Blog Archives - The Voices Project

The Garage Sale Queen~ By Ben Westlie

9/29/2020

She sits on her porch
among the junk-
the once important things.
She waits for buyers, strangers-
soon to be acquaintances.
They’re her currency
for the second-hand treasures
transforming into magnificent clutter.

She in the morning light
as it makes it way above us all.
She gets the stillness of the soundless world
before the buzzing cars, the monotony
of corporations. Before the stilling
plainness of the small-town zombies.

She gets to view it all.
The grandeur of her junkyard.
This posh role of seeing the fragments of her
past lives.

She’s out there on her porch
because her youngest son is shit with money
and his visions, his dreams
were more than him.
She still smiles at every buyer.
She gives discounts and deals
on every piece of past
because she’s the mother, the queen.
She can’t allow one of her own to become
A mindless wanderer who once dreamed.

She’s selling our old lives
At any price to ensure her kin
Is something of a star,
Not a destructive supernova, burning out
destroying it all too soon.

At the end of the weekend
she calls me and I can hear
how raspy her voice is from shouting
the deals, from the thirty cigarettes she smoked.
I hear something else through the raspy chords,
I hear this giddiness, this child-like chime
like when someone tells you’re the winner
among all the other hopefuls.

Author Bio:
Ben Westlie holds an MFA in Poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author of four chapbooks of poems, most recently UNDER YOUR INFLUENCE all published by Finishing Line Press. His poems have appeared in the anthology Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25 selected and edited by Naomi Shihab Nye and in the journals The Fourth River, Third Coast, Atlas and Alice, The Talking Stick, the tiny journal, Trampset and ArLiJo (Arlington Literary Journal).

Yvette~ By Isabelle Stillman

9/29/2020

There is a Nurse Practitioner named Yvette. When people come into her office, she asks them to sit in a small black chair and place their things on the desk. Then she sits at the desk facing away from the black chair toward the computer and asks them things like, do you use tobacco, do you have family members with heart disease or cancer or respiratory trouble, do you have a safe sexual relationship, do you think you might be pregnant, do you have regular bowel movements, do you wear your seatbelt, do you share needles, are you allergic to any medications, do you have any friends, and inputs the answers into the computer. Because the computer software in which she inputs the answers is slow and because Yvette does not like when the room is silent and the person is looking at her from behind and because Yvette has a habit of whispering instead of talking, Yvette repeats the person’s answers in a small voice until the next question loads on her computer screen and she can ask it. And so the people sitting in the black chair hear over and over, “normal bowels” “normal bowels” “normal bowels or “cancer” “cancer” “cancer.”

Author Bio:
Isabelle Stillman is a writer, teacher, and musician from St. Louis, Missouri. She began writing as a young girl, studied fiction through college and graduate school, and taught creative writing to high schoolers. Her most recent writing endeavor has been that of writing songs – Isabelle released her first full-length album, Middle Sister, in July of 2019. She then quit her job to go on tour. Her fiction and songwriting both explore ideas about coming of age, gender, mental health, and religion. In the classroom, she teaches writing as a vehicle for students to see the world in all its realities and to carve their individual space within it. Isabelle’s music is available on all streaming platforms; this is her first published piece of fiction.

A Woman is Not Home (In Memorial)~ By Letitia Six

9/29/2020

I think about the time. She moves. “I
need to buy butter. Real butter.
Not margarine.” I bring her back the butter,
but it’s unsalted. She says, “I need salted.”

I sit with her watching the news. She cries
during Dancing with the Stars. The pattern
on her dinner plate is from The Pioneer Woman
set. I take it from her manicured fingers.

Her drapes hide our figures from the darkness
outside. Candy Crush chimes on her
Kindle. She smiles. Her body shifts
below her throw. She covers me. I close my eyes.

I dream she leaves every window open. Scents
bristle space. Outside, the dirt is purple.
She laughs from somewhere behind a wall. I hear
thumping; soft, rhythmic motions. She steps inside of me.

Author Bio:
Letitia Six is a native of Appalachia and began writing when she was nine-years-old. While she has obtained her education as a single mother, her work has been inspired by the ideological institutions that have haunted her sex throughout history. She currently holds a BA in English, a MA in English, and a MA in journalism and mass communication. She is a member of AWP. Her work has been published in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Vol V, the literary magazines, Et Cetera and Whetstone, and her campuses newspapers.

Strength~ By M. West

9/23/2020

I wear a thin gold band on my right third finger.
It’s tenuous, hand-hammered, strong despite
its femininity. The band is harmony of fortitude
and finesse, the subtle art that I haven’t yet mastered,

Knowing how to be strong, to do the hard
things, to be the person everyone always
needs me to be without feeling and being a
lumberjack walking through a garden
of teacups, crushing delicacies.

I wear the wispy, ardent band, coping with
my unrefined identity, running my finger over it
each time I feel uncomfortable, drawing it near
my palm, falling in love with the cultured consistency.

Author Bio:
M. West, an Arkansas native raised on southern sunshine, expresses personal but universal truths on love, heritage, struggle, and survival. As a first-generation college graduate, the granddaughter of fruit pickers explores, through her creative process, her blue-collar heritage and its impacts, both desirable and undesirable, on her identity. Her love of poetry is largely credited to her father who kept worn collections of poems scattered around the family home and read novels aloud to her at bedtime. M. West, currently pursuing a graduate degree in counseling, observes and relays human behavior, along with its quirks, normalcies, and outliers. M. West enjoys drinking black coffee at sunrise, traveling, walking with her shepherd dogs, and spending time with her family. She appreciates Sunday brunch, collecting local art, and performing poetry and music.

Common Uses~ By Ann McBee

9/23/2020

Love is used to treat seizures: real seizures, fake seizures not really brought on by the Holy Spirit, real seizures actually brought on by the Holy Spirit, and real seizures brought on by something else, something not holy at all, something red and hot as a rash.

Before administering love, tell someone, anyone if you are allergic to love or any ingredient in love. Tell this person, this maker of apple pancakes or this painter of heroes wrapped in thorns, if you have any reactions that are red. If you have shortness of breath, heart palpitations, sweaty hands, swelling of any body part, if you have tears, if you have the urge to write a poem so hard the pen breaks and leaks ink all over your jeans. Tell the hero wrapped in thorns, but don’t expect Him to listen. He is part of the reason for your seizures. He is the reason for the symptom and the cure. Tell Him if you have kidney disease. Tell Him about any and all problems that may interact with love. Do not start, stop, or change the dose of love without checking with Him.

Use love as ordered by the Holy Spirit. Or the red thing. Take with or without food. Swallow whole. Do not chew, break or crush. Crushes are for girls. Check with the Holy Spirit to see if it is safe for you to love with all your drugs and other love problems. Drink lots of noncaffeine liquids but avoid Strawberry Hill Boones Farm because it is disgusting. If you need to stop love, you will want to stop very slowly.

Protect love from light. Keep love in a dry place. Do not take two doses of love at a time. Do not take two doses of love at a time. Do not take two doses of love at a time.

Author Bio:
Ann Stewart McBee was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She obtained her PhD in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. She has published fiction and poetry in Ellipsis, Untamed Ink, The Pinch, and Citron Review among others. Her short story collection titled How Rabbit Went Down and other Mishaps is available from Hoot-n-Waddle press. She now teaches English at Des Moines Area Community College, and lives outside Des Moines, Iowa. The limited use of her hands due to Rheumatoid Arthritis does not prevent her from writing in the same way that living in heavy air pollution does not prevent one from breathing.

In the Jacaranda Season~ By Sally Stevens

9/22/2020

In the Jacaranda season, through lavender clouds of twilight
we pass at dusk the road to wandering mem’ries.

Whose house was that, I visited once, so young…
time did not pass then but stayed, the moments one upon the other
Intertwined, tangled.

One fringe of false eyelash, left behind on alabaster sink
where someone’s wife later found it
the eyelash not being hers, of course,
but mine
forgotten there while she, away on holiday
slept peacefully through our stolen night,
the end
of our beginning.

Echos of retribution rise now like smoke from ancient chimneys
seeking forgiveness against a lavender sky
powerless to forgive.

In the Jacaranda season, narrow limbs reach outward
light now spilling golden there, upon new gardens growing.

Too much forgotten, of picket fences taller then,
like children grown and gone
that once, upon the sweet, musk smell of summer understood
but now are everywhere gone
leaving this,
we have only this:
that once
we were alive.

Author Bio:
Sally Stevens has worked in music as a singer, in TV, in Film scoring, in Sound Recordings and in concert for --- many -- decades. Her poetry and fiction have been included in Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, Mockingheart Review Poetry, Raven's Perch Poetry, The OffBeat, Funny in Five Hundred, Between The Lines Anthology: "Fairy Tales & Folklore Re-imagined", and in No Extra Words podcast.

She has always loved writing, and has spent the last 21 summers at University of Iowa doing the Writing Festival workshops.

Am I Beautiful in Ireland~ By Nancy Linden

9/17/2020

Am I beautiful in Ireland?
“Yes” the mountains tell me so.
They stand up tall and signal “yes,”
in welcome, a heather green hello.

Am I accepted in Ireland?
“Yes” the winds confer.
They whisper “yes” across my ears,
with mystical enchanting purr.

Am I valued in Ireland?
The answer “yes” you see.
American flags wave valiantly,
aside Irish flags for me.

Am I desired in Ireland?
A cheerful “yes” is spoke.
The Irish say, “Come over!”
to lavish encouragement with hope.

Am I beloved in Ireland?
“Yes” the answer read.
As child adored, told fables of lore, of heartache, pain and dead.
You see these hearty people struggled to be strong.
They scraped the land with labor from dusk until the dawn.
By grit and determination they prevailed against the Man.
A Republic is now flourishing,
so forward Emerald Plan!

Am I beloved in Ireland?
The answer “yes” again.
The dancing earth of peat and mirth,
sings footsteps from my pen.

Am I beloved in Ireland?
The answer “yes” and “yes,”
called gray white gull, gliding just below,
and repeated from her nest.

Am I beloved in Ireland?
Of “yes,” and “yes,” and “yes,”
My roots lay deep,
under trees on steep,
shade beacons home for rest.
.
Am I beautiful in Ireland?
The mirror is the land.
The lakes and streams reflect my dreams,
while future extends its hand.

So, I say “yes” to Ireland,
The answer “yes” indeed,
I am beautiful in Ireland,
God’s glory would agree.

Author Bio:
Dr. Nancy Linden is a Critical Thinking Lecturer at Savannah State University. She is the author of several books for Reading Comprehension and she enjoys traveling and learning customs from different cultures and other women.

Once Upon A Time~ By Ann Weil

9/17/2020

There lived a wannabe princess
In search of her happily ever after.
No evil step-mother
Gifting poison-laced apples,
No band of merry dwarf brothers
Hi-ho-ing off to work.
Just a tyrannical father
We’ll call King Charming.

A master of unpredictability,
King Charming loved to dance.
He perfected the two-faced tango,
The my way or the highway mamba,
And the shame and blame shimmy.
His browbeating bossa nova was the best in all the kingdom;
His persecution polka a true wonder to behold.

Alas, our little Princess Wannabe
Had two left feet, and although she tried her best,
She was never good enough to please the King.
Never good enough.
Never good enough.
In fact, so disappointed was King Charming by Her Klutziness
He locked her in a tower barely wide enough to do the twist.

But lo and behold! Our heroine was not to be defined
By her limbo limitations. She knew how to do hair!
Her fast fingers flew to her magnificent multi-foot mane
And she began to plait. Hour upon hour she braided,
Stopping only briefly to order some extensions on Amazon.
When at last they came, she finished her rope
And repelled down the side of the tower
All G.I. Jane like.

Good enough.
Better than good enough.

King Charming died a lonely old man.

And Girlfriend, Princess ditched the Wannabe
And lived Ecstatically, Enthusiastically, Emphatically
Ever After.

Author Bio:
Ann Weil wrote poetry as a child and is now returning to her first love after a career as a K-12 teacher and university professor. She writes because she must-- it's as strong a drive as drinking that first cup of tea in the morning. After surviving the fairly stodgy publish or perish experience of academia, Ann now revels in the chance to be playful via her poetry. She is inspired by things real and imagined, the ordinary and the extraordinary. Ann believes a truly good poem should make the reader both think and feel, preferably in unexpected ways. She loves a poem that can make the reader laugh in one stanza and cry in the next, or vice versa! She has a B.A. in special education, an M.A. in educational psychology and an Ed.D. in educational studies. Her first published poem will appear later this month in Amethyst Review.

The Rear View Mirror~ By K. Kelly

9/15/2020

Valuable lessons cannot be unlearned.
Inward reflection propagates outward beauty.
As the years go by, we can embrace the past missteps of our youth as we’ve stumbled along the
winding life path and grown stronger.
We can share our cultured wisdom but it doesn’t diminish the haunting effects of learning from
of our own errs.

Author Bio:
K. Kelly is currently working on her master’s degree in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. She has a bachelor’s degree in Communication from the University of New Hampshire. Her first love and passion has always been writing and editing. She is also a certified Project Management Professional who works in the health insurance industry.

Existence of ourselves~ By Saarthak Haldar

9/9/2020

Standing beneath the starry sky,
with thousands of stars .
I try to imagine the earth's existence,
in this never ending space .
There earth is just a speck,
a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.
There resides, we the Humans, illusionary masters of this mote of dust.
Done and still doing, endless cruelties,
with own brothers, with own mother.
Spilled rivers of blood, exploited the mother earth,
only known place harbouring life.
Human kind, with evanescent, transient existence.
Delusion of having privileged position in this universe.
Not known by them, negligible existence of ourselves,
like a drop in this vast cosmic ocean.

Author Bio:
Saarthak Haldar is a science student, He writes scientific articles and journals but he likes writing poems. His poems are mostly on Human existence, Emotions, Nature and Universe.