Category Archives: poem

How I Became an Angry Woman is Now Available

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How I Became an Angry WomanAccents is proud to announce our newest chapbook, How I Became an Angry Woman, by Bianca Bargo.

In How I Became an Angry Woman, Bianca Bargo autopsies a doomed love in razor-edged imagery “boiling with lava and venom.” Here we have a man who has “eaten girls’ hearts like valentine candy’ and a woman who has “too many nightmares / of your old lover; / her Fingers, dirty / with knowing you first.” These are volcanic poems that ultimately understand how love—like the truth—is rarely pure and never simple.

—Sarah Freligh

How I Became an Angry Woman

I was born honey-tongued
and eager, a soft thing
looking for legs
to coil around.

Over and over
I opened my mouth
to men in whispers,
kisses, confessions,
prayers to false gods.

I never asked to be this
pale demon with grit teeth.

I just woke up
one morning in her
scorching skin and

blinked against the burn
of new light until I understood
it was my own eyes
full of fire.

Bianca BargoBianca Bargo was born to a loving family in Knox County, Kentucky. She earned her B.A. in English from the University of Kentucky, where she discovered and honed her poetic voice, winning UK’s Farquhar Poetry Award and serving as Managing Editor of Limestone: A Journal of Art and Literature in 2009. From 2010-2014 as she spent her time working in retail and public education and obtaining her MA.Ed. from Eastern Kentucky University, Bianca continued to write and enjoy poetry with the inspiration and support of Lexington’s poetry scene. Her work has been published in Accents Publishing’sBigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems. She currently resides in Lexington, Kentucky with her husband Micah and their pets. She has yet to Figure everything out, but continues to work on it while trusting kindness and curiosity to lead the way.

“Dead Center” by Dan Nowak

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rp_of_a_bed_frame_cover-194x300.jpg

We drink down Nebraska
in giant starry cups. The dirt
falls down our throats, past
our primes. Belt buckles ring
like liberty bells. The center
of the country, the spine of a
book, for every verso a recto.

There is a North Star dividing
lane running through I-80.
Runaway deer and raccoons
start up punk rock constellations;
they sing their bodies eclectic.
It is our job to clean the club
after the show, pick up stragglers.

There is something left behind
in all of us. Everyday becomes
an improper fraction, top-heavy
without tipping. We pray to
Newton to let us fall soon.
We steal the sun, the compass
rose, everything along the zipper.

Our pants sag under the weight
of this state. Muscles, like an out-
line, can no longer carry us.
Our skeletons envy the road kill,
envy the ease of oncoming traffic.
We welcome the pavement, the
folding neatly along our spines.

–Dan Nowak,
Of a Bed Frame
Accents Publishing

Dan NowakDan Nowak’s first book, Recycle Suburbia, won the 2007 Quercus Review Poetry Series Award. He also has a chapbook, Burning the Arson Dictionary: Poems for Thomas McGrath published by RockSaw Press. Dan is co-founder and co-editor ofImaginary Friend Press and an editor for New Sins Press. Dan lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and enjoys that Lakefront Brewery is less than a mile from his home.

“Addition to a Poem” by Marin Bodakov

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The Season of Delicate Hunger

In addition to the two pink feet
sketching death’s greedy beak,

upon peering at the original, one discovers
the hand of Icarus.

Sore comb for the labyrinth of waves,
five fingers grasping the absurd support of water;
a detail not subject to reproduction.

Then four fingers.
Then three.

–Marin Bodakov,
translated from the Bulgarian
by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
The Season of Delicate Hunger:
Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry
(Accents Publishing)

Marin Bodakov was born on April 28th, 1971 in Veliko Tarnovo. He holds a degree in Bulgarian philology from St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. He teaches at St. Kliment Ohridski University, and since 2000, he has managed the literary department of Kultura newspaper. He and his wife, translator Zornitsa Hristova founded Tochitsa—an independent press for children’s educational literature. Marin is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Naïve Art (2011), for which he received the Ivan Nikolov National Literary Award.

“On Dr. Berman’s Thoughts*” by Nana Lampton

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Bloom on a Split Board

Out of the woodpile filling the sink-hole
grows the ubiquitous Heaven Tree,
draping bloom over a split board.
It cannot see itself, wound by a grapevine.

Two cedars flank the walking gate –
the male a shallower green
than the female with juniper berries.

I know this is the entry to the field,
into the forest of my destiny,
but the trees by the gate do not.

The ordering eye returns to me
images of barn and cow.
Without observation,
the river would flow above
its banks into space.

Space – the waves of possibility –
doesn’t know its sky name.
The eye takes advantage of what it wants,
puts into place sky above river.

–Nana Lampton,
Bloom on a Split Board
Accents Publishing

Nana LamptonNana Lampton earned a BA in English literature at Wellesley, and an MA at the University of Virginia, and she attended programs at the Harvard Business School. In 2004, she received an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. Nana has also studied drawing and painting at the Corcoran School of Art and the Louisville Visual Art Association. Nana’s other publications include the books Snowy Owl Gathers in Her Trove, and Moon with the Sun in Her Eye. Her art and poetry have been exhibited at the Chapman Friedman Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Northwoods Gallery in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin, among others.

* Dr. Robert Berman, astronomer, author of Biocentrism, believes that the conscious eye orders energy.

“Re: Snow” by Yordan Efftimov

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The Season of Delicate Hunger

Today I’m thinking of only one thing:
a picnic in the snow.
I was going to say “picnic in the light,”
even wrote “picnic in the lig,”
but stopped in time.
It’s so nice when
you think you’ve stopped in time.
And the next moment
the back of your car is rammed
by some ass who couldn’t.

-Yordan Efftimov,
translated from the Bulgarian
by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
The Season of Delicate Hunger
(Accents Publishing)

Yordan EfftimovYordan Efftimov was born on January 23rd, 1971 in Razgrad. He holds a Ph.D. in Bulgarian literature from St. Kliment Ohridski University. He teaches theory of literature in New Bulgarian University in Sofia. Yordan has worked as an editor and columnist, and has hosted radio and television literary programs. He is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently The Heart is Not a Creator (2013), along with five monographs and two textbooks on modern and ancient literature. He lives and works in Sofia.

“Werewolf” by Bianca Spriggs

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SwallowtailsI’m either a werewolf or I’m crazy, but I’m not boring
– Anonymous Graffiti, Ohio University

At the climax of a lunar cycle,
a poem stirs,
dark tempest in my chest.

It cracks my ribs to get out.

Aroused, the poem is
certain it smells blood,
grows teeth and hunkers over
paper like meat.

The poem flees my fingers,
desperate to hold it,
and snaps at shadows
cast like dice by the moon.

I do not bother arming myself
with anything plated in silver.

Once it runs loose,
there is no accounting
for every howl and bite.

There is no accounting
for every person it will turn.

-Bianca Spriggs,
How Swallowtails Become Dragons
(Accents Publishing)

Bianca SpriggsAffrilachian Poet and Cave Canem Fellow Bianca Spriggs is a freelance instructor of composition, literature, and creative writing. She holds degrees fromTransylvania University and the University of Wisconsin. She is a Kentucky Humanities Council Lecturer and the creator and programmer of the Wild Women of Poetry Slam (formerly the Gypsy Poetry Slam) featured annually at theKentucky Women Writers Conference. Heralded as “the new standard bearer for the Affrilachian Poets” by founding member Frank X Walker, Bianca is the author of Kaffir Lily (Wind Publications) and her work may also be found in the anthologies New Growth: Recent Kentucky Writings and America! What’s My Name? and the journals Union Station Magazine, Appalachian Heritage Magazine, and others.

“Molecular Therapy” by Bobby Steve Baker

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Numbered Bones

My therapist settles
metapatiently and swivels
back and forth,
waiting for change.
If I talk she doesn’t have to think.

Metamorphosis starts at
her stilettos.
One is planted on the rug,
the other rests high on her knee.
Lime green panties
are visible in her compound eyes,
reflected from my own.

She does not recognize
she is pupating in her black silk
dress and pearl necklace.
Soon all to be
sloughed.

When the pause has been
unprofessionally long,
like my gaze,
she chirps about
that New Yorker cartoon.
I can understand her garbled
clicks and clacks by channeling
Gregor’s sister.

I know the one.
This upscale thirty-something therapist
says to the patient, “Why don’t you
try going out and buying lots of stuff.”

Silly rabbit.
I do that all the time.
Like late last night,
I rode these large, smooth multi-function blenders
in high-tech stores
all over town.

I straddle-grip them tight
between my legs
and fly over the whole
appliance section, recliner-rockers,
and auto parts. Pitch and roll and blade speed
are step-wise varied
to probe vibrational epi-dymnamics.

The goal is to engage
the Larmor precessional frequency
of my atomic essence.
Spin like a top, tilt
side to side
at will and always return upright.

Gain control of hydrogen polarity,
subatomic harmony,
and moods will be a snap.

Blender after blender failed.
“Have you ever had that kind of disappointment
at other times,” the lime green
scaly milk snake hissed,
hoping to snare me in a disconcerting insight.

–Bobby Steve Baker,
Numbered Bones
Accents Publishing

Bobby Steve BakerBobby Steve Baker was born in Ontario, Canada in 1951, but has lived and practiced cosmetic surgery in Lexington, Kentucky for many years. He holds an MFA degree in Poetry from National University and has published in various literary journals, including Ann Arbor Review, Boston Literary Magazine, and Grey Sparrow Journal. In 2009, his poetry in tinfoildresses was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Bobby grew up in a home where poetry was ever-present but began to write seriously only in the past few years.

“End of Summer” by Sherry Chandler

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Bluster and blue sky,
gust-driven locust
leaves like drops of sun,
an oak lit neon green,
its limbs that sway in
their dance with the wind,
my rheumatic hip,
its ache as I skip
and limp in the cold.

-Sherry Chandler,
Bigger Then They Appear
(Accents Publishing)

Sherry Chandler’s first full-length collection of poetry, Weaving a New Eden (Wind Publications), has recently been released by Wind Publications.