Tag Archives: magazine

4:20 am

Posted on by

My poem “4:20 am” published in the weekly Avocet – a magazine focusing on nature and all its breathtaking wonder.

Baby Elf

my poem “4:20 am” (attached below) is in the weekly Avocet – issue #262 –
 Avocet link if you’d like to submit writing to this important publication for Mother Earth

 

4:20AM

frost creeps into the holes of my old moccasins

the taffy-stretched shadow of a red sunset maple

reaches across the dark grass

as if she too

desires the moon’s infinite perfection

stars tuck away in their opaque shells

this is autumn’s whisper

 

I peek through my eyelashes

must commit to memory

must etch my soul with rehearsed minutes

before tomorrow’s living

rubs out this wonder

 

4:30AM

I remain frozen in my silent place

knowing the sun will wipe away

the beautiful moon

this pristine silent moment

don’t want to go back inside a walled house

 

wish I could honestly tell you

a love affair with nature

enticed me from my bed

 

at 4:15 AM

my Dachshund needed to pee

baby elf sketch created a few years back with pencil

little red suitcase

Posted on by


new poem “Little Red Suitcase” published in oddball – this very cool magazine
I hope you’ll check it out. I kept a little red suitcase in my childhood bedroom closet for many years-
I was always ready to run away…

little red suitcase

Glasses stretch another piece of writing on the basement desk.
A string of words magnified beneath the resting lenses. All other
sentences, words I’ve written and know as well as the magnified
ones, settle back into the smallness of shadows.

A small red suitcase.
Stashed in my closet for when the ideas in my head can’t take the
body impersonating them any longer. A child and her red suitcase.
Bottom of the closet next to my dog Charlie with the chopped off
ears. He’s curly pink. I cut his ears off so he won’t have to hear

what I do in my head.

My typewriter is turquoise. I remember it that way. Near the desk table,
my fifth and sixth parakeets most likely named Budgie One and Two
because that’s what they were. Maybe bright blue and bright green
parakeets don’t like what they see in their little bird mirror. No room
for suitcases in their orange cage so they just die.

No flying away when the windows are shut
and people are supposed to love you.

Kinder Hours

Posted on by

New flash “KINDER HOURS”  and one of my illustration’s “UNIVERSAL WIZARD” together
Words and art keep each other company during this magical holiday season
Published in an excellent zine, FREELIT

Kinder Hours

Across the bridge where snow meets the sea, I comb my hair while wishing I were a swan.
 His broad hands stroke my delicate neck, gentle and curving on the point of a star.

I wake. Those same comforting hands are strangling me in the emptiness of shadow. Moonlight gives him the power to see my neck breaking, my jugular turning deep violet like the purple bed sheets of his new lover.

There was a time I would have gladly fallen beyond salvation. I’d have welcomed the pain. A tailspin drop to his bed, his mouth, his body. He touched my flesh and treasure books lost their gilded words. Warm gold lines melted into my bones. His shield of dragon horn turned silk upon our pressed bodies. He was magnificent. Those beautiful lips once whispered, “I love you.” 

The simple act of survival taught me to fight back. How many times must I do battle. I’ve grown weary. One weakness bests another. Pain rouses conviction, but I no longer possess the courage to face morning upright.

If my wand held an ounce of magic, I’d demand my mind dismiss its owner of memories. Dreams collect in a thick midnight veil, and waking hours are cloaked in cold light, light we once practiced magic in. A barred owl screeches as it lowers for a kill on the dark flattened tracks. The silver train streaks across the sky, but I’m not in a rail car. Trapped in a place that’s damning me, I will not adjust to the light. The sun is much too bright. It scorches earth and steals water. Charred holes open up into blackness and I watch all the white rabbits disappear. 

In darkness, I might remember the moon in kinder hours. Gentle arms cross my body where we lay together. Gold melts into my skin. His hands caress my neck. I scratch at his eyes then fly away.

Universal Wizard illustration

created with prisma pencil

Sharpies and Coconut Macaroons

Posted on by

honored and thrilled to have a new flash fiction piece, Sharpies and Coconut Macaroons, published in this terrifically absurd magazine
“The Absurdist is a small monthly periodical of absurdist flash fiction and illustrations, printed and distributed in Portland, Oregon and shared digitally around the world.”

Sharpies and Coconut Macaroons

AM Roselli

Nella wants to tie people down. Not everyone. Just those with hair like piles of snow. Their old translucent skin resplendent in odd brown patches and mottled crimson swatches. Nella believes wrinkled skin is cosmically linked. She must bind old people together and connect their age spots with Sharpies to make star maps to God. Old bodies are closer to heaven each day. She has visions.

The giant Moai heads of Easter Island are not empty. No one is empty. Nella feels empty. Her head hurts all the time. She sees invisible stars on wrinkled skin.

The other night while she was walking home from the Quik Mart with a coconut macaroon stuffed in each pocket, an elderly couple strolled by her. They were so close, Nella could smell the accumulated years on their skin. The gentleman held, not his wife’s bony elbow, but a tiny Pomeranian. The hobbling couple were glowing more than the bitty dog’s sequined collar. Twinkling glass shards embedded in the grimy sidewalk dulled to dirt near their worn shuffling shoes.

Nella thought about using her green belt to tie them together but feared her pants would fall down. Besides that, the Pomeranian would likely bite her in the ass. And anyway, she wasn’t armed with a stalwart Sharpie. The Quik Mart worker said they expected a Sharpie shipment sometime tomorrow. Nella was dubious. The young man behind the counter had done nothing but stare at her breasts. She’d forgotten to wear her only bra, blue and decorated with black Sharpie stars.

Not defeated, just delayed, Nella climbed the seven flights to her apartment. She ate her coconut macaroons and danced by herself. She used her long brown hair to dust the floor while dreaming about star maps.

Her head is not empty. It is full of ropes and lights and hammers. Endless headaches reminded her to work when she feels lazy. She needs God’s help.

She swallowed the last bits of coconut then leaned out her apartment window.

Down below, so many old people to tie together. So many chances to find salvation. ♦

the buck moon

Posted on by

I’m so very thrilled that a new poem of mine, the buck moon, was included in this wonderful magazine!
Into the Void, is available in both print and digital form.

“Included in ‘Nine New Lit Mags You Need to Read’ as one of “nine new journals that appeared on the scene within the past couple of years and have already made their mark on the literary landscape” in the November/December 2016 Issue of Poets & Writers.”

the buck moon

there is a moon where newness emerges
from above the forward brow line
 placid black almond eyes
antlers and smooth skin twist
against harder things
strip away velvet underpinnings 

wrap the chilled arms of night air
forest canopy dulling shadow
 dancing silhouettes vague 
 and 
 slippery
vulnerable newness pressed to pounding chests
no light
 forecasting the future
suckle the dark together
escape 

 alone

The Dipping Bread, new flash published in Chicago Literati!

Posted on by

just in time for Halloween
I’m honored to be included in Chicago Literati, with my flash piece, The Dipping Bread
I hope you enjoy reading, as much as I enjoy writing about vampires and their victims 😘

THE DIPPING BREAD

It happens at the Fondue Palace. Near the cheese fountain. Two lovers twirling their fondue forks suggestively. He’s been ignoring his inner voice all evening. “Something is very wrong with your date, John.” The very same voice that hours before implored him to make an escape out the backdoor. Get out before it’s too late. Too late.
Suri’s sultry eyes are vacant things. John can’t gaze into those shining black planets orbiting his date’s face. He turns away from the closeness of her flawless skin. She giggles and flicks her tongue into John’s exposed ear. He laughs nervously. He senses a curious warm spot on his cheek. 

Crimson droplets appear on the dipping bread.

His hand touches his face and traces the warmth down to his neck. The wetness tints his fingertips. He slides his thumb and middle finger together. Then apart. His eyes focus on what he sees. He’s unable to wrestle out the weak cry pinned behind his gum-line. Other unwitting customers continue gleefully stabbing at bread cubes. Drowning baked dough in pots of hot liquified cheese.

No words will leave John’s chained voice. Suri’s fondue fork finds her date’s palm. She guides the two-pronged metal, like a serpent’s fangs, along the meat of John’s hand then sweetly plunges the sharp points into his flesh. She guides his limp fist up to her wine-colored mouth. Her satin skin smells like ancient ice. A burning sensation shoots from John’s brain to his groin. An explosion unlike any erotica he’s ever experienced.

Suri’s slim, powerful hand slides beneath John’s shirt. His sweating back is buckling. She holds him up effortlessly with a polished finger. John clenches his jaw. His uninjured hand reaches around his date’s cool neck. Forceful and swift–he pulls her face to his. He kisses this “woman” in a manner unfamiliar to his own lips. Their mouths sucking like uncontrolled siphons. Lightning between his legs. Shockwaves ripple inside his thigh muscles. Metallic saliva flows back and forth between their twisting tongues. Cold bliss blankets John’s dying instincts.

It’s blood, John. 

It’s blood.

after image, new poem published

Posted on by

new poem, after image, in NowthenMagazine, October Issue, Word Life Section
this is a wonderful magazine, honored to be included in the October issue

after image

when you close your eyes and fall asleep
your mouth changes
your lower lip sets back
like the life holding it in place has let go
can’t help but imagine this is the face whose cheek
I’ll tenderly kiss
when your body ceases

behind this thought comes another
I desperately hold

your beautiful face not defined by age
rather your brilliant smile and eyes
infused with the will of a thousand newborns

AM Roselli

Leftover Sensations, new flash piece published in Free Lit Magazine!

Posted on by

LEFTOVER SENSATIONS

LEFTOVER SENSATIONS

When Luthien woke his skin was the color of flat sand on a starless evening. What the hell happened last night? He sees a sky not quite black. The moon, a shredded toenail hanging on a milky weave. Leftover sensations of tepid glass–thick tumbler, lazy ice.

Last evening he stopped on his way home. Between shots of Jack Daniels, Luthien remembers a powerful mouth. In the small bar–a big woman whose billowing lips could suck the enamel off teeth. What did he do? Did that insane mouth hoover the color from his body? Luthien’s fair skin that goes lobster belly pink on the beach is now dull grey. Was he vacuumed dry? Luthien hopes he’ll wake and find his skin its proper shade. But Luthien you are grey. Too bad.

Nervously he squeezes his eyelids shut. Shelby and her tears. She’d found him and Cassandra porn-style in ‘their’ bed. So what if he and Shelby picked out the duvet with coordinating sheets. The woman in the bar had lips like clamps–tight and hot. Big, deep red wet lips. Did he hear a name from that strange sucking mouth? Martianna, Maliana, Marvianna? A sentence slithers into his ear. A velvet tongue like he’s never tasted in thirty-eight years. Translucent hands pulling his hair so hard his head whacks the bar wall and he doesn’t give a shit. Her surreal mouth, a serpentine force plundering his desperate throat. Did that burgundy wet nurse utter something to his bourboned-out body?

Think Luthien. You almost talked Shelby out of leaving post-Cassandra fuck. The name. It will be important. Take a moment. Go through the minutes after her lips sucked your dick through your throat. Those red lips whispered something.

“When a heart is shattered, its pieces fall to earth. Tears of pain water and grows the blood rose that springs forth the serpent that feeds on the rat.”

The bedroom clock screams. Luthien wakes to the sun’s rays slithering past his silk curtains. His mane of hair, dripping sweat, soaking the grey cotton sheets. Saturday morning. Shelby would have slapped the alarm off then woken him with a tender kiss. 

They used to make love on Saturdays.


Love writing flash fiction, especially monster-themed. I let loose a bit more when invoking character voices. Hope you enjoy, leftover sensations, as much as I enjoyed writing it 😘
As the writing gods sometimes align themselves, my dear, faraway writing friend, DS Levy also in this issue with a masterful short, Pit Viper.
adore this cover art by Aisha Ali!