic Bands; and his songs have been used on network television shows and in film. Jim Shorts, his first book, is a humorous collection of wordplayful stories, poems and line drawings, available as a PDF from the author.
Arbus would later insist, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture. –Geoff Dyer, The Ongoing Moment
SCENES FROM AN ONGOING MOMENT
What makes them give up, these half-dead
bums, all laying around like dirty turnips.
A 1958 Ford, morbid, Sun Gold and Raven Black.
Its deep grill, so obscene and premonitory
and open mouthed; those quad head lights–
and a scalloped rear end; and four oval taillights.
And, parked beside it, a two-door 1958 Olds 88,
Pearl Gray, its gaping mouth, mischievous, taunting,
and its namesake, lettered in metal right there
above the chrome grill. On the theater marquee:
The Seventh Seal, that film by Ingmar Bergman,
death wheelbarrowing itself here, to play chess.
Chess? Can you imagine it? Forms, created
as conventional shapes, these men, these cars,
and death, playing a game of chess? And then, later–
in 1969, Charley Manson, drilling down
on that loud Beatles song, Helter Skelter,
riffing it on his hack guitar as he schemed
a violent revolution against the blacks, the rich.
Intervals of naïveté and neglect, those girls
that killed for him. Mike Love, worried
he’d adopt Don't Worry Baby as a cruising
song as they barreled up into the hills–
to mark their murder victims. And then–
in 1995, O.J., in that white Ford Bronco.
America’s image of a chase, on four wheels.
What’s in the chase, hidden? It’s the familiar: death, playing chess. More acute, for the camera.
Ken reads "Scenes from an Ongoing Moment":
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Ken confesses:"This poem juxtaposes cars, cinema and song with death as it plays chess with us. The poem aims to underscore the odd, arbitrary if tragic happenstance that can be so prevalent in the
course of life. Further: it highlights cinema and social media as complicit in the longstanding and prevailing, vulgarized voyeur culture. The poem emphasizes that performance—in extremis for the camera—is now the standard fare in vogue."
KEN MEISEL has work in San Pedro River Review and Rattle. His most recent book is Mortal Lullabies (FutureCycle Press: 2018).
More bemused than outraged
when fans of Michael Jackson took over
the 1862 monument to Orlando di Lasso,
the medieval Belgian composer,
on Munich’s Promenadeplatz –
in front of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof,
where “Jacko” used to stay –
as a memorial to the pop star
after his death ten years before,
Adele nevertheless lamented Orlando’s neglect.
But after the latest accusations of child abuse,
Michael’s music banned from European airwaves,
Adele was disturbed by the hatred she heard,
the sarcastic arguments back and forth.
"Let’s destroy the statues of Wagner –
the anti-Semite – too, and
Benjamin Britten and Oscar Wilde,
with tastes similar to Jackson’s,"
one man sneered.
“Even Beethoven, the misanthrope.
After all, art is only worthwhile
when the artist is a decent human being!”
“Michael Jackson, an artist?
He was merely an entertainer!”
"Art’s not supposed to be entertaining?"
Adelle shook her head.
She’d always admired Orlando di Lasso,
remembering now his Lagrime di San Pietro.
The tears of Saint Peter.
Charles reads "Denkmal":
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Charles confesses:"There are no statues of Adolf Hitler in Germany, of course, and the whole deal with Civil War monuments is an ongoing national trauma in the United States. The same is true in Spain regarding Franco. The weird thing about the Michael Jackson memorial is that the di Lasso statue was commandeered to set it up, but only because it stands outside the hotel where Jackson stayed when in Munich. Maybe his fans thought of it as a temporary memorial to their grief when they first put the photos up, but it’s been over a decade now. In light of recent allegations about the extent of Jackson’s pedophilia, has the time come to dismantle the impromptu memorial? This is above my pay grade."
CHARLES RAMMELKAMP is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore and Reviews Editor for The Adirondack Review. A chapbook of poems, Jack Tar’s Lady Parts, is available from Main Street Rag Publishing. Another poetry chapbook, Me and Sal Paradise, was recently published by FutureCycle Press. An e-chapbook has also recently been published online Time Is on My Side (yes it is).
america has sunshine
I never wanted
it has oceans
and
women that aren't on its mountains
it has television sets
of sad lives
and sometimes they're on repeat
and repeat all over again.
it has birds that don't sing
my song
and if you're lost
maybe you’ll find
me too.
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Thom confesses:"I had this image of Mt. Rushmore and just ran with it."
THOM YOUNG is a writer from Texas. His work has been in PBS Newshour, the Wall Street Journal, the Oxford Review, and over a hundred literary journals. A 2008 Million Writers Award and 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee.
Wouldn't that be beautiful,
To be murdered
By the delicate fingertips
Of love?
No cancer could
Tarnish these cells,
No drunken driver
Could scratch this life,
But love?
Oh, love has already
Taken my heart,
Leaving behind a body
Without her beating chest,
Love has already killed me,
My darling,
I'm just not dead yet.
Roseanne reads "First Degree Murder":
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Roseanne confesses:"'First Degree Murder' was inspired by the aftermath of being hurt by two of my closest friends. I sat frozen and thought that my heart should be broken. I should feel this overwhelming ache in my chest. But I didn't. Instead I felt numb. As if they had taken my heart with them and all I was left with was a hole where it used to be."
ROSEANNE FAHEY is a nineteen-year-old writer from Ireland. She studies Arts with Creative Writing in the National University of Galway. She primarily writes poetry and non-fiction.
Somewhere a chrome barrel is cooling, a tall
bridge is aching it’s a jump. It is there, despair
is haunted by appeasements grace.
In jar of chalky pills tattooed in skull & bone,
and a Yelena Shvart’s FDA warning label––in
extended prose. Somewhere there is a wrist
without pulse, or maybe dressed to the nines
in bloody gills. A crystal ship that won’t float.
There in the lovely woods a leaf, a branch, a
limb- a-rope. There is a hospital, a band on a
delicate newborn, that says ‘this is me.’ A tag
on a toe, of who you know or were.
Somewhere
there is a motel room spattered in neon red.
Eternities 2:00 A.M. digital clock pulsing:
‘I am sorry, I am sorry’, over, and over again.
Somewhere in a dark window, is a fresh
crescent moon, all dressed up, with nowhere
to go, a shovel stacked full with dirt awaiting its throw.
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Dan confesses:"This piece was written to highlight how uneventful, we, in our digital culture, treat untimely death. How we love life, yet groom cemeteries. How we can’t wait to have our children be born, and enter this crazy paradoxical place."
DAN A. CARDOZA has a B.A. in Psychology and an M.S. in Counseling from the University of California, Sacramento. For more, visit his website.
I thought it was some Indian guy
chanting
saying prayers
the way they do
kind of a murmur
louder and louder
until I woke
thinking wtf?
And got up
out of bed
and went to the window
and down below
about fifty yards or so
an orange truck,
and some guy
running a chain-saw—
what the Christ!
I stuck my head out the window
and screamed
HEY
and they looked up
one jerk waved
and they kept at it
tossing branches into the bed of the truck
and I shouted HEY!
but they did not even look,
ignored me
like I was not there
like I did not exist
like maybe I was a piece of shit,
and I tell you
I was pissed—
had not slept more than two hours
all night
and what gave them the right
I ask you
to wake people
at 6 AM
and break the city ordinance besides?
How rude and obnoxious
I stuck the barrel of my rifle,
a 30.06,
out the window
and
just to scare them
fired a shot over their heads
only
FUCK
I missed
and shot the guy in the head
and he dropped
and I thought, hell
no use stopping now
and I shot the guy who
went to the first guy's side
and then I shot the girl
standing by the truck's gate
(another head shot)
and the other guy
who had dropped the chain-saw
and hid behind the truck
I could not get a bead on him
and put a few rounds into the engine block
to try and flush him
but he stayed put
until
as I reloaded
he made a run for it
and
in the old days
I would have got him
but I was rusty, see
and led the fucker a cunt-hair too much
the lucky prick
and, yeah
you could say that
I over-reacted a little
and maybe even that
I was wrong
but who are you to say anything
to me?
You wake me
at 6 AM
on a morning after I have not slept
and before I have had my coffee
and see what you get
you son-of-a-bitch.
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Wayne confesses:"I wrote this poem after being woke one morning by some workers tearing a tree down outside my apartment. So pissed at being woke so early—I'd had a bad insomniac night—I went outside to confront them, thought better of it, and returned inside and wrote the poem. Art as catharsis."
WAYNE F. BURKE has published six full-length collections of poetry. Five with Bareback Press and one with Alien Buddha Press. Most recently, from Bareback, Diflucan (2019). He lives in Vermont.
Some words mean the opposite of their definitions
Finery
Whore
Forgetfulness
Loss
An echo is not sound, but the sound of sound.
Its memory.
These words fold, backwards, from the air.
Fashioned like aluminum petals by brittle voices
Sipped like drugged drink
They damage the brain,
Derange the senses.
What is my vocabulary?
Am I not what I am?
Am I my best guess?
The limit of my imperfect senses?
The backward speech of a four-color sorceress
I am not
I am not
I am
Not
Once, I stood beside a wooded path
And watched the dead boys rise from hidden graves
Falling in reverse, their shattered skulls knitting
Their kissed-on wounds closing lips.
Unmurdered by stones
Unmourned by healed parents
The past has not passed
The bodies unrest
A secret is not a secret if it remains untold
What is the nonsense incantation
That rolls the stone away?
What word replaces the Thylocenes in their burrows?
If I knew that silent language
I’d unmake my memories of you.
unwound you, unmortify spirit-flesh
And you would never have saved me.
Listen, listen.
Alived boys whistle
Walking backwards among the trees
Marching with their backs turned home.
Alex reads "Mxyzptlk":
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Alex confesses:"Mxyzptlk is an extradimensional Superman villain only banished if tricked into saying his name backwards. Too many people have disappeared in the forests of the Pacific Northwest. This poem imagines what led to those crimes and wishes they could be undone."
ALEX JENNINGS's writing has appeared in Ellipsis, New Suns: Speculative Fiction by People of Color, and Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler. He is also the recipient of the 2010 Ryan Chighizola Poetry Prize. He lives and works in New Orleans.
Skip the rope
No knife
Ditch the gun
I said
Skip the rope
Rather
The feel of flesh
Soft or wrinkled
Smooth or stubbled
Jugular jumping under my palm
Desperate
Hands tear at my latex gloved clinch
Eyes bulge
Full body
Convulsive twitch
Permanent
Bruised purple necklace
Surprised expression
Breathless
Dead weight drop
Meander away
Smiling to myself
Like
I said
Skip the rope
RJ reads "Strangle Hold":
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RJ confesses:"Movies and TV strangle on-screen. Theaters strangle onstage and books strangle on the page. Samuel Little strangled numerous people in real life. Curiosity asked, what was it like? Not for the wronged victim but, for the deliberate killer. Imagination flipped the view from terrified prey to cruel hunter seeking to answer the question."
RENA J. WORLEY is a Word Artist residing in rural Michigan.
The man with the hat
who couldn’t feel the wind
in his hair because he was wearing
a hat, picks up a paper to read
but the wind keeps folding the pages
so he goes inside a bar near the light
to read when his face lights up
from the light and he can see himself
in the mirror and leans in to inspect
his unshaven chin when he knocks
over a drink which spills all over
the mirror and the paper and he
no longer sees himself and the bartender
asks, “What can I get for you?” and the man says, “A
towel to wipe the mirror,” and the bartender
says, “No, to drink,” and the man says, “Something
dry” and the bartender pours a bourbon which
the man uses to wipe the mirror and his throat
which he now sees has grown bearded ever since
he stopped shaving to avoid buying razors
making him look like a cat with shaven eyes
and he can’t afford this drink of towel-replacing whiskey
but slinks crawling stealthily to the door
when the bartender mentions the tab and sees
the tabby man halfway out the bar
before he can say it’s on the house
and the man’s beard is getting clogged with refuse
from the floor because he’s ducking down
and sneezes from pollen as he exits the bar
back onto the street, pollinating a nearby
bud, and he wipes off his beard where he
finds a ten-cent piece and, excited, looks
for more and, huddled in an alley,
scavenges his fur for change and comes up
with enough to buy a razor except
he likes the beard now what with its
stealth and wealth potentials,
and he folds the coins into his right hand,
making a tight fist that from a bearded man
seems belligerent, enough so that passersby
are frightened and the cops are called and arrive
and the man does the don’t-shoot hands
in the air, dropping his precious metals,
which the cops hear clinking and think for a second
could be a gun, a bomb, an atomic weapon,
an Islamic threat to our Christian ways,
and they draw their weapons,
until the man says, “I’ll pay for the
bourbon,” and the cops are taken aback,
and see that the man is referring to some
legal tender, with the words in God we trust,
and know this man means no harm but
the man sees the guns and runs anyway
not wanting to look back lest he lose
his stride, his muscles aching on only a shot
of bourbon in his veins, an emaciated lion
defiantly pollinating stray flora, thinking
about that article in the paper he just
was trying to read in the light about
shoot-first trigger happy coppers.
It was only then when he noticed his hat was no longer on his head.
Howard reads "Ballad of a Tabby Man":
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Howard confesses:"The escalating threats to underprivileged people (police shootings, Muslim ban) were on my mind when I wrote 'Ballad of a Tabby Man'. However, I wasn’t looking to be political, but rather to follow one such person facing a mundane situation that nonetheless escalates into a challenging one for him."
HOWARD HO is a playwright and composer. His play Various Emporia was a 2017 O'Neill National Playwrights Finalist. His musical Pretendo was featured in the Center Theatre Group (CTG) Library Reading Series. He was a 2016 CTG Literary Fellow and a 2013 NY State Summer Writers Institute Scholarship recipient. His short plays and musicals have been produced at Theatre Now New York, Company of Angels and New Musicals, Inc and presented at Playground-LA. His articles have been published at HowlRound and the Los Angeles Times. He studied Musicology and Communications at UCLA and Master of Professional Writing at the University of Southern California, where he was stage and screen editor of the Southern California Review. His popular Youtube videos analyzing the music of Hamilton (youtube.com/HowardHoMusic) have been recognized by Lin-Manuel Miranda and have garnered over a million views collectively.
She made special cakes. I remember those.
Not just their sweetness, or the way that you
Could smell them from across the house—the dark
Aroma of frosting, the scent that rose
From the baked flour--but something else too.
The thrill of them: the way I almost marked
How sweet they’d be, how good they’d taste by how
Nice they looked on their plate. That joy I’d had
As I held my fork, just before I ate
That first bite... There’s nothing joyous here now.
I feel no joy anymore. Only bad.
All I do is remember things. First hate.
Then cakes. Then panic. Then laughter. And then,
Nothing at all. Again. Again. Again.
Juleigh reads "Cornelia Gale":
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Juleigh confesses:"Over 150 years ago, Chloe Woodruff boiled oleander leaves, then poured the poisonous liquid into a bowl of batter which she baked into cakes and served to the daughters of her master, Mr. Gale. They died. The ghost of one of these girls still haunts Myrtles Plantation, Louisiana."
An English ex-pat, JULEIGH HOWARD-HOBSON's poetry has appeared in Third Wednesday, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Lyric, Able Muse, Poem, Revised (Marion Street Press), and many other places. Nominations include “Best of the Net”, The Pushcart Prize and The Rhysling Award. Her most recent book is Our Otherworld (Red Salon).
Casualness of your craft negates
many other notions. There are
no awkward moments, churlish
lapses in comprehension. The lilt
of integrity rings in, its riff more
luminous than all the light there
is. But I have to believe in your
qualities as gemologist to accept
your son is a gem.
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Sanjeev confesses:"More often than not, the mother of a criminal believes in the virtues of her boy. I find this 'conflict of interest' engaging. It explains the birth of the poem."
SANJEEV SETHI is the author of three books of poetry. His most recent collection is This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury, 2015). A Best of the Net nominee (2017, 2018), his poems are in venues around the world: Poydras Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, Miller’s Pond, Litbreak, Red Savina Review, Persian Sugar in English Tea Vol. 111, The Best of Mad Swirl: v2017!, Ink Pantry, Amethyst Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Mumbai, India.
He goes to the rugby field
and draws swastikas, Stars of David
and the ever-popular “Suck D*c.”
As a gay man I wonder about
the “Suck D*c.” The bad spelling
advertises his fantasy
he writes out large in public—
a coming out
even if he thinks he’s staying in.
Naturally, accompanied by pictures
of guy genitals. Maybe
if he spells it wrong, the truth
slips away. Instead, it turns
the field into his own gay bar,
private in public, says who
he really is. Hating who he is,
he wears the latest swastika,
a popular design now. Lil’ Redd,
like Little Red Riding Hood who entered
a stomach to await rescue. Come out,
Lil’ Redd, there’s work to be done.
Ken reads "Lil' Redd":
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Ken confesses:"Hate crimes are getting more numerous in the age of Trump. Vandals are drawn to symbols of hate. This particular vandal included gay-hating designs/language. I take it personally. Perhaps he doth protest too much—and his fury at gay people is a fury of what he fears in himself."
KENNETH POBO has a new book out from Clare Songbirds Publishing House called The Antlantis Hit Parade. He has work forthcoming in: Switchback, Other Terrain, Trinity Review, Total Eclipse, and more.
Her cornrows braided with baubles
the young girl sits between her mom and
her grandmother on a shabby sofa
drapes drawn, one bulb lighting the room
all of them sobbing as she explains
she’d wanted money to buy candy
so for a quarter she let neighbor boys put
their hands in her panties, but older
boys from Spring Street gave her
a dollar and raped her behind a dumpster.
Nancy reads "For Want of a Dollar":
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Nancy confesses:"As a caseworker for the State of New Jersey, I saw on a daily basis how poverty impacted lives in ways we, who don’t have to worry about putting dinner on the table, can hardly imagine. This was a good, church-going family. None of the boys was ever charged."
NANCY SCOTT has been managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets for more than a decade. She is also the author of nine books of poetry and a novella, Marriage by Fire (Big Top Publishing Company, 2018). Before she retired and turned to writing, she had a long career as a social worker for the State of New Jersey which informed and inspired many of her poems. Originally from the Chicago area, she has resided in New Jersey for many years. www.nancyscott.net
As I lay here devastated, humiliated and degraded,
I try to reminisce of a time I didn't feel hated.
Any good memories all seem to fade,
I try so hard, but your hateful words stayed.
My feelings are hurt, my confidence is shot,
a laugh at your expense, but my misery is what it brought.
I don’t think I am good enough, it’s hard to look in the mirror,
you make me want to just give up, I've never felt so inferior.
I used to be scared to die but now it doesn’t seem so bad,
at least you won’t have the satisfaction of laughing when I’m sad.
I didn’t want this for myself, I used to be full of joy and whit,
I had goals and dreams for my future, but you’ve now ruined it.
I just can’t go on living this way where each day is a nightmare.
I’m one step away from being a social media story you share.
You may laugh it up now, thinking it’s all in good fun,
not knowing your slowing pulling the trigger to my dad’s gun.
I know I’m barely a teen, but I can no longer deal with all the teasing,
Is that what you want? To kill an innocent kid for no reason?
You may think what you say or do means nothing,
but you will see how much it really hurt me, when you read my obituary,
and know that I wasn’t bluffing.
Sincerely,
Bullied
Erin reads "Dear Bully":
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Erin confesses:"This poem is meant to give a voice to all the young children who have committed suicide due to depression caused by bullying. In February 2019, an 8-year-old boy hung himself because of bullying. After watching the story on the news, I was in tears. I just felt the urge to write. I took out my phone and began typing, and within five minutes the poem was finished."
ERIN BRYANT is a mother of three from Louisville, Kentucky.
