“Late” and “King of Quiet”

by Ethan Sparks

Late

Where once 

opened and welcome

smoke tilted towards

her neck, 

now adrift,

her neck

pale and raw

hints at clean 

and settled patchouli.

His lying

is getting to me.

King of Quiet

Down the street

Where king and quiet meet

Belt loose and

Warm echo on stale 

Milk carton flies

August inner ear

And buzzing

A perfect heat and 

Handprint recedes

From spilled red

Beneath table

And warm bed

I’ll stroke your missing hair

The flap of scalp 

The love leaking from you.

Ethan Sparks is a graduate of UCSD's MFA program in Creative Writing. He also holds a Masters in Teaching from USC. His work has been featured in the Allegheny Review and the Birds in Shorts City series. He has taught writing at UCSD and currently teaches High School English in Phoenix, Arizona, where he also runs the LGBTQ and Newspaper clubs.

“it needs more light”

by Linda M. Crate

i used to laugh loud and talk loud

until i was mocked for it,

now i have sewn myself into softness

and silence and people tell me that

i am too quiet;

no matter what you do or who you are

there's someone that's going to be unhappy

so you may as well be yourself—

because there's no freedom in restraining

who you are for the happiness of others,

and if they truly loved you they would care

more about your happiness than their 

personal preferences;

one day i hope that i can get my voice back

even if i never can i know that i can write

these words with the hopes that i can help 

people who suffered like me in a world that

will be cruel to you and then ask why you don't

love yourself? in a world that will be cruel to 

you and then ask why you're not smiling?

in a world where they want you to be just

another prototype, dare to be yourself;

the world doesn't need more shadows—it needs more light.

Linda M. Crate's poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has ten published chapbooks: A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press, September 2017),  splintered with terror (Scars Publications, January 2018), More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, March 2019), the samurai (Yellow Arrowing Publishing, October 2020), Follow the Black Raven (Alien Buddha Publishing, July 2021), Unleashing the Archers (Guerilla Genesis Press, August 2021), and Hecate's Child (Alien Buddha Publishing, November 2021) and three micro-chapbooks Heaven Instead (Origami Poems Project, May 2018), moon mother (Origami Poems Project, March 2020), and & so I believe (Origami Poems Project, April 2021). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books, June 2018).

“Sonora Bound” and “Ghosts”

By Liz Pino Sparks

Sonora Bound

We fled in a heatwave 
eucalyptus ablaze
in the rear view.
Saints and angels just
memories like in our
olfactories. They say 
we are immune 
to our own bacteria 
and I think maybe 
the charm of faith has
worn off. There is
sickness here and
we try in desperation 
to stave it off, grow
new life in healthy 
air, where desert 
promises buds in
the harshest conditions, 
and we take that to 
mean hope instead of
death and, stilly, we 
wait 
for sunrise.  

Ghosts

When I think of 
Kyle Rittenhouse, I think of 
Sarah Winchester. I think of every boy
called into battle and how all battles
are of the mind. I think of how we tell
these boys that murder 
is noble
within the bounds of
unexamined motives, without
a history that makes sense
of their anger, within 
a nation 
indivisible 
from self-justified 
violence, that seizes land
and lives,
that believes property 
to be both in need of protection 
and also
in existence at all. I think of every ancestor
who will rise up, demand proximity 
for time eternal 
to the conductors 
of their demise. I think of how fleeting 
a life is 
compared with the years of a 
deeply-earned haunting. I think of
how it is not so much a question 
of whether the dead can talk
but that they must. 
They must.

Liz Pino Sparks is a legal scholar, teaching in the areas of Bioethics and Health Law, with particular foci on reproductive justice and human rights, as well as a singer-songwriter under the name Liz Capra. They are currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) at SDSU. Liz is a Mami to 5.

an introduction

welcome to boats against the current poetry magazine! we’re so glad you’re here. we’re an online poetry magazine dedicated to bringing poets from all backgrounds and all stages of their writing careers together. for now, we are only publishing poems online. we hope to begin working on our first print edition once we have a consistent amount of submissions. check out our blog for more information about who we are and what we’re doing!