we put together
thoughts
like good TV
to pull quick
against a profile
of guilt at
every detail
Tag: Poetry
Faustian Sentences p.2
The series of short verses “Faustian Sentences” were written while inpatient for mental health concerns. Each sightof handshanding over meds in papercups takesa sleight of mind stolen from timespent alonewhen each of us is judgedby the juryof our fears. * inside ofone momentthe day plungesinto glare and the tremorswe call plansretreatinto machines * three days…
Faustian Sentences, p. 1
we speak at times
to no one
and at others
to ourselves
words that cover
what’s between us
and the absence
never there
even if they seem
like what they are
or if they are
what they do not
Sometimes Love is as Dangerous as Love
For two blocks after she stepped off the city bus, she felt her father watching from the upstairs window. He would be half scrolling with his gun in his lap, she thinks. He can’t stop thinking about her sister and what she’d been through. He can’t let it happen again. A girl shouldn’t be alone,…
Dream
i dreamt
i like you
like i do
Three Micro-fictions
Each spoonful of Jello, every bed pan, she felt older.
Unsafe, infrequent & far from home?
A longtime Racine bus rider and a former candidate for elected office offer criticisms of current city transit policy.
“you would die, or be happy forever”
by Jessie Lynn McMains A couple months ago, I made a post on Facebook: What was the poem or poems that first made you really say WOW? The poems that felt like spells or prayers to you? The ones that felt like portrals to Elsewhere? The ones that gave you chills, made you cry, made…
Love Song during Riot with Many Voices
by Jessie Lynn McMains All through the summer of 2020, from May to September, I returned again and again to Lynda Hull’s poem “Love Song during Riot with many Voices.” I thought of it when police murdered Breonna Taylor in her apartment, and the protests began in Louisville, demanding justice. I thought of this man,…
Let’s Be Bad
by Jessie Lynn McMains Sometimes, I want to do bad things. This is not a confession of nefarious plots or dirty thoughts. Maybe I should rephrase it. Sometimes, I want to allow myself to be bad at things. I want to let myself make crappy stuff. I want to let myself just make the absolute…
ArtRoot Writer-In-Residence 