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    Querencia Spring 2023
    Querencia Spring 2023
    Querencia Spring 2023
    Ebook226 pages2 hours

    Querencia Spring 2023

    By Emily Perkovich

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    About this ebook

    Querencia Press's Spring 2023 anthology features 52 contributors of Poetry, Fiction, & Non-fiction work. Themes of the collection vary widely and the editor would like to include content warnings for self-harm, addiction, grief, domestic violence, religious trauma, sexual trauma, gender dysphoria and politics, as well as some blood and body

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherQuerencia Press, LLC
    Release dateApr 12, 2023
    ISBN9798330253630
    Querencia Spring 2023
    Author

    Emily Perkovich

    Emily Perkovich is from the Chicago-land area. She is the Editor in Chief of Querencia Press and on the Women in Leadership Advisory Board with Valparaiso University. Her work strives to erase the stigma surrounding trauma victims and their responses. She is a Best of the Net nominee, a SAFTA scholarship recipient, and is previously published with Harness Magazine, Rogue Agent, Coffin Bell Journal, and Awakenings among others. She is the author of the poetry collections Godshots Wanted: Apply Within (Sunday Mornings at the River), The Number 12 Looks Just Like You (Finishing Line Press), Manipulate Me, Babe-I Trust You (GutSlut Press), & baby, sweetheart, honey (Alien Buddha Press) as well as the novella Swallow. You can find more of her work on IG @undermeyou

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      Book preview

      Querencia Spring 2023 - Emily Perkovich

      Querencia

      Spring 2023

      A picture containing logo Description automatically generated

      Querencia Press, LLC

      Chicago Illinois

      QUERENCIA PRESS

      © Copyright 2023

      All Rights Reserved

      No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

      No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the author.

      Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

      ISBN

      978 1 959118 50 3

      www.querenciapress.com

      First Published in 2023

      Querencia Press, LLC

      Chicago IL

      Printed & Bound in the United States of America

      CONTENTS

      Poetry

      Tightening – Steve Denehan

      Bottled Messages & Skimmed Answers – Milie Galindo

      New Desolation Row: Shooting Characters in a Barrel – Milie Galindo

      Joker in the Deck – Milie Galindo

      Hooking Up with Your High School Boyfriend in Your Thirties – Amanda Brown

      Sweetheart, I’m in Minneapolis – Amanda Brown

      Embrace, Egon Schiele (1917) – Abby McKee

      Cathedral: – Abby McKee

      I still can’t talk about what happened – Naoimh Rogers

      A Slight Ache – Naoimh Rogers

      This poem is shaped like a cock – Naoimh Rogers

      Birthday Poem – Kelsey Landhuis

      Baraboo – Kelsey Landhuis

      holograms in the buttermilk – Amanda Bennett

      black is a place we carry – Amanda Bennett

      This Heat is for Feeling – Amanda Bennett

      rest is the part in the waterfall – Amanda Bennett

      Besides Kim Kardashian – Emily Manzer

      Swampland Blues – Emily Manzer

      Imagine a California – Emily Manzer

      Milk Tea – Emily Manzer

      Skipping School – Ann Kammerer

      Three Years After – Ann Kammerer

      Behind Me – Ann Kammerer

      Acknowledgement: Anatomy – Sari Richards

      An exercise in how far i could go [and have you meet me there] – Sari Richards

      Re-Association – Sari Richards

      This is a story – Lucas Kurmis

      Lucas isn't like us – Lucas Kurmis

      A lifetime in 200 words or less – Kristina Percy

      Woman – Audrey Timmins

      (April 18th, 2020) – Luke Young

      Tease – Luke Young

      Crow Corpse – Luke Young

      Rejuvenation – Daniel Moreschi

      Sorry I missed you – Kelly Cutchin

      An Exercise in Self-Containment – Kelly Cutchin

      Parthenogenesis – Kelly Cutchin

      Reaching – Marshall Bood

      Numbers – Marshall Bood

      Spirits Leaving – Marshall Bood

      Eulogy on the Edge of a Forest After Midnight – Sara Doty

      American Meadows – Sara Doty

      (2) – M. Hutman

      Spring Cleaning – Jess Gregory

      The Lily – Jess Gregory

      Shrubs – Leonie Anderson

      Changes – Leonie Anderson

      Liminitive Transition – Sam Indigo Lydia Sword Fern Parker

      FA – Sam Indigo Lydia Sword Fern Parker

      I am a collection – Sam Indigo Lydia Sword Fern Parker

      Beyond Infinity – Ixy

      Repellent – Ixy

      surf over sunflower swells – Anastasia Helena Fenald

      what embers tell their daughters – Anastasia Helena Fenald

      girl scout badge: survival – Anastasia Helena Fenald

      A Total Schenectady of the Heart. – Andrew Daugherty

      Flowers – Luis Lopez-Maldonado

      Run-On-Sentence – Luis Lopez-Maldonado

      Glue Me Up – Luis Lopez-Maldonado

      Post-Trauma – Luis Lopez-Maldonado

      Brown Lawns, OC Califas – Luis Lopez-Maldonado

      Rivercide – Zoe Copeland

      A Reckoning – Olivia Snowdrop

      Play House – Olivia Snowdrop

      Teen Queen Tram Dream – Olivia Snowdrop

      Kayaks in Spring Heat – Olivia Snowdrop

      I Am – Liz Yew

      the wreckage – Dani De Luca

      Take(n) Back – Dani De Luca

      After My Son Tells Me Mean People Are Just People Who Suffer Too Big – Dani De Luca

      The Blood of Our Trees – Dani De Luca

      Fridge Magnets – Elaine Westnott-O’Brien

      Interrogations on Sunday Morning – Bruce Robinson

      It’s The Sediment That Counts – Bruce Robinson

      Orion Shoots First – Jane Palmer

      That Night at the Bar by the Sea – Jane Palmer

      The Yard Sale – Jane Palmer

      Lonely Together – Jane Palmer

      Instructions for Repairing the Broken – Jane Palmer

      Mussel – Christian Ward

      Gifted – Christian Ward

      Shark at the shore – Jo Bahdo

      A PALM TREE MOVED OVER THE HOUSE

      on thanksgiving before the holiday/ a lovesong for Blatty – david diaz

      Fiction

      ME FT. YOUR HAND – Hasrat Chawla

      Nanang – Cathleen Balid

      Ghosts. – Janna Lopez

      The Good Euf – D.M. Rice

      Tiresias Speaks – D.M. Rice

      My Body is My Own Canvas – Carella Keil

      If There’s a Ledge to Hang From – Eliza Marley

      Willow – Jacek Wilkos

      Adobo Heart – Georgie Morvis

      Halloween, 2000 – Charlotte Ella Rosenblum

      The Juliettes – Charlotte Ella Rosenblum

      Non-Fiction

      Geometric Proof: The Immigrant’s Edition – Karen Gonzalez-Videla

      32 – Glendalee Diaz

      Walking the River Path – Emily Levang

      Rage, Ignorance, Love – Sydney Lea

      The Secret I Keep from My Mother – Francesca Leader

      What No One Told Me About Glitter – Lauren Emily Whalen

      About the Contributors

      Poetry

      Tightening – Steve Denehan(he/him)

      It arrives

      unwanted

      all teeth and shadow

      tiny, tiny castanet claws

      to push against your skin

      from the inside

      scaley coils to tighten

      around your spine

      to lattice your ribcage

      to pull you tight

      into yourself

      so that

      you appear

      by degrees

      to disappear

      it arrives

      unwanted

      and no amount of symphonies or birdsong or laughter or cut grass or good food or bad jokes or kind eyes or sherbet fountains or snail trails or cat purrs or thunderstorms or Christmases or coffee or trampoline jumping or writing or vapour trails or smiles across the car park or childhood memories or snow angels or magic tricks or singing or love or love or love

      no amount of anything

      can stop it

      Bottled Messages & Skimmed Answers – Milie Galindo (she/her)

      1)      Spin the Bottle

      By the Liffey’s bed,

      expats / strays / were brought together by a condensation-inducing breath of happenstance.

      Happenstance & a handful of cloves. Mistaken for clover.

      Heineken-green luck serenaded them from neon lights

      as they clandestinely sipped at it               the two of them the only 2 players 

      of a 3-persons spin-the-bottle game         fizzy on a molecular level

      They roamed / strolled / climbed. 

      tacking each other onto the city                 pinning innuendos to antlers

      staring down the glass bottle     down to the arch         shaking it like a snowglobe

      Barmbrack season came with half of the neon gone.

      Not consumed / Gone / Running out.

      Yet glaring. Yet sirenning from the south side of O’Connell bridge.

      Soon after, Grafton Street’s lights chimed in, ringing the last sips. 

      Ginger powder stung their eyes and nutmeg tied their gingerly purring tongues

      all pent up hop & barley & Georgian stateliness & Darts in the night as they indulged separately

      Their pulverised cinnamon was wiped away with the cloves & the crumbs from their last meal. 

      And, with the cymbal clink of broken glass, they parted, 

      by the Liffey and its untouched bed.

      Still, they say the neon hasn’t fizzled out. 

      2)      Autocomplete Foam-filled Phantoms & a Magic-8-Ball

      On Guinness nights—wry, warm, coy, calcified, phallic & straight up randy.

      When the modalities of sleep are riding the hamster-wheel gram.

      When the pelican’s beak beats your beady brow.

      When your sheets are caught in the froth of interloping street lights.

      Focus on the shallow pool of memories/fantasies gathering on your right temple:

      Floral prints were watered with that pool. Bare thrills & chills were washed in it. 

      And that’s why insomnia now plays pool in your mind. With a magic-8-ball. And sheds black feathers all over your bed.

      You sit up and start flipping bottle caps. Heads: she loves me. Tails: she doesn’t. 

      There’s wool over your eyes. And it’s not the sleeping kind.

      Skim the top. Chug it with the wee small hours.

      New Desolation Row: Shooting Characters in a Barrel – Milie Galindo (she/her)

      It’s a malted March morning. Sheldon crosses despite the amber light.

      He goes, knock knock knock on Penny’s door.

      A white tank top on a barrel-chested man fills the aperture.

      It’s Tony, with his chipped tooth and man-slaughtering hands.

      Sheldon, baffled, balks at the sight of the grinning Italian bear. 

      Frightened out of his wits, Shelly mumbles clammy interrogations as he trots away from the much amused wiseguy.

      High above the roofs of the swanky suburb, bloodied cotton balls merge into an hemorrhaging bale.

      Skies are wounded from New Jersey to Henan via Westphalia.

      It’s all sliding bare-assed down hill from here.

      At least Alec Baldwin weighs less in crushed carrots.

      Curators will soon pass down the wisdom of his impressions.

      On a grimmer note, only a counter shot away, Gavroche plays fifa with one hand.

      Cause Kaboom goes Law & Order. Spare the rod, spoil the club.

      Napoléon has a one-track-mind, and we all know solidarity isn’t his favourite ditty.

      Paracetamol isn’t enough to stop the fever, floods and fires.

      Oceans and seas foam at the mouth. Want a mint, dear?

      Oily insomnia on balsamic nights.

      Even a teabag trail doesn’t lead to REM land.

      In the lobby, a baked Phoebe performs Smelly Cat for a skittish Shelly.

      Until he finally conks out.

      With the morning comes neither sun nor chicken, but soap.

      Loneliness loiters, even in packed masked streets.

      Covid and Batman are tied in iterations.

      Yawns wind and unwind, buffeting the coiling paint.

      The forces of the Starry Night are spayed. Only Heavy Circles are left.

      You know it’s bleak when even Rory’s ivy curls gather no moss.

      Postcards are plucked from the wilderness, and potted.

      We’re tracing next week from the template of the week before last.

      Penny is belting out Journey’s greatest hits,

      she doesn’t hear Sheldon’s purelled & gloved knocks.

      When we see ourselves in the mirror, we either see

      a dented smile

      Or complacent blings.

      Yes, Meadow did park,

      but it’s a barrel’s snotty nose that peaks through the door.

      ***

      Joker in the Deck – Milie Galindo (she/her)

      The king of Spades is high on crystals.

      *

      He started out with a winning hand and a laurel wreath.

      His crib effortlessly grew. Stunting growth itself.

      Through life he bore the clank of his name as a bargaining chip on his shoulder.

      *

      Now, his elbows bend with a clink.

      Now, he’s a silver fox with Sterling clubs and a crumpled ace of hearts. 

      The Queen of Hearts reaches higher than glass.

      *

      She rose through the ranks. Moving sideways. The only way for her to move upward. 

      Ideas bulging with testosterone splayed across her path. Some were even hurled at her. But she ducked, her flip in place, cause she’s never been one to flip out.

      Honed elbows tripped on her creative savvy. Hordes of limping knights have learnt not to underestimate her.

      *

      She’s a Queen in a Knight’s suit. Kings better keep up cause she’ll turn them loose.

      The Jack of Clubs has reached his stride

      *

      He was a smarmy square with a personality that came in bulk. 

      He was kettle-headed and entitled. Expecting the ladder to fold at his feet.

      He floundered daily in foul mediocrity, grasping at plastic straws. 

      What he did know was; he was just tinfoil for the King of Spades.

      He hauled his chipped ego across Manhattan.

      Until he finally took a dip into the mainland.

      *

      He learnt to look to his full house for comfort, not the office.

      The King of Hearts is no longer sitting astride the bottle.

      *

      He was a broken tumbler.

      Secrets trickled down his Chevy mouth. 

      His life was

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