Issue #10 – Page 3 – PLEASE SEE ME

This Side of My Skin – S Marie Watkins

Poetry Issue #10: Women's Health Mental Health Awareness Writing Contest Winner April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 This Side of My Skin by S. Marie Watkins This Side of My Skin only shows a glimpse of me. Melanin speckles the ridge of my nose, the crest of my brow, the arch of my shoulders from crouching over a book. Parallel scars fade into ghosts forever haunting my arms, stomach, thighs, and ankles. Stretchmarks zigzag like lightning strikes and tear bolts down my hips. Most of these ...

Three Poems – Lake Angela

Poetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Three Poems by Lake Angela The Women's Waltz —1— The day overwhelms us with insight into grey. The women survive. Their chins expand to stubblefields, and the furrows of their eyes draw closed. In their neglect, these bodies are left to love themselves. —2— In fitful sleep inside small cells, time recedes: ethyl-red dripped over flesh corrodes childhood dreams, drills drone and cigarettes singe grey skin thinned from years of rape locked in ...

Children’s Hospital – David Banach

Poetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Children's Hospital by David Banach Children's Hospital My fingers gentle graze her pale and shaven head. A vise of six tapered insect legs keeps it immobile. Canvas smooth, her skin, a checkerboard of black, child-like hand-drawn lines, with electrodes embedded at the interstices, inscribed to map out paths of electric storm seizures. Myoclonic they said was the word to describe the clench of the body rolling forward, head banging against her plate on the table. I ...

Osteoporosis – PS Cottier

Poetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Osteoporosis by PS Cottier Osteoporosis So many holes in the word, it’s almost onomatopoeic as if the porous bones used the doctor’s mouth as a ventriloquist’s doll. Four ‘o’s in the diagnosis, and many little voids in my hips. My brain is forming a single big “O” of surprise. Have I not worked out? Have I not pushed weights? Why would my bones allow these tiny, traitorous caves, in which I sense the word “break” lurking like an omen? “Break” contains ...

Two Poems – Doriana Diaz

Poetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Two Poems by Doriana Diaz Brandywine No. 1 i blamed you/for this/for making me this way/for the vicious battle/i’ve been playing/back and forth/with all the parts/i want to get rid of/but still remain/maybe that night/i took fire to my own flesh/desperate to find/the exact location of you in me/to try to burn you out completely/enoughwasenough/i can’t lie/for a second before the stench excreted from my pores/i felt relief ++++++++eraseeraseeraseeraseeraseerase ++++++++holdspaceholdspaceholdspace bupropion 300 ...

Two Poems – Dagne Forrest

Poetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Two Poems by Dagne Forrest Mother’s Heart as Incandescent Lightbulb For too long I allowed this heart to be a porchlight, standing sentinel, always on, even in the glare of day. It blotted out anything else I could be, casting me in the role of a lighthouse or the sun. For a long time, I didn’t even notice, the light came naturally and I loved what I saw, children growing and tussling ...

Two Poems – Emily Hockaday

Poetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Two Poems by Emily Hockaday Anniversary As my father became thinner, ALS whittling his body to something we didn’t recognize, the weight my mother carried grew. As though each lost pound was added to her grief. I watched her way out in the waves, where I couldn’t swim, and I wondered how she kept from drowning. On lunch breaks I called from the Wall Street public space, surrounded by indoor palm trees and strangers, ...

Magnitude 7.1 – Catherine Klatzker

Poetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Magnitude 7.1 by Catherine Klatzker Magnitude 7.1 When the earthquake comes at night, you search first for your glasses, then your shoes. A flashlight would be a friend, a protector. There is so much splintered glassware. In the morning, before the power returns, you take in the ruins, the way your home, your neighborhood, has been lifted up, shaken, and dropped any which way. You plot ways to get more bottled water if there is enough cash, ...

Migraines – S Marie Watkins

Poetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Migraines by S. Marie Watkins Migraines Split neck th(robbing) to temples and eyes, pain makes ++++++++++its presence kn(own) ++++++++++once I learn what normal could be. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++I wish I’d feel (screwd)rivers +++++++++++++++++++++++++++in homemade lobotomies – frontal lobe ++++s / c r a m / b l e d. ++++++++++Faces melt into s(wirl)ing ++++++++++messes, hiding truths ++++++++++++++in toxic light. Roots from the Mighty ++++++++++++++Migraine +++++++++++++++++pull at my skull, +++++++++++++++++seep th(rough) my vertebrae +++++++++++++++++tie knots around my stomach, +++++++++++++++++(wreck)ing plans +++++++++++++++++and blurring dates – ++++++++++erasing language ...

Three Poems – Jill Michelle

Poetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Three Poems by Jill Michelle When the Orderly Wheels Me Out Afterward there is a family loading up their SUV fumbling with the baby seat as the morning sun winks off the shiny Mylar balloons with their blinding pink hues confetti exploding around the words: Congratulations! It’s a girl! and I can’t swallow the hiccupped sob before the new mother hears turns, smile caught on my balloonless wheelchair watery stare no cart of bouquets to be packed in the backseat no pastel-tissued ...