New Poetry by Renwick Berchild

Love Doodle

In the evening she sketches me.
Throws down the lines of my body, shadows my contours,
builds my eyelids and knees. 

With looping rounds she mounds my breasts,
scoops my stomach, scratches
my scars in groups of three.

Twisting strokes, she mashes my hair,
presses my lips beneath my long nose, chases
down my back, molds my shoulders.

My feet she massages into being,
my head she mounts, my tongue she inserts,
she places each weathered finger on my stumps delicately. 

She flips the pages, and now
we are rolling, swimming nude and colliding,
rising out of a bed, beaching ourselves onto the moors.

The moors, she drew them.
And the moonlight she painted, and my gasps
she wrote in ink. 

Our love, printed on pages,
a charcoal colored heart rendered in the shape 
of birch leaves. 


- Renwick Berchild 2018

Renwick Berchild is an emerging poet. Her poems have appeared in Vita Brevis, The Stray Branch, The Machinery India, Lunaris Review, The Blue Nib, Slink Chunk Press, Streetcake Mag and other e-zines, anthologies, and journals. She was born and raised on the angry northern shores of Lake Superior, and now lives in a micro-apartment in Seattle, WA. You can find her work and additional links at RenwickBerchild.com. 

New Poetry by Nadia Wolnisty

I Can't Wait for  a Lifetime of Vanilla Sex with You

Orchids are as delicate
as the testicles they are named after,
and I have murdered dozens.
Orchids, I mean.

The one I bought at a grocery store
and gave to you to say I'm sorry
blooms more every year. You said
you thought you killed it
by caring too much, but
it came back more verdant
last spring.

You spend your days
in a cubical, getting pastier,
but I think in another life,
you harvested vanilla.

Listen, vanilla grows
on orchids and blossoms
for a few days only each year.
Hundreds of years ago, a slave
engineered manual pollination
without the use of bees.

Farmers must watch closely
because there's a twelve hour window
to get it right. One hand is to open
the rostellum, another for the stigma.

I am a private person, in my own way,
and you more so. I'll just say this:
the things you can accomplish in your own
body with a patient help.

The farmers call this cultivation.
I call it making love.


- Nadia Wolnisty 2018

Nadia Wolnisty is the submissions editor of ThimbleLitMag.com. Her work has appeared in Spry, Apogee, Anti-Heroin Chic, *Isaucoustic, McNeese Review, Paper & Ink, and others. She has chapbooks from Cringe-Worthy Poetry Collective and from Finishing Line Press and a full-length from Spartan. Her third chapbook is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.

New Poetry by James Diaz

From Shadows to Star Lines

then there's the ark i never had the wherewithal to build for you
and the rain that almost took us under
and the dark we lived in for so many years
it was underneath our fingernails 
and knotted in our hair
we were dripping with it

then there's the fact of you
the feel of you, all your broken weight
your coming through the longest tunnel 
in such a daze, oh, not one single board 
could have kept us afloat then

but now, why not now
are we done fighting the old us
the terrible us
can we be beautiful and in pain
isn't there a life in that, 
all that didn't kill us but tried so very hard
and in the end fucking failed, like we did
and will again and again,

then there's the fact that we don't know what to do with each other
with ourselves, the fact that we bleed longer than most
hit harder, ride farther, fight fuck and fall deeper 
than is survivable 

then there's the fact that I love you
love you love you love you
but cannot heal you

there's the fact that you already are and just don't know it yet

Oh what terribly true things we have to learn from the dark
how to dance as if our feet were our heart, our heat
our listening little wisdom tooth fierce and wanting 
and living it the only way we know how. Broken down. Hard. Intact. 


- James Diaz 2018

James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger ( Indolent Books, 2018) and founding Editor of the Literary Arts & Music mag Anti-Heroin Chic. His work can be found in Occulum, Bone & Ink Press, Moonchild Magazine and Philosophical Idiot. He lives in upstate New York.   

New Poetry by Abigail George

The red-sparrow instinct of the phoenix

(For the Dutch poet Joop Bersee)

    The wild can be savage. Forgive me.
    Forgive me. It is my lack of memory.
    The night. The night. Ghosts falling
    From the attic of my soul. Your mouth.
    Your eyes. You’re near and that is all
    That matters. Linger. Linger. Frame
    The depths of your heart. Sacrifice your
    Heart in your twenties. Give up those
    Ghosts but only if you want to. Only
    If you dare. Look at this verse. Read
    This and weep or laugh because this
    Is cupid-country. I only knew of liberty
    When you left you see. There was no
Other way to print the face of God on the grass that
    Just grows and birds that just fly away. A woman
    Loved is changed. I’m in the deep end
    Of the swimming pool again. A mermaid
    Numb to the bone with desire and winter-
    Mischief. I’m a hungry and thirsty traveler
    With my head in the kingdom of clouds.
    A tangled mermaid. Half-fish. Half-bone.

    Half-flesh not tasting of smoke or plume.
    I have few excellent friends that I write to.
It is the writing that is the great unknown. The song.
    The pizza is cold but I eat it anyway.
    Even depressed I would pray. Meditate.
    Sit in silence for hours on end in my
    Bedroom, and the wound would become
    A spell. The hospital bed would become
The source of that spell. I was sad then happy
    Then sad again but all this time I could
    Still write. I wrote for my Father who art
    In heaven and my biological father. I
    Wrote for my brother, and his son. My
    Mother and my sister. Your poetry is
    Made of concrete though. You’re priest,
    And curator. Prophet and husband. Father
    And poet. You’re brilliant with words, Joop
Bersee. I’m writing this for you. To you. Eating this
    Cold pizza was as depressing as the day.
    Near the city of Johannesburg there’s a
    Darkness there that’s the friend of sinners.


- Abigail George 2018

Abigail's book, "All About My Mother", is available for free download from Ovi Magazine's online bookstore.