The Distance of Funeral

by Matt Gillick

The Distance of Funeral

A silent film actor died a few days ago. The mourning service played a slide show of still images from his filmography at the wake. Balancing a beach ball, balancing a cane on his nose, that was his shtick. An open casket showed a body wearing 3-D glasses on a bloated face. A self-aware bit from his standup residence of trying to keep up with the times. He…

New on #LSPMAG: Anna Kapunga "Waiting for Death" #nationalpoetrymonth

by Anna Kapunga

Waiting for Death

Smell the flesh in the vents Blue sky through the grid laced windows I cannot bear the tears The date no-one tells Do not know what day it is The sun rises Time I do not see Never had vacations Reason to myself, my situation speaks A language that is my own, changeless Next cell, joy lives The crazy dog at night who giggles No letters on Monday mornings In the…

New poetry on #LSPMAG by Jaime Faulkner, "A Poor Idea of Pillow Talk"

by Jaime Faulkner

A Poor Idea of Pillow Talk

I ask him what I should do with his body should he become a vegetable, brain dead, hooked up to clicking machines my imagination fleshes out too quickly. He exhales and laughs a little, Jesus, Jaime, but I insist—should I let them take his skin, his spleen and eyes? Even in hypotheticals I don’t want to confront that ambulance abundance, the death by…

[Cool Girls Read] National Poetry Month 2018 - We hope you fell in love with a poet this month!

On the last day of National Poetry Month, we wanted to share with you some recent editor-tested, LSP-approved poetry finds. We hope you fell in love with a poet this month!

Shauna Barbosa – Cape Verdean Blues

The country of Cape Verde is a tiny chain of volcanic islands off the western coast of continental Africa. It’s got an incredibly rich history that rings through this sizzling collection by…

New on #LSPMAG: Six Easy Peasy Ways to Commemorate National Poetry Month

Have you tried (and maybe failed?) to stay on task writing your 30-in-30 poetry magnum opus this April? Are you almost burned out even though we are only ten days in? Well don’t fret. We’re here to help you figure out what the heck to do to commemorate National Poetry Month that may get your muses singing again.

Attend a poetry reading. Need some help? The editors of Poetix (in Los Angeles) have…

New on #LSPMAG - From Sylvia Plath to Jack Jones, March Is Lit, Too...

Even though April is National Poetry Month, Women’s History Month has some pretty spicy poetry goings-on of its own, one of which involves my tween-dream heroine, Sylvia Plath.

In sixth grade, I picked up The Bell Jarat the little neighborhood library down the street from my city bus stop, just a few blocks over from my junior high school. It was an unauthorized detour, but I’d made my peace with…

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  Gilmore Tamny has a story in Madison Smartt Bell’s Narrative Design, several short essays in Not A Rose by Heide Hatry and The Dan Clowes Reader. Additional essays, artwork, interviews and short stories appear in Chickfactor, Petrichor Review, Foliate Oak, Turk’s Head Review, Pithead Chapel, Meat for Tea, The Drum, Vine Leaves, and Gravel. The essay “Mug It: Mug Cake Review” appeared in Neurons Protons in 2017. Tamny wrote songs for three albums under the name The Yips and has a record with her band Weather Weapon on Band Camp, shortly to release a second. In 2002, she received an MFA from Emerson College.

You can find her on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, read her novel online, or listen to her music on Bandcamp.

And on we go with a new poem by Greg Hill, "March and Poetry"

by Greg Hill

March and Poetry

Not too many people want to write poetically about March. There is the weather simile about a lion and a lamb, but that doesn’t always ring true,

and it doesn’t say much. Eliot noted the cruelty of April, which is Poetry Month, incidentally, and Shakespeare has that whole thing about the darling buds of May.

On the other end, February is smothered by sappy and trite…

Janea and Pamela guide you through Oscars 90: Best Picture Nominees - Part One

The 90th Academy Awards are this Sunday, and if you’re anything like us, you might not have seen all the films nominated for Best Picture yet. At times it still seems like not much has changed in Hollywood in terms of representation, but with the extreme success of Black Panther and the bright future of A Wrinkle in Time on the heels of Get Out and Girls Trip, things are looking up.

In case you…

New story on LSPMAG by Bill Pieper, "Barcelona Days" - good read!

by Bill Pieper

Barcelona Days

One of the world’s great walking cities. That’s what everybody said, and he’d sure spent time walking this past week: isolated amid the body crush of the tree-shadowed Rambla, or aimless along the glassy harbor to Barceloneta and the crowded beach beyond. Or inland on the hushed slopes and lanes of Montjuic, or in the echoing, walled Ciutat Vella. Anywhere he hadn’t…

New on LSPMAG, Michael O. Starr, "Instrument"

by Michael O. Starr

Instrument

Nothing like marketing overhyping their “new” (read: mundane, lacking in any and all novelty whatsoever) products On facebook

Nothing like a pattern

Let’s bash over the heads Repeat after me: I did not invent the such and such Never too late for a career in art Starvation is in But that’s pejorative Many make it, I’m sure Just look at shampoo bottles

Lost in black…

Inventory Day: Taking a Relationship Inventory on Valentine's Day - by Michelle Avitia - new on #LSPMAG

Inventory Day

Every year on Valentine’s Day, my boyfriend and I fill out our Relationship Inventory—a chart of the principles and values that are important to us as a couple. Maybe it’s because we’re both Virgos, but we find the clean lines of an organized spreadsheet wildly satisfying and helpful.

The purpose of the Relationship Inventory chart is to provide ourselves with a system that helps us…

New poetry - Sara Guiang, "Online Dating for the Modern-Day Feminist"

by Sara Guiang

online dating for the modern-day feminist

you didn’t mean for it to happen like this, maybe for it to happen at all, but come on, the boy was cute so you liked him and he liked you and yeah his first words were “i’m a naughty boy and i don’t think you can handle it” but you didn’t leave because every conversation either starts or ends like some variation of this anyways, so the you…

Sea Poppies – H.D.

Amber husk fluted with gold, fruit on the sand marked with a rich grain,

treasure spilled near the shrub-pines to bleach on the boulders:

your stalk has caught root among wet pebbles and drift flung by the sea and grated shells and split conch-shells.

Beautiful, wide-spread, fire upon leaf, what meadow yields so fragrant a leaf as your bright leaf?

—–

Gretchen Gales is a (sometimes) artist and managing editor of Quail Bell Magazine. Her work has also appeared in The Establishment, The Huffington Post, Bustle, Yes Poetry, Yellow Chair Review, and more.

lipstickparty mag has previously published two poems by Gales.

    Sea Poppies by H.D. is in the public domain

Kelsey Richey "After the Birds & the Bees" - "raw reds & browns of flesh breathe / like spring buds--beautiful, doomed to bloom into leaves"

by Kelsey Richey

After the Birds & the Bees

Grocery cart wheels shudder before stopping, cry out a little I weave my fingers in & out of mama’s while we browse through produce & soup cans, making our way to the unspoken end–The Meat Section. Where the raw reds & browns of flesh breathe like spring buds–beautiful, doomed to bloom into leaves. In the middle of the meats like a concrete crypt angelic…

Michael Istvan, "Fifteen Angles on Beauty and Body" new on LSPMAG today. -- "Other things equal, the one oblivious to her beauty, seeing herself as neither beautiful nor ugly, has greater beauty."

by Michael Istvan

Fifteen Angles on Beauty and Body

1 Eyes tense in watch as the chair groans under the hulking body.

2 Having the body exhumed only to gaze upon it one last time.

3 Mothers inking names in their children’s clothing for body identification.

4 Intrigued by her only when someone else finds her beautiful.

5 Rejecting new art on grounds that it rejects beauty relieves one from having…