Poetry – Novus Literary and Arts Journal

Maybe Aphasia

Written by Dakota Delk. Posted in Poetry.

Aphasia is a voice disorder resulting from damage to the brain. This damage can be caused by sudden injury or develop slowly. Aphasia is one type of many communication disorders.

Wake up without words

Grasping at air like a child begging for attention

A bit of warm water and honey

Can’t save your voice

Months of visits to airtight coffins with icebox walls

And wintery hands against your throat

Told you to speak and heard only the sounds of a Galton’s whistle

Silence. No diagnosis

I speak for you now

That I know what permanence means

What if I end up like her

Your lips, two camellia petals brushing against each other

Pushing out prayers

Everything will be okay

The first lie I ever spoke

Years from now, someone will ask

About you, who you were

What I loved

I will say, I loved everything

But your voice.

When the Person Stays Dead

Written by Shannon Lise. Posted in Poetry.

When the person stays dead,

you finally find time

to deep clean the bathroom,

throw out all those promises

you almost made to God.

Afterwards, you climb the roof

and watch the stars go hunting.

Carnage chokes the sky and prayer

shoots shrieking over the edge

of the world, a river into the void.

Dawn threatens, savage with sparks

that unknot the flesh and the face

of God is a wandering home

where no one you know has been.

Way down by the water

the light still shivers offshore,

a little flame that leaps and flies

like an asteroid on the wind.

When the person stays dead,

then you know that God is a rebel

queen, with her back against the wall.

Poet Cemetery

Written by Morgan Bishop. Posted in Poetry.

Silver Rain dusts the bridge

Moonlight’s beams of silk

Unwritten poems walk the rail

An Unstable language

Yesterdays breath

Lingers above every arch

And sinking in every pit

Budding between brown petals

Thirty-three names silenced by time

Travelers who have forgotten their voice

Strays in circles of timeless stone

Voiceless pages turn

Falling petals of the tongue’s age

Bald grass and rotting wood

Through these are dull points of pencils

Still dancing in the breath of winter

And Other Lies I’ve Told

Written by Nicole Carey. Posted in Poetry.

I called grandma today,

said I needed the solace only

a woman can provide,

short of mother’s lectures.

Grandma was at home.

I called grandma today,

she was cooking,

landline kissing the rim

of her soup pot. Marbled meat stumbling

upon soft produce, tangled in herbs

bathing in the milky base.

“your mother’s favorite”

but I already knew that.

I called grandma today,

she was missing our

sweet faces, the cheeks that

she gave us

and the dimples she didn’t.

Those were from grandpa.

She didn’t say she will see me soon.

I called grandma today,

her voice matched the

silky way mother always described it,

her honey speech, words of

nectar running towards the

point of my chin.

I wanted to be sweet like that.

I called grandma today,

we made plans

for peanut butter brownies,

dipped toes in the glassy lake

and tales wrapped in gold.

I called grandma today knowing

my chances, slim

like her figure in a

freshly floured apron

and yet

I called grandma today. Now she lives

in pages greased

with butter kisses in round

spots of lakes

her body a cookbook

bound together with stories

of a Detroit Christmas in

slanted cursive. My only

source of her

carrot cake language.

I Think My House is Haunted

Written by Nicole Carey. Posted in Poetry.

I can’t shake the spirit who

envies my bones-

a frame to claim as my own

rattling the broken screen

out back

guiding bitter fingers down my neck.

traces of dancing apparitions

invitations to the ceremony

of black dresses

burnt orange petals, the hush

of remembrance.

we pass

tear-stained glasses on the roof

blushed spirits

blaze

our throats like a ghost,

And listen

to another funeral.

the cry of wind instruments

the cry of broken mothers

Sisters, friends

counting cars in procession and creating

a life

for the dead.

I know what it’s like

to live beside

the cold breath

of a graveyard.

I watch Sunday burials

with bitter black coffee

rows

headstones

inch closer, blurring lines of living

seeking solace

in the smoke that escapes

my lips in thick white ribbons,

They tempt me to join them.

objects in mirror are closer than they appear

Written by Renee Boyer. Posted in Poetry.

whiskey heartbeats

and birds flying in patterns

xo, accept

not all are flying south

midnight rivers

and warm misted skin

your kisses chill the breeze

of September

highways are highways

until you reach your exit

then hills become mountains

and rivers

are deep in between

I can never wash the smell of September

out of my hair

and your whiskey lives on my lips

as an after taste for when the missing

becomes too hard

the birds go where they

are called

and the sun sets on my skin

that only sees you

in the rearview

Maybe Aphasia

When the Person Stays Dead

Poet Cemetery

And Other Lies I’ve Told

I Think My House is Haunted

objects in mirror are closer than they appear

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