Poetry
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New! LIT Monthly Writing Prompt: April Edition
Happy poetry month everyone!
Here at LIT we are starting a new series of monthly writing prompts. This month’s prompt is from our nonfiction editor Vicky Oliver:
Write about a time when you were lost and how you found your way home.
The hero’s journey is sometimes a parable on the transformation of being: old habits and emotional reactions that are shed out of necessity as they become stumbling blocks to the journey. The old ways are replaced by new strengths or new ideas that have been germinating out of sight, waiting to come into play as fresh discoveries in a moment of crisis,
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If You Cry Hard Enough, God Will Answer Your Prayers
by Jae Eason
How many times have I prayed in wooden pews &
the echo of my voice answered?They say: drink this,
eat thisand the enzymes in my stomach learn how to break
down Jesus’ blood & Jesus’ body and if you recite
your dinnertime prayers, God will give you food and
let you eat it.And you will pray & we will continue to pray.
Hail Mary, full of grace
you will recite these words – they’ll web inside your
throat until the Book has stifled you. -
After Thirty Minutes, Dark Adaptation Occurs
by Emily Townsend
The sky is rarely clear during spring
in Willamette Valley, and tonight
there is a star coruscatingthrough the cloudless canvas, as if to say,
I am still here, please don’t forget I exist
Earlier, daffodils were drunk with rain.I am your backpack as you fall
asleep. I watch this asterism burn
and dim like a stagnant plane, fixated
yet moving as our planet orbits. I assumethis is the only thing alive in the dark.
You snore loud enough to wake up
the horizon, -
Broken Glass and Other Sharp Objects
by Genevieve Creedon
Paring knife meets plastic meets
index finger amid kitchen preparations
for tomorrow’s chicken pasta salad lunch:red dyes soft fabric in dim lights
during efforts to contain the stain,
blood meets counter meetstongue and then water, washing it away.
But blood washes better than brooding
erupting in tomorrow’s chicken pasta salad lunch:recollection, rising, unleashed,
in the corner of the living room,
a wandering eye meets cardboard meetsboxed remnants of a long past attempt
to learn to draw—the penciled contours
of life, -
Ark
by Alex Starr
We are ever
ything exploring
itself ever
y spelunking
satellite
unwrapping of
a gift
discover
y of calculus
quarks crème
brûlée
a lei
around a neck
introspection
specks
Alex Starr is a writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. Alex's poems appear in Vallum, Three Rooms Press: Maintenant, Lunch Ticket, Ignatian Literary Magazine, La Piccioletta Barca,