Photo by Lois Nantais
Uproar invites writers of all genres to submit their works written in consideration of our monthly theme. Once per month the moderators will select the best submissions and publish them here. See “About Us” for submission criteria. We are limiting the number of times we will publish work by the same writer to three per
Here in February’s grey I bleed away, Red run into the snow. So many years from home I, here, a fugitive A captive too. The home I had gone away This one not mine, not quite. The whisky jack mocks me The “caw caw” and my soul crawls Into the frozen ground. I will die
MY SWAMP TIME I was barely surviving in Louisiana, unpleasantly and unsuited, a land as shifty, unstable, as a drunken father, where no frog, no gator, ever took a vow of silence on a long hot night, where I couldn’t step outside my door without some critter gnawing on my flesh, and all in the
A Descriptive Linguistics of Isolation Verbs of motion will be the first to go—well, not go which has long gone the way of disappearing into idiom. No, we will lose the careful ones: disembark, sojourn, trek, take leave. Perhaps, even, arrive. There will come a day when we will believe all movement is rooted into
though he had known every quantity of life: its short repose, its indefinite strike; though he had knowledge of the indifferent span of evening and daylight and the repetitious metaphysic of sound and fury; though life had been every superstitious quality of sensate being, he, with indifference, collected the manifold days into folded gestures and
Three sounds I love, stepping out my door: The patter of oncoming rain The splash of a refilled creek The hushed howl of sweeping winds. Perhaps I should have made my place Somewhere near the Pacific And all its rugged glory; But I’d miss the downy waves of green. The tall eucalyptus and pines Rustle
Exodus bound Senegambia down rivers of dignity leaking From Fouta Djallon out of Banjul’s mouth sailing listing creaking Culture history music art left in the scupper’s wash Bodies delivered with flaming heart all history the cost Commerce of thralls conscripted fed on diets of fear Future beyond unscripted and anywhere but here
Writing the Road to Hana It’s open season for wild boar, the driver says, pointing out the truck half-hidden in underbrush. No one’s in sight but he assures its rusty bed will drip with blood before mid-morning sun. For hours I’ve photographed ocean-pounded cliffs, forests of bamboo, twin waterfalls; jotted down impressions of impressions I
“African Insomnia” by Mark Blickley I’m tired and I hate the daylight. This strange sun reflecting off the white djellabas irritates me. It lights up a city of men tugging at their genitals, smiling toothless smiles. It shows dogs and children, bones pressing against skin, begging for relief. The sun releases the warm smell of
“Do you wanna go?”, Yevgeny enthusiastically asked. He didn’t have to specify where and she didn’t need to ask. He had asked her many times before. “Not now”, Yael responded in one of her various ways that wasn’t quite a yes, yet preserved hope by never being a definitive no. This wasn’t a technique of
Moonlight With Tom Thomson Tom Thomson winked as Marla tucked a daisy into the open paint-box on his lap. She did a double-take and stepped back. There was a discordant crash behind them, and Marla flinched and looked over her shoulder. Her family was banging on the rainbow-painted piano in the middle of the patio
I Love a City That Will Never Love Me Back The desert stopped crying long ago. She placed her tears in a prickly pear and gave me a champagne mirage where palm trees forget to grow. Where sweat drenches daylight and neon sucks the soul from night. Where drunken marriages flow as freely as fingers
Tears of abandonment in the eyes of a faithful companion my past has been part of someone else’s future; Ripening into a sailing stone inscribing long tracks without any physical intervention giving birth to geological phenomenonal types of rocks; Being the kind of man that is never poor, aiming for the shade and prescribed hugging!
I cut up my ribs, neat and tidy. He bites into his, smearing barbecue sauce across his mouth. He’s always been the impulsive one and I the more careful. I wonder if he ever burned himself. I know I have. My heart aches as I watch, almost as much as I do with longing. If
On the (not so) Merry-Go-Round Dawn’s wake-up call a constant replay caught on a carousel, a March hare carnival, a nightmare because there’s no safety out there. Longing for days before a new normal ripped memory, slashed from olden days of childhood, turned a sunny life into a three-ring scramble for $ with roaming unmasked
I haunt myself with fragments embodying wonders of roads not taken not able to witness where they could have led aside from tracings in my eye gone once focused on in the pale blue din of thoughts intersecting with cross-sections of self here yet not really anywhere of consequence. Who would I be without you?
Sideways Talk I watched the sunlight slowly depart the room. Magically sucked from the room through a closed window. Darkness. Another day marked off. I was neither happy nor sad; mostly bored. They told me not to worry; they will take good care of you; you won’t be there long. The door to my room
I shut my eyes to brush through my memories for warmth and sunny beaches as a pair of red, shiny slippers shelters my feet. As the slippers clack, clack, clack, I wishfully whisper: “there’s no place like home; there’s no place like home; there’s no place like home.” But that won’t get me all the
Elegy To My Breastmilk Your milk will come once You birth Your baby. Prepare accordingly. Your baby needs to be cut from your womb – Prepare. Your nipples are large. Your baby is small. Your milk will come if you pump enough. Come breastmilk, come Make me Mother. My first Mother’s Milk – Golden Milk
Daddy, oh (for Lawrence Ferlinghetti) If your father is messing-inaction you look round for replacement but that’s your secret even you don’t know. Dad: a beaten conundrum, flaking goldfish that forsook water in favour of booze. Son – not reflective moon – alters course, makes tracks in deep space or sea, learning to navigate, searching
In the Grip of Dementia teased by crumbs of recognition like the maple tree on third and main she wends her way to the Legion Hall only to discover the building has been pulled out by the roots, a yellow taped cavity warns “keep out” she sulks back through the salient houses each turn a
We barely finish dinner of cauliflower and chickpea coconut curry, when you suggest we dash to the beach. The sky, like a southwestern painting of burnt orange and turquoise is obstructed by the stately maple tree in our back yard. Donning my fall jacket for the first time this year, I welcome the brisk, blustery
Farm Workers’ Quarters pre-dawn colours, crêpe sky. daybreak unfurls, edges out sleep. empty thermos, chai on the propane stove, jars of spices, crude shelves, a bucket of flour next to the mattress on the floor. a rope across this one-room life sagging with drying clothes, dignity. through thin walls, rustle of others in rooms next
Denver Juvenile Hall 1974 The cabin is in Big Sur. Tucked in the woods. After a long day of hiking and a hot shower it’s so warm and cozy to sit around and drink hot chocolate by the fireplace. There’s no TV in the Big Sur cabins but who needs TV when you got a
Call For Submissions: Uproar is looking for submissions related to the theme “Anywhere But Here.” You can interpret this theme as you choose, be it travel pieces, places you would like to go, a change of scenery, a different state of mind or situation. We are looking for high quality poetry, prose, spoken word, and
