Dear Larry, by Kiley Roach

Dear Larry,

The day I learned your name was the day

I execrated the female body. Her palms acclimated to

being bound up with contorted knuckles and tape, only softened

by springboards and white chalk. How long is a doctor’s

appointment supposed to last? An hour, a life

sentence? The length of a drone strike? Your eyes keyed

into her ribcage, her mouthcage, her thighcage, her soul.

“Dismount” is to leave an apparatus

at the end of a routine; usually done with a difficult twist

or salto; to take a mechanism to pieces. It was you

who stained her first maxi pad, drew the copper

blood of a girl who still believed that a gold medal could pay

for what you stole. You kinked her tightly wound coiffure into

elflock, you offered no comb, you never fixed

what you broke. Dead is the pity

poised in the judge’s eyes, a landing

unstuck. One hundred and seventy-five

years will never unburn the soles of her feet.

Goliath was a woman, a force unchallenged by

sword or stone until God (a man) sent David (a man)

to throw rocks (a phallus) at her mighty stature – a spectacle

for kings (all men) to revel. You found a chink

in her armor, you reminded me that no woman can ever be

too careful, too covered, too poised or too pure.

Dear Larry, you taught me how to lust after

vengeance rather than justice. You taught me that

Some sentences never deserve the peace

of being finished

Kiley Roach is a Drake University undergraduate Honors student studying Political Science and English Theory and Criticism. She has been studying the art of reading and writing poetry under the direction of Kyle McCord, 5-times published author and Co-Executive Editor of Gold Wake Press, for two consecutive semesters. She hopes to eventually pursue a career in higher education administration but enjoys writing about women, sexuality, and politics in her spare time. This is her first time having her work publicized.

Apologies by Abbey Murphy

You don’t owe me an apology
for the restless school nights
the tossing and turning
while little arms wrapped around my neck
and suffocated me.
They crawled and crowded into my bed
drifted to sleep. It was another night
spent waiting for you.

Don’t feel like you need to explain
rationalize, justify
every bottle against the crumbling plaster,
and the hairline fractures crawling up the walls.
The glass was beautiful as it rained down,
glittering and coarse against soft skin.
Your words were cinder blocks on my head,
So I begged for broken glass instead.

I could never be resentful,
of the loads and loads and loads
of laundry I washed.
Folded myself into towels and socks
and drowned in Great Value Detergent.
Hours spent at the scoured kitchen table,
Monitoring grades and report cards
Doing everyone’s homework but my own
with only Hamburger Helper to assist me.

(Some days, it was too much-
I wished they would disappear
just slip away
as silently and easily as you did.
I guess on those days we both wanted the same thing.)

I loved them, and hated you,
and despised myself
for every moment I tried to fill.
I bet you never realized how
the responsibilities of being a parent
could wash out everything else about you.
I’m as drained as the dirty dishwater
from cleaning their dishes again.

Please, don’t apologize

all the nights you staggered into bed
at four a.m.
and I staggered out
to hold your head over frigid porcelain
and brush the hair off your sweaty forehead.
It was easier to strip you,
scrub away the cloying smell of sin
and gin on your skin.
Good thing I was so good at handling dirty laundry.

You never remembered enough to regret.
An empty house, full of empty pantries
empty bellies
empty hands.
Those kids were starving,
but I was inadequate to fill the space.
But you don’t owe me an apology.

Abbey Elizabeth Murphy is an English and Sociology double-major at Drake University, is the Treasurer of the campus English fraternity Sigma Tau Delta, and is the incoming president of the Grant Writing Corps. Published in three other literature magazines, she realized that submitting her most recent work to AGORA would be a new and exciting opportunity. She enjoys writing poetry and short stories and reading science fiction novels and comics in her free time. After having spent a semester abroad, she realized her love of traveling and studying new languages, and much of her recent work focuses on the experiences she had with other cultures.

Dear Heroes by Abbey Murphy

I feel safest behind the cold stone;
There is comfort in thick doors and empty halls.
Please don’t rescue me,
I’ve only been locked away
from hungry gazes
and glinting mirrors.

The Queen can leave me here,
Free from rotting atop her throne.
I’ve had enough of the steel at my back
Scraping down each vertebra bone
Spine shivering, jaw clenched,
as I anticipate the blow.

In this cage, my body isn’t withering.
Here I can linger in all the rooms,
and dig my toes into the carpeted floors.
The whispers of slithering
Down the winding corridors
Aren’t as daunting as those
Of golden heels on marble
Stalking towards my bedroom door.

Tails don’t lash out unexpectedly,
Pinning me to walls, trapping me.
The dragon doesn’t force me
To lick the venom from an unhinged jaw
Gather it in the back of my throat
Burning until I’m forced to spit it back out.

How do you never spot
The fangs stretching her smile?
They always give her a slight lisp;
Her eyes aren’t yellow from the firelight.
Your too busy looking for the monster,
That I’ve already found.

Abbey Elizabeth Murphy is an English and Sociology double-major at Drake University, is the Treasurer of the campus English fraternity Sigma Tau Delta, and is the incoming president of the Grant Writing Corps. Published in three other literature magazines, she realized that submitting her most recent work to AGORA would be a new and exciting opportunity. She enjoys writing poetry and short stories and reading science fiction novels and comics in her free time. After having spent a semester abroad, she realized her love of traveling and studying new languages, and much of her recent work focuses on the experiences she had with other cultures.

Elegy for Full Caskets by Matthew Musacchio

when i am to die, because there is no if in the matter,

whether it be two days or two hundred years,

may it be on this ground or out in technicolor stars

like bars on the rhythm of this mortal coil

where i am to return to the earth or the sky

or to whatever god has hold of the chain

around my neck giving me such

terrible mercies as to break it

snap it.

when i am to die, do not bury me in this sweet mother

the soft dark soil that is the bosom of Gaia proper,

improper to profane such beauty, such grace,

think of each and every lover we leave behind,

dont make them fall on our caskets

reaching once more tugging at our necks;

think of the pain a eulogy would bring

no, i wont do it i wont knowingly do it

so if you read in newsprint memoria

“they were loved and remembered, service at-“

fuck that, know that i wouldn’t want to lie

sallow in dark suit pinned by carnation and

why couldn’t they at least be roses

rising and falling on wailing chests

please, i beg,

If one person sees me in that suit

surrounded by pine, opining that i

left too young

it wasn’t my design

know that i wanted my heart strings plucked

placed in an urn

and wrapped in the velvet of this poem

Your Flowers Sound Beautiful by Matthew Musacchio

Your roses always sounded the most beautiful. The string accompaniments of the sleepily strumming marigolds. Your planted orchestra played a symphony I never could. You were always better with your hands, dear. With the spotted lily dosing in the corner and your warm sighs, what more can I ask for?

Remember that time I tried to ape your art?

The roses I wrote down came across a gross lilac. You laughed. Of course, you would. It wasn’t my skill. Like a writer trying to garden, or a gardener trying to compose, or a composer trying to write.

So, instead of trying to replicate or imitate, I give you this.

Keep your auburn hair up. Smile with trowel in hand.

There is nothing you can say. You were really never good with words.

Instead, you choose to open your mouth, so wide magnolias threaten to spill out. You made the air a garden, glittering dust of amber rays.

My father always used to ask what I saw in you.

What happened to that boy down the road, he asks, what made you settle for the quiet one.

I could never put it into words.

But now, you. Framed in the strings of the rosy sun, I know exactly why.

I taste the drum beats of this coffee, turn back to you, and smile.

You once asked me what your voice was like to me. Colors come to mind when one speaks. Not always, but most times. The reds and blues and golds of the human voice. Your sister sounded like a quiet opera. The booming voice of my father produces the void between thunder cracks.

And here I am, basking in your botanical glow. An author wordless, what good is that?

 

I once heard a story from my father, back when I was a young boy, still afraid of thunder. The wife and her fisherman.

Every day he went out to sea. And every day she would draw.

He absolutely loved seeing her work. And with every completed piece, he would take them and place them in his loft, with his tools and his with his tackle. One day while looking for more canvas, she walked in on his loft.

My God, she cried out. Not a single painting was hung up. The walls were wood and bare.

So, after finishing her next piece, in the tiniest rowboat, she followed him out to sea. And what did she see? She saw him, ever so gently, slip the painting into the ocean. The gall! So, when they returned home, she confronted him.

My dear, he said, remember how I said to bury me at sea.

For that art I wish to be with forever.

What do you remind me of?

What does the sound of fireworks evoke? How do the waves that crash against the ocean smell? And what in God’s name do you do to that garden to make it sounds like that?

It’s like trying to ask what you feel when conducting. How the passion burns sweetly from every pore in your rosy cheeks.

You’d be speechless, a silence so loud even the daisies flinch.

There are many things I could say.

I could say that you sound like Dawn’s pale fingers across the sky. The long shadows of a fall sunset. A weary traveler coming home at last.

But I won’t.

I never was very good with words.

Instead, I give you the advice that every flower gave me. They whispered full bloom into my ear and wrapped me in thorns that refused to cut.

They told me to build a garden that loves you back.

I hope you will be interred within its earth, with paper trees covered in blossoming word. Trees around a rosewater pond that you or I or we may call our own.

And eventually, you’d place me in my pine box inside its gates with every marigold and rose and magnolia you ever spoke.

My dear, remember I said bury me with you?

For that art I wish to be with forever.

Hugh Hefner Laid to Rest Next to Marilyn Monroe in Private Ceremony by Kate Gorden

“I’m a believer in things symbolic,” he said. “Spending eternity next to Marilyn is too sweet to pass up.”

Many admirers of the late celebrity gathered

to pay respect to a sexual icon, a man

of such prestige and prowess to shame

Zeus. Ravenous.

A few flecks of white blemish the pure

blue sky, but there is no threat of

rain – he would not want any of the funeral guests

to weep for him, and so the sky complies.

 

Today, Hefner merges in eternity alongside

the blonde that never became a rabbit. The Helen

about whom thousands of magazines were printed.

Her face is the muse of many, her body

the model of countless fantasy. Her mind a broken

cog in the otherwise ideal product.

Her voice a painting of the Madonna.

Her soul the lord of the abyss

he did not foresee.

 

They join together in their stone wedding

bed, pomegranate seeds strewn

across the sheets that drove her

into the depths of damnation. Seeds fed to her

in life by her new bedmate and leagues of others.

Poison hidden behind sweet devotion. She swallowed

them whole, naked. Just how they wanted her.

Just how he liked her. Silent.

She complied because she had no voice.

 

In the kingdom of the dead,

Marilyn speaks.

And as Hugh enters Hades, he does not

enjoy Persephone’s fate.

She makes sure of it…

 

Rather, that is what I tell myself.