SURGING TIDE
  • about
    • about
    • masthead
    • join us
  • the latest
    • issue seven
    • archive >
      • issue one
      • issue two
      • issue three
      • issue four
      • issue five
      • issue six
  • submit
  • interviews
  • support us
  • workshops
  • contest

Short Form

Love Letters from a Burning Planet

2/15/2023

0 Comments

 

by MJ Gomez


                                 X
 
A dimpled boy told me what forever means.
 
                                IX
 
His whispers the crumbling
of language
and earth, revealing

                                                                                              the hallway
                                                                                              of mirrors,
the prayer beneath all prayer--
 
                  Stay. Take me by all my selves and show me.
                                    What a miracle it is to be understood.
                  How truth becomes song
                                                                  becomes willful forgetfulness.
 
                  Wind shackled to the throat
until it is time to let go—I send to you a songbird, hellfire
                  at its claws, a name
 
at the border
                  between sound and meaning.
 
                                VIII
 
Singing of light, but not of what follows.
Promises of strong coffee. The promise of forever
 
                  we break daily
 
                  over bread.
 
The truth is every promise has already borne too much of the world to last.
 
                                VII
 
And when they find us, sweetheart,
                                              we’ll be light and only--
 
                                  Light. The shrapnel,
                  ​not the fire it came from. What remains of devotion
 
                                  drips into an hour so beyond us
only the page survives.
                                                                 Crystallized flame
                                  on the bedroom floor.
 
Our hands clasped
in prayer, invoking a god’s name--
 
                                VI


Only we remember.
 
 
                                V
 
Picture the world made anew.
 
                                              The song escaping the burning
                  ​is inside every other song.
 
The lightest touch
                  ​brings out the wrong frequency. The undercurrent
                  condensing spent stardust.
 
Alive, the fire asks its surroundings
                                  how they want to be remembered.
 
                  ​At the lightest touch--
A planet ignites.
 
                                IV
 
A mother sings her only son to sleep. Only their embrace
                  ​                  ​                  ​                  ​  withstands the burning.
 
                                III
 
                                  Hear the glass--
Its shatter--
 
                  ​Singing all we know of always--
 
 
                                II
 
What we haven’t realized: the earth has said all that needs to be said.
 
This time, the earth chooses not to speak against the fire.
 
And we burn in silence.
 
                                ​I
 
When they lifted me to heaven
                  ​all I could think of was what I left behind.
 
The loneliness—called want, called daydream, called
choir—                   
                  ​                  ​         My tailbone an animal
                  ​cradled by an angel in freefall.
 
Holding the memory of sunlight
                  ​                  ​                  ​     folded into clay
until it is so dark
                  ​the body can only remember
through emptiness.
 
                  Even now, there are still parts of me
that have not touched the Sun.
                 
I send to you a flame
like a bullet
                                             repenting.

MJ Gomez is a young writer from the Philippines, currently based in Saudi Arabia. Pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English, they enjoy playing guitar on hot, sleepy days and stargazing through bus windows. Their work is featured in Healthline Zine, the Cloudscent Journal, the Lunar Journal, Lavender Bones Magazine, and others. You can find them on Twitter @bluejayverses!
Back to: Issue Eight
Next: 
0 Comments

Lake Kariba, 2020

2/9/2023

0 Comments

 

by Farai Chaka


​Our vision of summer       was sunken feet       sunlight
moths suspended over black water       mangoes
morning silence       evening prayer       absence of shadows
what we did not know was that a snake slithered on the beach
& died       skin alight with luster stretched like the heaven’s light
we scooped up to our faces and rinsed       in the mornings
we watched naked thighs & confused them for glory       desire
could never be pure like that       like a collage robbed of context
or the way sunsets unfolded all around blood red & unowned
when dusk washed over we felt clean & wanted       & somewhere
someone was dying & tearing & folding       when we gazed
across a flat plain scorched we thought the water was water       that
our bodies were the kind we tamed and understood when we speared
into water our bodies were crooked questions       unanswered
& somewhere       someone watched & did not speak

Farai Chaka is a writer from Harare, Zimbabwe. He is an avid reader who enjoys long walks and horror shows.
Back to: Issue Eight
Next: Aaliyah Daniels 
0 Comments

Elegy for the Nautilus

1/26/2023

0 Comments

 

by Claire Pinkston

I keep             testing
          my limbs against the sea
and coming up                        with the same
 
          hollow body. before I ask          
for anything I cut away a portion
          of my own tongue              sometimes I feel
 
I have grown           so tightly coiled into deference
          my hands have ceased to be my own.
my grandmother tells me        
 
          I am nothing            without a body. at night I cut
my fingers to the quick, smooth
          and edgeless. say                    surrender.
 
when it is dark enough to speak, she tells me of
          a couple who slept            as a man
in blue warmed a bomb
 
          between his hands       at night, I dream
of pressing myself into every crevice
          of her skin               until
 
we glow brighter than the flash.
          once, I held myself by the
wrists and restarted        my heart
 
          with the same clinical
urgency           my mother jumpstarts
          her car. I am training myself              out
 
of viewing the world               in absolutes
          but when I hold the ocean to my ear
only the sound of our destruction
 
          echoes             back.
as the moon opens its mouth on the sea
          as do I,            ask                  
 
when I am gone                      please
          do not let them            section open my
skull, compound the history within to
 
          sequence. when I am gone, I want
to leave behind                          more 
          than     a          body.

Claire Pinkston is a biracial Black youth poet and writer from the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work has previously been recognized at the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and is published or forthcoming in diode poetry journal, Lumiere Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and The Hellebore, among others. She is growing with her poetry.
Back to: Issue Eight
Next: Kara Knickerbocker ​
0 Comments

NOOSE

1/26/2023

0 Comments

 

by Aaliyah C. Daniels


​Picnics were crafted around the suspense of a body
i.e. they were hanging out while the village boys hung him
off a branch, pants ‘round his ankles, tongue swole. Manhood exposed,
breast bare. To be hung is to be celebrated:
begins with a scared white woman and the protection of her virtue --
                          there goes  Smith, Tulsa, Till.
They take the body, force submission of the neighbors:
white families watch a body fall limp and enjoy
deviled eggs the body convulse, lemonade the body scratches for breath, whiskey the body fades plum. There goes the memorial, the itchy hands waiting --
to cut the body down,                         string the body up
bring somebody back home to their mama,
or back home to                      God.

Aaliyah C. Daniels is a teen writer from Hunts Point, The Bronx. She was recently the winner of the first No Tokens Young Poets Prize and published in the No Tokens Journal. Her work has also published in 2020: The Year That Changed America Anthology, Collegian Magazine Fall 2019, the Columbia Journal and the Lucille Clifton Anthology in the 92Y publication. She has been recognized by Victoria Chang, Hanif Abdurraqib, and many more. For two years she has been New York Youth Poet Laureate Ambassador and has performed across the city including the Brooklyn Museum, Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, Adidas, Joe’s Pub, the Apollo stage, the Intrepid, and more. As an activist, she was president of a teen activist organization called A.C.T.I.O.N. that works to dismantle oppression in the South Bronx and was a member of the Youth Justice Board where she worked to pass legislation to protect youth from social media platforms in New York City. ​Daniels is currently attending Kenyon College for the class of 2023 as an English major with an emphasis in Creative Writing and a concentration in Law. Her collection of poems and essays on Black Girlhood will be published by Sunset Press Spring of 2023.
Back to: Issue Eight
Next: 
0 Comments

Even under Close Scrutiny

1/26/2023

0 Comments

 

by Benjamin Rhodes


I've once again wet the inner corner of my thigh
not holding the cup of my STP close enough
against my body. Either it was too far to the left
 
or the amount of liquid inside spilled up over
the lip patented specifically to prevent this,
meant to funnel the piss down and out efficiently,
 
to harbor any excess and make sure your pants
remain the only pair you wear for the day, unless
you're already the type to change more than once,
 
shift your outerwear to match your mood. In Florida
my dad Facetimed his new girlfriend every night
for several hours. I'm shirtless on the beach
 
for the very first time. My pink neckerchief
makes a hat-wearing veteran stop in his tracks,
stare at me walking by and shake his head. Twice
 
across the sand a tortoise crawled to the ocean.
Twice each shell was hand-deposited among
the reeds. Silly thing, back where it belongs.

]Benjamin Anthony Rhodes is a queer and trans poet living in Northeast Ohio. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Kent State University and a BA in English from the University of Louisiana at Monroe. His work can be found in Cleveland Review of Books, LimpWrist, Cowboy Jamboree Magazine, and in the upcoming collection from Madville Publishing, "Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology."
Back to: Issue Eight
Next: 
0 Comments

Constructing the Damage

1/26/2023

0 Comments

 

by Kara Knickerbocker


There is nothing else to say--
It’s true I had wanted my neck wrapped in gold.
Come December, I needed the moon fastened closer

to God, or me stitched to them both. Fate was sure as fishing line,
a beacon of cobwebbed mercy in someone else’s language.
Before we could shake ourselves loose, there were pockets

of highway, our silence shoved into them, tangled metal,
glacier tongue. How many words for bullet do you know?
What about the wonder of a mouth, the sound it makes

when one fires into the back of the other? Look--
I have followed all the threads, tooth & nail, wrote
a dictionary of hurt, and I can’t blame the cracking sky,
​
the flameless fire, for what darkness swallows but the more
I unravel, the closer we are to driving straight into the wound,
the further we become from the only hope of heat.

Kara Knickerbocker is the author of the chapbooks The Shedding Before the Swell (dancing girl press) and Next to Everything that is Breakable (Finishing Line Press). Her poetry and essays have appeared in or are forthcoming from: Poet Lore, HOBART, Levee Magazine, Portland Review, and the anthologies Pennsylvania’s Best Emerging Poets, Crack the Spine, and more. Her work has received support from Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, Murphy Writing at Stockton University, and the Gullkistan Center in Ireland. A Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee originally from Pennsylvania, she currently lives in Hawai'i and is a proud member of the Madwomen in the Attic at Carlow University. Find her online at www.karaknickerbocker.com.
Back to: Issue Eight
Next: 
0 Comments

Ohio Landscape (June 29, 2020)

1/20/2023

0 Comments

 

by Darren Demaree


So rarely does
​the wild animal
touch back
& so rarely
do the police
ask permission
before they position
us on our backs.
We should always
feed the animals.
We never have
​to feed the police

Darren C. Demaree is the author of eighteen poetry collections, most recently “the luxury”, (Glass Lyre, January 2023).  He is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal.  He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry.  He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.
Back to: Issue Eight
Next: Katie Tian
0 Comments

an exploded view

9/26/2022

0 Comments

 

by Patrick Wright

After Cornelia Parker
Picture

Patrick Wright has a poetry collection, Full Sight Of Her, published by Black Spring Press (2020). He has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at the Open University. He is also currently finishing a PhD in Creative Writing, on the ekphrasis of modern and contemporary art, supervised by Jane Yeh and Siobhan Campbell.
Back to: Issue Seven
Next: James Diaz
0 Comments

TWO POEMS

9/26/2022

0 Comments

 

Hurricane Season

by Daniel Liu

Poetry Winner of the Inaugural Surging Tide Summer Contest 
​Selected by I. S. Jones
I apologize too much for small things, but I feel sorry too little. 
On Saturdays, I ignore my dad calling about toilet paper or batteries. I am not 
a good son. Most of the time I drive like a thunderstorm cradling 
a baby, which is why my grandmother is almost blind. She reminds me that 
the rain is angrier here in America but everyone thinks she is deaf. 
She grips her jade bangle when the lightning recounts all her Buddhist 
traditions for her.    Little dipper, can I hold you closer to my ribcage. 
Can I rattle you back and forth until I am a mother too, the light 
surrendering to the gaps between my fingers. I am so surprised by
the size of wild animals, and when she grabbed the shovel and 
crushed the garden snake under an iron diamond, I knew my apology 
before I knew my want. I am so still I end up alone. 
Even the horses know my fear. I feel so sorry for myself that the 
water droplets release too soon, and I am left with just the floodpath.

THRIFTING

by Daniel Liu

Picture
Picture
Picture

Daniel Liu is an American writer. The author of COMRADE (fifth wheel press 2022), his work appears in The Adroit Journal and Diode. He has received awards from the Pulitzer Center, YoungArts, the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, Columbia College Chicago, Bennington College, the Adroit Prizes for Poetry and Prose, and others. You can find his work at daniel-liu.carrd.co

Back to: Issue Seven
Next: Chiwenite Onyekwelu
0 Comments

EDEN

9/26/2022

0 Comments

 

by Chiwenite Onyekwelu

Poetry Runner-Up of the Inaugural Surging Tide Summer Contest
Selected by I.S. Jones
​Every circle begins from a dot. 
          I watched  
my niece accumulate: foetus  
          before the  
bulge before the soft curl of  
          baby hairs.  
Where I’m from femininity comes
          with instructions.  
You’re born & you learn to  
          shrivel,  
be a girl with enough drawers in
          the mouth  
to shelve her tongue: Unlike those
          women you  
read about, the human animal in
          them wide-eyed  
& neighing aloud. Unlike Eve. But
          everyone I’ve  
known has at one point desired a
          bite from the  
forbidden fruit. It’s a human thing
          to reach a  
wall & think only of an opening, or
          wreck. At fifteen,  
my niece DMs sometimes, & we
          stay up late  
chiselling new holes: Yes, you can
          be whatever 
you want. Yes, a woman can work
          in any field.  
Yes, you’re smart of course. Yes,
          you’re beautiful. Yes, 
don’t let him gaslight you again. She
          knows I mean  
it when I say, let’s go grab the fruit &
          unlike Adam,  
I would not blame her for it. I’m
          learning that the 
human life is first the size of a poppy
          seed, before 
accumulation. I say accumulation, &
          think about 
growth. I say growth & think about
          Hawa or Eve— 
the ferocity of a body in starvation. In
          her the first  
human animals awakening, screeching,
          reaching for 
the one door that could lead them out.

Chiwenite Onyekwelu, 22, is a poet and essayist. His poetry appears in Adroit Journal, Chestnut Review, America Magazine, Lolwe, Gutter Magazine, Rough Cut, and elsewhere. In 2022, he was a runner-up for the Foley Poetry Prize, a finalist for the Gregory Djanikian Scholars in Poetry, and was most recently shortlisted for the Spectrum Poetry Contest. He won the 2020 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, and serves as Chief Editor at the School of Pharmacy Agulu, where he’s an undergraduate.
Back to: Issue Seven
Next: Nikki Ummel
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Stay in the loop! Subscribe to our newsletter to be the first to hear about open calls, submission tips, and more.

Subscribe to Newsletter
© 2022 Surging Tide Magazine
  • about
    • about
    • masthead
    • join us
  • the latest
    • issue seven
    • archive >
      • issue one
      • issue two
      • issue three
      • issue four
      • issue five
      • issue six
  • submit
  • interviews
  • support us
  • workshops
  • contest