Cajun Mutt Press Featured Writer 03/03/21

Uma Margot (no. 87 of Women’s names sensual series)

I’m no pretty mental patient, man!
This is the first year in along time
I didn’t want to kill myself—

I have no fear of Alphabet City.
The whinos and druggy bastards,
these are my people. Punk is alive—

a water-logged torture device,
an asterisk in a row of commas.
I’ll sing the contents of the telephone book

if that would keep me grounded,
like the growl of my lover’s electric bass,
before she’ll scowl at the audience.

Bopping and head-butting to the beats,
I feel the most alive here,
more electric than Spanish fly.

Carrie Magness Radna is an audiovisual cataloger at the New York Public Library, a choral singer and a poet who loves to travel. Her poems have previously appeared in The Oracular Tree, Mediterranean Poetry, Muddy River Poetry Review, Poetry Super Highway, Shot Glass Journal, Vita Brevis, Home Planet News, Cajun Mutt Press, Walt’s Corner, Polarity eMagazine, The Poetic Bond (VIII-X), Alien Buddha Press, Jerry Jazz Musician, and First Literary Review-East. Her first poetry collection, Hurricanes never apologize (Luchador Press), was published in December 2019. Her newest poetry collection, In the blue hour (Nirala Publications), was published February 15, 2021. Born in Norman, Oklahoma, she now lives with her husband in Manhattan, New York. https://carriemagnessradna.com