Querencia Autumn 2023

By Perkovich

Querencia Press's Autumn 2023 anthology features 58 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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Querencia Press, LLC
• Release date: Oct 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798330264186

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

Book preview

Querencia

Autumn 2023

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 73 2

www.querenciapress.com

First Published in 2023

Querencia Press, LLC

Chicago IL

Printed & Bound in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Poetry

The sewing machine – Dorothy Lune

Wedding – Dorothy Lune

Sick sad world – Dorothy Lune

Veil Walker – Alexa Brockamp Hoggatt

Smoke – Marshall Bood

No Longer a Maiden, Not Yet a Crone – Caitlin Downs

I Request a Natural Burial – Caitlin Downs

Inheritance – Caitlin Downs

Non-Binary – Caitlin Downs

Mauvaise Femme – Caitlin Downs

Lexicons – Shannon Vare Christine

MUBBLE FUBBLES    /n. English/melancholic state – Shannon Vare Christine

ORGONE              /n. English/aura/chi/lifeblood – Shannon Vare Christine

RAASKIA           /v. Finnish/dare, courage to act – Shannon Vare Christine

A Midwinter Day’s Dream – Anushri Nanavati

Bird Music – Anushri Nanavati

you won’t vote yourself out of this – c. michael kinsella

When Grief Moved In – Amata

in quale porcia ferendo la coscia – nat raum

sunrise beach – nat raum

nag’s head – nat raum

Untitled – Mykyta Ryzhykh

DECEMBER 26 – James J. Siegel

Shadows – Brittany McCauley

Bleedings – Ivan de Monbrison

Before Perseus – Alison Lubar

one in front of the other – Alison Lubar

Dimming Triptych for REDACTED – Alison Lubar

Dominoes – Sandrine Letellier

one of a kind – tommy wyatt

how to pray and mean it / how to just say no to dissociating / how to move on – tommy wyatt

baby’s first horror (they’re just too young edition) – tommy wyatt

ben drowned (analog) – tommy wyatt

Early Sorrow or Fight, Flight, Freeze – Joyce Hayden

Inverted Elegy – Joyce Hayden

Did Emily Dickinson Ever Consider Suicide? – Joyce Hayden

Inheritance – Jessica June Cato

The tall tree with shaking leaves – Lynda Chouiten

Blue House Tour – John White

Alligator – John White

O.A. – Kara Quinn

The Unknown, Remembered Gate – KB Ballentine

Archeological Disclosure – Kim Malinowski

Are our hearts displayed in Snow White’s coffin of glass? – Kim Malinowski

Enough Shooting Stars for Eternity? – Kim Malinowski

Our Song Rings – Ariya Bandy

Ghosts of Grass – Ariya Bandy

One Minute Per Second – Ariya Bandy

How to Want Less – Jo Angela Edwins

when clouds and balloon animals become one – Janna Lopez

Balaneion – Delilah Dennett

Shunyata – Delilah Dennett

What Your Mother Never Told You When She Painted Your Toenails – Sally McClellan

Vida Loca – Sally McClellan

In My Country – Sally McClellan

Ruined – Sally McClellan

Unworthy – Zuha Zubair

stuck in expanse – Arlo Arctia

El viejito and the cows – Fabio Chee Madrigal

The old woman y el queso – Fabio Chee Madrigal

Smoke Break at the Nuthouse – Dan Flore III

Running and Walking With Girls – Dan Flore III

Welcome Aboard (the destination isn’t new, only different) – Cailey Tin

what hall of dreams light up with – Cailey Tin

Sunset Haiku Poem – Brenda Kay Ledford

MY CHERNOBYL WINDOW – Paul Truther

fire fire fire – Octavio De La Cruz

my plants hang from the ceiling – Octavio De La Cruz

up – Octavio De La Cruz

how often do you listen to jazz? – Octavio De La Cruz

Evolution – Kathryn Diamond

Of Trees And Ancestors – Alexandra Voicu

Strawberry Fever – Kiara Nicole Letcher

Lift the shirt over your head, Let the roses fall out – Kiara Nicole Letcher

Years of the Snake – Kiara Nicole Letcher

Untitled – Gina Bowen

Omens – Gina Bowen

Fiction

Belonging – Antonia Rachel Ward

A Watcher – Ric Stott

Warrior Candle – Hannah Saal

Plus ça Change, Plus C'est la Même Chose – Jordan Nishkian

Eve – Daniel Schulz

Heaven in her head – Irina Tall

Don't give back what you've been through – Irina Tall

Visitors – Mel Piper

GLOAMING – Tina Klimas

The Angel and the Storm – Daniel Barrios

Non-Fiction

Concealed – Angela Townsend

A Late Awakening – Sydney Lea

Black Licorice – Monique Quintana

Love in Five Drawbridges – Limi Marie Bauer

Will Abortion Kill the Filibuster—Only Dead Men Can Tell – Amy Bobeda

Souvenirs – Amata

The Steps to Attaining the Best Indian Ginger Tea – Nitya Budamagunta

Coming Out to You While Playing Minecraft – Nitya Budamagunta

The Good Boy – Coe Colette

The Mysteries of Dia Van-Burdick – Dia VanGunten

Dreams – Claire A. Jones

About the Contributors

Poetry

The sewing machine – Dorothy Lune(she/her)

A hook

A hypocritical curve

A copper grin of your grandma

A deceiving bait

Jiggles of rubber

Gauge the dunce, gauge the mime—

I am not the hole

Defective & sinks on its own accord—

You're between yourself like a mushy strawberry

Under the needle of the sewing machine

It taunts you with a hum like your grandma's

When she sewed a hook on a human hem

Or tried on something new—

Each infant a stepping stone to almost reach

The pond of blood head first

One coat counts as skin.

Wedding – Dorothy Lune(she/her)

Hear women scream be careful, I know how to spill the wine

/ my red glove was once caught in the act at a wedding. The

chairs were plastic yet withstood hydrofluoric acid—I

witness love & it witnesses me, marriage / swing / adjust.

Wedding as a print of a swan's torso—daughter of

leglessness. Entitled to loneliness, I know how to recite

divorce rates, my parents never married, I know how to sip

rain. The wine spills like kissing in public / the shade of my

glove / the glimpse of leglessness—like watching swans. A

cuff of rain—daughter of the dam, I know how to spill the

wine.

Sick sad world – Dorothy Lune(she/her)

New girl

doesn't make friends

like Quinn—esteemers make friends

/ like crumbs happen to sit / on the same acre of glaze

marble shore /—if it came to it, dad would pick this sick

sad world over a better one. I may be sentenced to life long

methposting on Facebook like my father, / or

running for office. I'm a special kiddo in Lawndale High,

in a mindless family system / upon systems /—

perhaps adults should know better than me. My

mother loves this sick sad world / cherishing

something she hasn't personally encountered,

like one droplet of that crimson

in the center of a clear pebble.

Veil Walker – Alexa Brockamp Hoggatt(she/her)

Yes, you can come in. I think I’ve seen you before, in my dreams.

I think I’ve known you once, twice upon a lifetime.

Do you know my ghost? He’s the one who haunts the forest.

I only say he’s mine because he told me so. Ghosts aren’t something you can claim without permission. He walks between the trees and calls for me and sometimes I find him there, but most days we wake and walk in different worlds, though I feel for his in my sleep because it isn’t right that he should know something without me when we have always only known each other.

The veil is so heavy some days.

I could bang my fists against its edges and hear nothing from the other side.

This world can feel so far away from the others. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like the fog leads anywhere at all, but I still think if I walk into it, I’ll emerge somewhere far away, deep green and

heavy with magic.

I am still learning about this world I live in.

I once thought it was full of myths and stories, but every day I find another reason to believe that the only myth is the story I told myself about why I need these walls to protect me when I could

make myself the fiercest part of the night.

I would walk it, then, unhindered. I would walk right to your tree and lay down in the moss. The night would turn from blue to black, and the coyotes would pad by, and the trees would whisper night secrets, and somewhere between the trees you would walk the darkness, and together we would be the fiercest and gentlest part of the night.

Can’t you see it? Just the gentlest haunting.

Smoke – Marshall Bood(he/him)

I fell down

to my knees

and pointed

to a spot

on the sidewalk

as the police

passed by

The night before

I had a wake

with a candle

burning on the floor

I continued to a pay phone

and tried to explain

the murder

and all the afterlife dreams

up in smoke

No Longer a Maiden, Not Yet a Crone – Caitlin Downs(she/they)

There’s a body in a field

with flowers in the eyes of yesterday.

I unapologetically bare the body

remade as a temple of branches

from the mire and moss.

I invite all of the frogs to

croak in worship, alongside

the strangely whirring choir

of the seventeen year cicadas.

The last time they surfaced

our love was a fatuous

teenage distraction.

Like the cicadas, we are reborn

on different cycles after all.

The buried thing left behind by you,

long ago unflowered, was a woman

still young but too old to ignore

the cruelty that grew in you

like dark and twisting briar

choking out any greener growth.

I Request a Natural Burial – Caitlin Downs(she/they)

Bury me with half a peach

resting just beneath

where my ribs and spine

meet soft flesh.

Two spliced wombs

decaying together,

a pit ripe with possibility—

that one day a hungry

sprouted limb

may split the lid

of my pine box

to reach ecstatically

for sunlight

would be the absolute

bliss of unbeing.

I should probably

draft an actual will.

Inheritance – Caitlin Downs(she/they)

The cells of the damned

carry holes eaten

into human fabric

by the moths of

traumatic inheritances.

Empty vaults

have broken links

waiting to be filled

with endless replications.

There is an echo

in this internal chamber

absent any ammunition

to fight off replications.

It is loaded instead

with abundant heartbeats

aimed at the absence

trailing the deceased.

Non-Binary – Caitlin Downs(she/they)

Do you remember, cousin,

conversing about the witch hairs

on our chins? Not at home in myself,

the compound word to describe me

didn’t exist when I first needed it,

and it sure as hell couldn’t account for

the state of errant body hair.

Instead, I grasped weakly at the idea

of being a person first and only,

or romanticized the prospect of

becoming disembodied consciousness.

To no longer be tethered

to anatomy determined identity

(or an animate skeleton covered in

networks of blood running through stacks

of meat and sinew and keratin

bound together by skin)

was an attractive prospect.

The puberty we were living through

promised physical distinctions

forever marking a body femme.

I wasn’t ready for the cramps

and the scars and the sex

expected of me.

Mauvaise Femme – Caitlin Downs(she/they)

I’ve never been good at sisterhood.

Is that because I rejected womanhood?

Have no interest in motherhood?

I can say this much for myself—

my response to the overturning

of Roe v. Wade was to menstruate—

to make sure my birth control worked

and my uterus remained barren.

I live a partial life in knowing

that by some backward social logic,

all of the responsibility for maintaining

a childless lifestyle is on me; yet,

my ability to take responsibility

for what happens to my body

can be stripped away

if I accidentally conceive.

Removable rights, rescinded autonomy

over my personhood—all clear inequality

based on biology and absent

of freedom of choice.

Lexicons – Shannon Vare Christine(she/her)

INTRADUZÍVEL     /adj. Portuguese/untranslatable

his S-shaped                  

self morphs /    

Z / F / D / C / L? / D? /    

Snellen / Line 11 /

she hardly remembers / his lowercase days / lispy vowels / misunderstood meanings / sing-song rhymes /daily riddles

he became / cannot be translated / a non-fluent language / hard consonants /  misplaced punctuation / labyrinthine diction / bussin’ not busted / sheesh! having a comeback /  no one wants a pick-me girl / to be cheugy /  IYKYK IDK IRL / sksksksksksksksssss

How much / single words weigh /

pink / speckled / joy / unearthed / lost /

Parisian market / locket / preserved artifact / cupped hollow / winged / grave /

yellowed /paper / curled

crumpled / Crayola 64 /

she sweep dusts / dresser finds /

/ his six-year-old-squiggled ladybug sketch /

Coccinellids contain / seven joys / seven sorrows

close eyes five / ​     seconds longer /     ​hold on

/ elytra lift / gossamer unfolds /

MUBBLE FUBBLES    /n. English/melancholic state – Shannon Vare Christine(she/her)

While folding wash ​organizing the stacks ​lights darks               under outer

Sorting neatly ​ ​ready to be homed ​stray sock               dingy drawers

Netflix streams play ​her one-sided companions these               black-and-white days.

Unlimited hours ​more than twenty-four ​once-craved               quiet suffocates.

Shake lonely black ​cut-off top free from

static clingy concert ​tees and singled socks.

Switch loads wet ​to dry, basket

to fold, line hung wet ​ ​to dry,

basket to fold, load load. ​ ​Kids’ clothes-strangers              visitors from their               new life.            

Van’s psychedelic ​mushroom tee.

Wrinkle-washed fifty ​stuck to jeans.

Red lace thong. ​ ​Calvin boxer briefs.

No more ​ ​Wonder Woman ​No more              grass-stained Toy

Story ​mud puddle-caked ​rag ready.

Memory avalanches ​she should have hid ​count to ten again!               again! Find me!

Regret rocks cascade ​sad-slides suffocate. ​She is a breathless               chores robot.

Laundry cairns guide ​could have listened

to one more story, more games, more fun

more more always more, blocks her