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Three poems

"Most photos are fabricated moments."
"Most photos are fabricated moments."

A Couch She Loved

  • Now, stacked
  • between packed boxes
  • lining a spare bedroom
  • a couch she loved
  • in a house
  • I was tired of haunting
  • I left because
  • the body recognizes
  • on its own
  • despite denial—
  • how long can you hold your breath
  • and call it living?
  • I left because
  • of night’s strange flesh
  • pressing her against
  • the couch
  • she loved,
  • closing my throat—

Empty Glass

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  • when you fall into a bottle,
  • make sure you are the one
  • doing the swallowing
  • it can be so easy to forget
  • how to breathe
  • keep remembering
  • or your sorrow will not be
  • the thing that drowns you
  • don’t look for answers
  • chances are you didn’t come here
  • to find the right one
  • chances are you prefer darkness
  • to a reflection, but all the walls here
  • are mirrors
  • scrape her name from your tongue
  • replace it with the taste
  • of rock bottom
  • this bottle will never fill the space
  • left by her shade
  • love makes for a menacing hangover
  • when you wake up,
  • take the cracks for what they are
  • a heart with no scars has never truly loved
  • so learn to shatter,
  • gather your ashes
  • & let the past pass through you
  • like sunlight
  • through an empty glass

Candid

  • Most photos are fabricated moments. An imitation of
  • truth, skewed, fish-eyed. In real life, the party stops
  • when someone wants to take a picture. Conversations
  • are paused; attention, diverted. Smiling in the same
  • direction never would have happened, had the
  • lens not asked it of you. When I look through old
  • albums, I try to remember what happened after the
  • shutter-snap. I wonder what changed when someone
  • stopped trying to capture the moment and, instead,
  • let it roam free. The truth is that life, like beauty, does
  • not require a pose. Most of the time, it happens when
  • no one is looking.

Brennan DeFrisco is a poet, writer, spoken word artist & educator from the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s the author of A Heart With No Scars (Nomadic Press) and co-author of Exquisite Duet (Hermeneutic Chaos Press). He’s been a National Poetry Slam finalist, a runner-up for the Drake University Emerging Writer Award and is currently the Grand Slam Champion of the Oakland Poetry Slam. He is a California Poets In The Schools teaching artist, as well as a performance coach for Poetry Out Loud. His work has been published in Words Dance, jmww journal, Gemini and other publications. Brennan enjoys words & the way they move. He loves movies, poker, whiskey, Firefly, and Allie Marini more than you do. He is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Antioch University Los Angeles.

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Two poems by Marvin Bell

“To Dorothy” and “The Self and the Mulberry”
"Most photos are fabricated moments."
"Most photos are fabricated moments."

A Couch She Loved

  • Now, stacked
  • between packed boxes
  • lining a spare bedroom
  • a couch she loved
  • in a house
  • I was tired of haunting
  • I left because
  • the body recognizes
  • on its own
  • despite denial—
  • how long can you hold your breath
  • and call it living?
  • I left because
  • of night’s strange flesh
  • pressing her against
  • the couch
  • she loved,
  • closing my throat—

Empty Glass

Sponsored
Sponsored
  • when you fall into a bottle,
  • make sure you are the one
  • doing the swallowing
  • it can be so easy to forget
  • how to breathe
  • keep remembering
  • or your sorrow will not be
  • the thing that drowns you
  • don’t look for answers
  • chances are you didn’t come here
  • to find the right one
  • chances are you prefer darkness
  • to a reflection, but all the walls here
  • are mirrors
  • scrape her name from your tongue
  • replace it with the taste
  • of rock bottom
  • this bottle will never fill the space
  • left by her shade
  • love makes for a menacing hangover
  • when you wake up,
  • take the cracks for what they are
  • a heart with no scars has never truly loved
  • so learn to shatter,
  • gather your ashes
  • & let the past pass through you
  • like sunlight
  • through an empty glass

Candid

  • Most photos are fabricated moments. An imitation of
  • truth, skewed, fish-eyed. In real life, the party stops
  • when someone wants to take a picture. Conversations
  • are paused; attention, diverted. Smiling in the same
  • direction never would have happened, had the
  • lens not asked it of you. When I look through old
  • albums, I try to remember what happened after the
  • shutter-snap. I wonder what changed when someone
  • stopped trying to capture the moment and, instead,
  • let it roam free. The truth is that life, like beauty, does
  • not require a pose. Most of the time, it happens when
  • no one is looking.

Brennan DeFrisco is a poet, writer, spoken word artist & educator from the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s the author of A Heart With No Scars (Nomadic Press) and co-author of Exquisite Duet (Hermeneutic Chaos Press). He’s been a National Poetry Slam finalist, a runner-up for the Drake University Emerging Writer Award and is currently the Grand Slam Champion of the Oakland Poetry Slam. He is a California Poets In The Schools teaching artist, as well as a performance coach for Poetry Out Loud. His work has been published in Words Dance, jmww journal, Gemini and other publications. Brennan enjoys words & the way they move. He loves movies, poker, whiskey, Firefly, and Allie Marini more than you do. He is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Antioch University Los Angeles.

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The latest copy of the Reader

Please enjoy this clickable Reader flipbook. Linked text and ads are flash-highlighted in blue for your convenience. To enhance your viewing, please open full screen mode by clicking the icon on the far right of the black flipbook toolbar.

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