HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Brutal Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some of our shortlisted contributors the chance to be published on our website.
Keep an eye on our social media for more great writing like this, in the run up to the release of The Brutal Issue…
Speaking in St. Petersburg
Daniel Edward Moore
If what happened keeps saying it didn’t
look to see if the little blonde boy
kneeling as instructed at the end of the pew
beneath the stained glass bleeding lamb
weeping above his head could possibly be a mirror.
His name is Tongue. He knows what to do.
Make sure he’s in a subservient position, interceding
on behalf of perverse minds scanning his body
with flammable eyes. Make sure he never gets cold.
Being fluent in the language of trauma
as touch, trauma as praise of male disappearance,
he’s beckoning something back from inside
where silence had it removed. Ask him
to talk about silence. Ask him to tell you
the name of each scar and how much
darkness they eat at night. He knows not
why the gospel became the presence
of everything lost, why Dali used a
scriptural knife to paint horizontal
the dogma of absence, deep from the
mouth of St. Petersburg. Like gulls
eating bread on the filthy gulf coast,
the lie of some body breaking for him,
made every man thirst for his wine.
DANIEL EDWARD MOORE’S work has been published in journals such as: The Spoon River Poetry Review, Rattle, Columbia Journal, and others. His poems are currently at Mandala, Lullwater Review, Prairie Winds, WA 129 Washington State Anthology, Clackamas Literary Review, New South, Birmingham Arts Journal, District Lit, Street Light Press, Scalawag Magazine and Gyroscope Review. He has poems forthcoming in Tule Review, December Magazine, Natural Bridge, 2 Bridges Review, The Big Windows Review and The Literary Nest. He lives in Washington on Whidbey Island. His recent book, “Confessions Of A Pentecostal Buddhist,” can be found on Amazon. His work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
