Thank you for making our celebration of National Poetry Month a smashing success! Going into April, I hadn't written a poem in well over a year. But the talented writers, photographers and artists who submitted their work inspired me to the point that I began to write poems again - with a fury.The result? Apotheosis, a chapbook of seven poems. Order your copy today!

Grateful to the artists of the world,

Tamryn Spruill

By Tamryn Spruill

Patriarchal parsimony had its way again,

Little divination doll descends into a crevasse.

Her wood ripened from eons of basement storage,

Habiliments soiled from stagnation.

The varnish of her face cracks and furrows,

Stop-motion anime where salty secretions flow.

Infinity beckons from the depths of verisimilitude –

An invitation to His Perdurable Party.

Contact: Tamryn Spruill * Email: info@wordnerdeditorial.com

Website: www.wordnerdeditorial.com

By Cedric Tillman

For all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings... it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility... - William Wordsworth

I

I am never naked

around nobody

no one has ever seen me

with my clothes off

but me and the Lord

and this diary

can’t look at myself good

when ya’ll in the mirror

don’t take inventory

until everybody leave the sto’

The good Lord

keep good secrets

What he could tell about me

II

get this down

get it down as it comes

just like I bring it to you

get the house first

we can clean the carpet later

III

if it don’t hurt

I didn’t swing hard enough.

it’s gotta hurt for it to matter

gotta feel me

or it don’t matter

gotta be so’

stomach gotta hurt

chest gotta be so’

gotta know me better

at the end

gotta wanna know again

I am trying to make you

remember

IV

there is never any place

for the dam to break

either I ain’t got paper

or the wife is awake

Cedric Tillman received a BA in English from UNC Charlotte and an MFA in Creative Writing from American University. He lives in Charlotte.

Contact: Cedric Tillman * Email: juggsmurf@yahoo.com