Adage

It has been 
said, we know as we grow
old as a day mundane looks to be
a life laid down in decades
I say where is the equal sign
the grand total
of what I have done
what is left to consider

consider this: nothing
and that’s fine
I thought nights of pain would never see the ease
the cutting cry of a baby unable to stand it any longer
the rocking back and forth
the praying hours
spent trading my time for his or hers
the awful wonder that time brings

standing beneath these leaflets of shame and guilt 

for what

and yet

I wish for more
time to ache with you in my arms
more prayers to send on your behalf
love for the days I had anger in my words
I wish for more to give you
more to leave

when I leave, let this be known

♨

Held Captive

I write this sober.
I love him: know that.
Know this: I don’t know
what to do.
I bought gray sheets
to match his mood and hide
his neglect – white
towels to encourage that daily baptism
by hot water and a blue scrunchie.
I keep Clorox on hand,
soak in it some days – like today.
One of us is of sound mind
and body – One of us
is desperate to find
out what normal is – One
of us is a shell of himself,
the other: a shell.

♨

Quality Control

Yesterday I went to Publix on 301,
the new one in need of new entry tiles:
the girl bagged my groceries perfectly:
chicken with the shrimp,
romaine with the bananas still green
like I like them, the hotdogs 
with the genoa salami—the kind he likes.

This morning
two hotdog buns were missing.
He must have eaten after ten. He does that, you know.
Must feel like he must eat 
when I am asleep, prevents me from seeing
he is human, that he delights
in formed angus beef
not knowing I bought them
for him. Not knowing I live

to see him delight in hotdogs, to see him
normal.
Stupid word: normal.
Stupid until you beg for it—whatever it is
I just know
it’s not here.

—Submitted on 01/20/2023

A.J. Forrester is the author of Resurrection (Word Poetry, 2021). Her poems have appeared in SWWIM, Trailer Park Quarterly, and Azahares, among other journals. She lives in Dade City, where she teaches poetry and volunteers for the Florida Literary Arts Coalition.

Writing Against

I have no words. 
Yes, my neighbor displays elephant tusks
on his mantle, and a stuffed cougar in his basement. 
Brags about his next trophy hunting trip to Texas.
And I have no words.
Yes, my cousin says a wife should submit
to her husband. That no woman should 
choose abortion. He says, God is male. 
And I have no words.
Yes, my friend tells me climate has changed
throughout history, and always will. 
We’ll be fine, since animals and plants
adapt. Declares there’s no global warming 
since it’s our coldest winter on record. 
And I have no words. 
I place a bowl here. There.
Fill them with my emotions.
Set them aside. I tell myself 
contradictions will always exist. 
It is to find love
(for the whole lot of them!)
that I must find words. 
Pen to paper.
I write against them. 

—Submitted on 01/20/2023

Yvonne Higgins Leach is the author of Another Autumn (Cherry Grove Collections, 2014). Her poems have appeared in The South Carolina Review, South Dakota Review, Spoon River Review, The Cimarron Review, and POEM, among other journals. Alongside career, family, and poetry, her most recent passion is working with shelter dogs. A resident of Washington, Leach splits her time between Vashon Island and S). 

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered for publication. Click here to submit work to Flush Left. 

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Intuition

It begins in my hands.
The idea, a perfect greenness, speeds
up my pulse. I feel it, radioactive throb
in my wrists. The endpoint of loneliness
is to escape the living. I do not mean
to stare into this wilderness.
Above me, miles of angry
sky. Like a secret stored inside
the body’s cells. Like having a crush on
the secret you. Like my mother, shrinking
more each day, still telling me which hill 
to climb and do I hear her? Am I near
enough? Because just this once
I have no doubt: when she dies
we all die with her.

♨

Until Dawn, Barbaric

My mother dies on occasion,
looping toward her extinction.
Each time she returns to me 
in a new version. She speaks 
slowly, the syllables sweeping, as
though she’s unaware of the violet 
pansies blooming inside her throat. But
she knows they’re there. She
nurtured them as they grew.
Tonight her battered voice 
sings sotto voce from her very
bones, introducing me to 
a music that can only be described
in the imagery of Arkansas:
deer night-grazing in the meadow.
You eat the glow of dark songness.
Because of their eyes. Their eyes. 

♨

Dear Always

Always traveling toward brittle  
Always something wrapped in plastic  
Forgetting the words of the Kaddish prayer 
Hiding tears from my kids and siblings 
  
Because I am now
Because I am dead to the living  
Dead to the dead  
Buried in cold sunshine 

The brilliance 

—Submitted on 01/20/2023

Robin Reagler is the author of Into The The (Backlash Press, 2021) and Night Is This Anyway (Lily Poetry, 2022), as well as the chapbooks Teeth & Teeth (Headmistress Press, 2018) and Dear Red Airplane (Seven Kitchens Press, 1st ed. 2011, 2nd ed. 2018). 

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered for publication. Click here to submit work to Flush Left. 

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Low Pile Fragments 

The words are plucking right there at my teeth, crowded inside
standing nervously like nape hairs that have
known Fear before
Sitting in crossed-leg confession to my best blanket friend:

a gay late night after-party : memory fractures

drunken, naked hot tub departure when they find out; start in
not a real man : pussies are gross : we can’t sit in this 
             dirty water

i see my hands on the carpet— low pile, beige carpet—
see them tensed, weight bearing
raw knee abrasions; scarred for months. gonorrhea from . . . . . . where? 

i see my hands on the carpet

Someone is kneeling behind me
someone enters the room, sees

Leaves.

resisting force, Someone’s hips pounding as cocained hearts; i’m there i’m    
not there   i   see my hands on the carpet : bang bang bang bang
ecstasy and booze? drugged?   immobile. i feel nothing. Just

my hands 
low pile carpet

: In silence, he bends at the waist, burrowing his bald head in my lap
a monk in wordless prayer. I was the boy burying his feelings 
arm’s-length underground, so our sorrow would not have 
a chance to grow

I gathered his heaviest pieces in my arms, those dampened elder tulips 
split open 
with the dwindling rains of Spring. And we danced to shift weight 

He made love to me there, in the day-lit room
holding my hand through full-body pleasurequakes
crafting a juxtaposition: Then and Now :wide as my weary, wintered sea 
—
He knew
—
but said not a word, just kissed me in his arms
and loved away what hurt 
just loved it all away

♨

Pink  

God gave me roses
pink roses
on my birthday

And God watched as I learned 
to grow thorns; protection 
proving more critical 
than care
Weeds creeping around stems
as a slower kind 
of fatal embrace
 
God was in my garden
when my lover felt the velvet layers
gingerly rubbing petals 
between his fingertips 
he comes to me
he arrives 
with/in me
Oh my, God
was in the garden 

♨

Independence Day	 

"Enchanté, come in"
tête-à-tête with my new 
Grindr conquest
His raised tongue forms the 
tip-less roof for Zhuh
to speak my grateful name
I learned fast, around here 
Jean’s call themselves Jeen in
Non-Haitian company
Stranger casual on my couch, chiseled like a legend
telling me about his family’s 
Kreyòl Ayisyen 
[Haitian Creole] 
Us second gen kids, we don’t know
too much         not like the old folks 
want us to
Told me Haitian Independence Day 
was yesterday
barbecues and block parties—
facts I didn’t know because 
je n’avais 
pas besoin 
de savoir 
[I didn’t 
need
to know]
He eyed my wispy wrist
resting soft like 
Québec snow 
his brawny arm in ancestors’ 
richly earthen hue, these
pieces of Us intertwined 
like an atlas we’d cracked open 
and laid flat upon the table 
His gaze rose, seizing my eyes
“kind of interesting that today
we’re sitting here together”
and together we fell motionless 
and felt that        apart

—Submitted on 02/13/2023

Jean-Denis Couillard Hale (they/them) is an emerging queer, non-binary trans poet originally from Vermont. Their poetry is forthcoming in The Write Launch. Couillard Hale holds a master’s in public health from the UMass Amherst.

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered for publication. Click here to submit. 

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You've lived many lifetimes like this:

holding back, hands folded,
embodying the family code: 
do not give yourself away. 

No wonder you let the Shadow 
lure you into fast cars,  
tilt the whiskey flask to your lips:

Girls like you like the sweet burn. 
No moon. Scent of cut hay. 
Gravel roads that end in trouble. 

As long as you succumb 
to the trance of he made me, 
who can blame you? 

A voice says, Remember this:
No one owns you.
You owe nothing to no one. 

Bats dive from the abandoned loft, 
arrow-winged, fork-tailed. 
Surely it has never been this dark.

—Submitted on 02/13/2023

Debra Kaufman‘s most recent collection is God Shattered (Jacar 2019). Her poems have appeared in Tar River Poetry, The Phare, The Healing Muse, North Carolina Literary Review, and the anthology Crossing the Rift (Press 53, 2021), among other journals. She lives in North Carolina.

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered for publication. Click here to submit. 

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Spectators		
          after Rilke

The surrounding spectators
have us badly paired,

too much of a calculation.
Suddenly we are falsely colored

in metallic silk
under heavy weights,

confused in our windowed skin.
We chase a cloud of tears.

Some of the spectators
already lie in the graveyard,

yet they stare at this suburban sky.
We are wanderers,

shrunk in our skin, living on 
despite the fruit of displeasure.

The spectators bend and twist us
in the oiled slippery air

of infinite space
while we convalesce 

with our scarcely trying mothers,
our affectionate toys.

♨

Coyotes

bent on prey
sidle into the woods 
near my house 
soundless indifferent
gray among grasses

what have they taken
from me at the edge 
of the field what 
part of me stays
with them in the brush

♨

Let Me Not Say

I will not tell you how relieved I am 
when I don’t have to cook,

or how much I need to be alone,

or say how determined I was to turn on 
the car radio and listen to politics 
though I knew you’d hate it,

or tell you how I sink into violent 
cop shows as into a soporific soup,

or how it annoys me sometimes 
that you’re so kind, so organized,

how you never forget to mail the letter 
or wake me before you go to the store,

not say how in your excellence, so modest, 
I feel my own pallid aspiration

(again I forgot to call my brother),

or how I need so many hot baths 
to stay calm in these terrible days,

not say that most of our stuff 
is mine mine mine, old stuff—
my grandmother’s Chinese screen, 
my father’s platinum whale, his set of Kipling—

not tell you how much I wish 
you had piles of things too, 
just because you wanted them!

—Submitted on 10/31/2022

Cammy Thomas is the author of Tremors (Four Way Books, 2021). Her debut collection, Cathedral of Wish (Four Way Books, 2005) won the Norma Farber First Book Award from the Poetry Society of America. Recent poems have appeared in On the Seawall, Poem-a-Day, Poetry Porch, Ghost Quarry, Sixth Finch, and Amsterdam Quarterly, as well as in the anthologies Poems in the Aftermath (Indolent Books, 2017), and Echoes From Walden (Wayfarer Books, 2021).

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered for publication.

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Visit our Kickstarter for A MONTH OF SOMEDAY, the debut chapbook by Gerald Wagoner. 

Pre-order the book right here on indolentbooks.com.

Aftermath 

I am aware of all the ways
In which I am not aware

Grace is more than a notion 
It is a condition of being in a body

And what is a body?
And are you listening for what the question is really asking?

And are you certain that you don't want to be here anymore? 
Is there perhaps not something more beneath that feeling?

Tell me, who stole your joy? 
In whose hands were held carelessly the things you were made of?

And if you could, would you go back and fight even harder?
You couldn't have won, you know.

It's not your fault 
That the sound of rain triggers something in the body

The unexpected ping
And washout 

And a war is more deadly once the war is over, 
And what is a war

And aren't you here, still
Though the odds were so great against it

I am aware of all the ways
In which no poem, or prayer or hand reaching out in the dark

Is ever enough.

❡

A poem for my father while he's still living 

My father's laughter
How can I make you see
It was just the air we breathed
Tethered us
Dowsing body of sweet joy
Shoulder to shoulder on the worn couch 

Picture us 
Tired and beautiful 
Around the television's warm glow 
Mad TV, Grace Under Fire, House of Buggins,
I want to bottle his laugh 
An amulet of holy sound 
Worn for the rest of my days
Around my neck 

I want him never to leave 
This world we're in 
My father 
Want a heaven full of televisions
God must know this man's laugh 
Must know how much he had to suffer and lose
To find his way to it 

I refuse to imagine a world without this sound 
All around 
Like the blues
It's sung with the whole body 

Corn swaying in the cool breeze
He jumps and he makes that shot from the 3 point line 
And everything is just fine
Not fine, almost fine
beginning, ending, beginning 

My father, lost in the bins
Records from way back when
In his hard working hands
We skip church in search 
Of that sweeter music 

Walk along the road
Honey buns and chocolate milk from the corner store 
Say what you want
That was my heaven 
Right there between pump number one and pump number two

Me and him 
Out along the road

I did not know I was in the holy moment
How quickly time passes 
That you can't go back
To the precise feeling 
Of the two of you 
Up along the road
Searching for the promised land 
In the dusty light of the bins 
A river of sound run through us 
Washing us clean and new 
And whole and home. 

I refuse to imagine a world without all of this.

❡

A big, beautiful dark

There's a tree, Charlotte
A big dark beautiful tree 
Between you and me
Right along the road, little bird,
And we are running 
Still, a tree, and the world,
Charlotte, the world 
Remember how it felt
To stand where once we stood 
Light in the field
Such breeze could carry one
Charlotte, the world, then-
It's not the same world now
Still, there's a tree 
A big beautiful dark in me
The world, Charlotte, a big dark beautiful field, oh little bird, in all that light,
Burning. The world, Charlotte, the world,
Burning in light. 

—Submitted on 01/28/2023

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018), All Things Beautiful Are Bent (Alien Buddha, 2021) and Motel Prayers (Alien Buddha, 2022.) Diaz’s work has appeared most recently in Thrush Poetry Journal, Wrongdoing Mag, Sugar House Review, and Rust + Moth.

Editor’s Note: The series title Flush Left refers to the fact that, due to our limited WordPress skills, we are only considering poems that are flush left. Poems already in our Submittable queue that have simple non-flush-left formatting may be considered for publication.

Visit our Kickstarter for A MONTH OF SOMEDAY, the debut chapbook by Gerald Wagoner.