#NationalPoetryMonth MiniPack: Yuu Ikeda, Juanita Rey, & Clem Flowers

EDITOR’S NOTE

Although a bit delayed in our start of Mini-Packs we are proud to feature three wonderfully awesome poets to cap off this year’s National Poetry Month! We are so excited to end this exciting month off right with another all-poets mini pack.

Brief, but beautiful imagery! Powerful statements on culture and the self! Work that truly utilizes the limits of its space. These are just a few of the ways to describe the work of our three poets in this issue: Juanita Rey, Yuu Ikeda, & Clem Flowers.

Be sure to read some of the featured poetry and please be on the look out for our upcoming Issue 8 in June!

Sincerely, Asela, Lauren, Eli, Veronica, & J.B.

A SICKNESS

By Juanita Rey That summer, I ate milk fudge, palitos de coco, anything sweet, my reward for staying inside with the old black dog, out of the heat, recovering from pneumonia.

I was seven but my lungs were clear at last.

No coughing, so sneezing, no weight on my chest like my brother’s dumbbell had landed on me.

“Don’t rush it,” my mother said.

So I sat and read with my chair pulled so close to the fan I could feel the blades cut my breath in two.

This way, I did not have to hear the arguments or a vehicle scorch tires on gravel as it sped away and a woman hanging clothes and sobbing.

I spent my time getting over.

But for my parents, there was no cure.

IF

by Yuu Ikeda If this pain stops, I’m willing to decorate a colorful puddle with darkness If this Hell vanishes, I’m willing to be swallowed by an eternal lake of past

JACUZZI FUZZBOX

by Clem Flowers Fireweed hum ravages a humid crayon canyon & by the night it was diamonds & I was whole & bleeding true art

CONTRIBUTORS

Clem Flowers (They/ Them) is a poet & soft spoken southern transplant living in a mountain's shadow in Utah. In an eternal quest to be in an infomercial audience. Nb, bi, and queer as the day is long, they live in a cozy apartment with their wonderful wife & sweet calico kitty. They can be found on Twitter at @clem_flowers

Yuu Ikeda is a Japan based poet. She loves writing, drawing, and reading mystery novels. She writes poetry on her website: https://poetryandcoffeedays.wordpress.com/. Her published poems are “On the Bed” in Nymphs, “Pressure” in Selcouth Station Press, “Dawn” in Poetry and Covid, “The Mirror That I Broke” in vulnerary magazine, and more. Her Twitter and Instagram @yuunnnn77 Juanita Rey is a Dominican poet who has been in this country five years. Her work has been published in Pennsylvania English, Opiate Journal, Petrichor Machine, and Porter Gulch Review.