Issue 15: Poetry
Photo: Weightless Throne by Shinara Weathersby, Issue 15.
Here’s our poetry digest from Issue 15:
Christina Rikkers
God
I fell down the subway station stairs and shattered
my ankle, and all I could do was say sorry.
My leg swelled green like a new balloon
and the shock set me on fire, vision swimming,
a shrinking vignette, and I kept saying, “I’m sorry,”
“Thank you,” and “What do you need me to do?”
with artificial bright eyes, like tumbling
down concrete wasn’t a thing I did, like I wasn’t expanding
with new bruises, like they needed me.
“What can I do?” … READ MORE >
[strong]Richard A. Decker
On Becoming a Better Man[/strong]
I tend to write rain checks that bounce but I decide to put myself out there by brushing shoulders and making the best of a get-together.
I bring cheddar sour cream chips and a case of Coke ‘cause I want to somehow break the bad habits from my upbringing and somehow show them that I know how to be polite even though the host said she should be good on snacks.
I want to show them that I can take care of myself — that I’m my own man. … READ MORE >
[strong]Regina McMorris
Pedestrian[/strong]
Tonight the silver moon reveals its lower half
through translucent clouds, the shape
like a watermelon slice. As the clouds shift,
I forget the weight of my dirty laundry as I drag
my suitcase down Colton Avenue, and I don’t
miss having a ride to the coin-op.
The hidden half of the moon, larger
than the half I can see. … READ MORE >
[strong]Kyler Littlejohn
Hard Faith[/strong]
We were born to red earth
and hand-me-down prayers,
to mothers who knelt in the fields
and called that kneeling faith.
Our fathers were men of silence,
their ghosts planted deep,
roots tangled in grief and duty,
their shadows stretching farther
than the cotton rows. … READ MORE >
[strong]Elle Rosamilia
Recurring Dreams[/strong]
I.
I hear my father’s footsteps coming closer.
I can’t drive, but I’m still trapped behind the wheel.
The people I love keep disappearing through empty doorways.
There is a face I used to trust and a stranger who plans to do me harm.
II.
The space between bedtime and morning becomes a tunnel
through my brain. As I sleep, I wander corridors in search of symbols that will show
me all the ways I haven’t healed, dig through chests in childhood bedrooms
whose furniture shifts every time I blink my eyes. … READ MORE >
[strong]Sarah Goldston
Melee Diamond[/strong]
As small as a poppyseed
Almost an appleseed
These comparisons seem
So unfitting
As if disregarded muffin crumbs
Or apple pits
Could capture the significance
Of a child … READ MORE >
[strong]Ellen Jane Powers
On being the first woman in this world[/strong]
The soles of my feet are dull gray,
years of dirt I couldn’t avoid, and
they no longer come clean. I taught
myself to step aside, to not answer questions
from silver-eyed strangers who test me —
are you lost? No. I turn toward unexpected
paths. I look for a river bed, the one that’s lined
with late spring lilacs, nectar as sweet
as what I tasted long ago. … READ MORE >
[strong]David Anson Lee
The Weight of God[/strong]
The sky does not split.
No curtain lifts.
Afternoon keeps its appointments:
dogs barking,
bread cooling on windowsills,
a child practicing scales
in the next room
while God bleeds outside the city.
They finish efficiently.
Iron through flesh,
flesh through bone:
a skill perfected by repetition. … READ MORE >
[strong]Sarah Tate
Eden Writing Her Own Obituary[/strong]
THE GARDEN OF EDEN — brutally murdered by words twisted like smoke and buried to rot under sloughs of snakeskins. Do you smell my cries? I wanted to leave something of account: a bard’s song, maybe, some sad rhymes for the poets, a couple words thrown onto a Wikipedia page. My story like an arc for the unborn, you know. Instead, you consider my paradise lost like you would chew on a vague memory. … READ MORE >
[strong]David Athey
Slithering, Twitching[/strong]
In the tropical dead of day,
a grey squirrel with twitching tail
makes his rounds with gifts
for the community garden.
The squirrel keeps to the shadow side
and fills the soil with the usual thistle
seeds emptied from a lady’s bird feeder.
It’s rather funny … READ MORE >
[strong]Kimberly Beck
Pocket Prayer[/strong]
I carry it around with me
in a message on my phone, typed
and re-typed;
on the torn page of a leather journal, folded
in my pocket like a sleeping
crane, or a heron, or
a swan. Now and then it stretches
and lifts its wings, feathers brushing
over the tips of my fingers as I reach
for the ink, for the soft, snow-bright page. … READ MORE >
[strong]Jonathan Darren Garcia
Amos, when you are in the Desert[/strong]
I have stared into headlights,
And felt the car move through me —
like a phantom
I have fallen on the sharp branches of an oak tree —
swallowed splinters like food
I have felt the night kiss me goodbye —
woke with red eyes,
carrying the sky’s golden, amber flames
Prayers, Prayers, Prayers … READ MORE >
[strong]Scott Schuleit
A Precious Soul[/strong]
standing at a busy corner in neon-glittered night,
red dress exposing skin, perfume wafting pleasure
to passerby. Half-lidded eyes tracing her shape,
some indifferent, a few soft, expressing pity, compassion.
Need some money for drugs and her babies, no other reason.
Dangers, fights for best places to work, violent customers.
No exits out of this room, she figured. Difficult to see
through thickening smoke, rising heat, greed of flame.
She saw no way out of the city. … READ MORE >
[strong]Patrick T. Reardon
Harsh angles[/strong]
Chill valley. Hallelujah waters.
Hear nobody. Hear nobody.
Outshout the light of God.
Outrun the word.
Outdistance.
Jordan troubles. Burden dreams.
Cross the kingdom into the Canaanite land.
Take by force.
Hear the unsaid. … READ MORE >
[strong]Lucy Swan
the -ologies of memory[/strong]
philosophers posit that the past only
exists in the mind; settled in the spongy,
gray-matter of your cerebrum, in fluid
through the narrow tubules between synapses,
budding in the engram cells of your neuronal
ensembles. but i see it as an ugly discoloration
clinging to the epidermis, a pink ghost of a
scab, action’s irreversible consequence. … READ MORE >
[strong]Cody Adams
Thunder Put Asunder[/strong]
When my ex-wife refused to halt
the affair
I reminded her of the time our preacher screeched
a sermon about God’s answer to Job,
and how, with climactic timing that felt cinematic,
lightning struck in the city street just outside
the stained glass, animating illustrations of
Judgment Day for one terrifying instant. … READ MORE >
[strong]Alexandria Marianne Leon
The jar still there[/strong]
shifting the weight —
forearms tight,
handle slick from sun
water pulling low.
small fingers tug
at my pant leg.
the thought —
drop it. … READ MORE >
[strong]Alexis Leigh Ragan
Heartpine[/strong]
There is no handle here,
on the face of a door overgrown
with the after-rot of harvest
loss, where persimmons split
along the worn frame, ombré
abandon embellishing the hinge
that was sealed shut with such
severity, one might believe
the owner of the home lives
bent on keeping secrets
silent — in a forest that thinks
it’s forgotten, not knowing
its own carver. … READ MORE >
[strong]Adam Burrell
Let It Be So[/strong]
Do you come to me? Do you come to this trash heap playground?
You tread on the mud, kick past the dirty magazines and sit,
silent and unassuming, on that swing. I’m still hiding inside
this rusted, metal climbing dome next to the merry-go-round.
You shouldn’t be here, plain and simple. It’s a place for snotty kids
and maybe drug dealers after dark. It’s a place for teenage makeout sessions,
for raccoons and garbage cans and broken bottles and old shoes — and me. … READ MORE >
[strong]Margaret Adams Birth
A Rush of Angels’ Wings[/strong]
Flashes from the chrome on cars
passing by on the street outside —
easy enough to confuse
with a rush of angels’ wings
releasing a little shaft of light
from the heavenly realm —
remind me that where the wheels
meet the asphalt, there’s where
the world, and this life, is grounded … READ MORE >
[strong]Meg Freer
Still Here, Waiting[/strong]
Fifty years ago, she yelled at the old vagrant
in London, Put her down! when he hoisted up
my sister in the Finchley Road pharmacy.
Now she yells at God, Stop picking me up!
after every infection, every hospital stay.
She doesn’t want to remain on this earth.
She phones and says, I’m still here.
God doesn’t listen to me.
I have to keep living this awful life. … READ MORE >
[strong]Jo Taylor
Entrances and Exits[/strong]
Two weeks into December we are
all coming and going in my brother’s
house, Hospice nurses attending
to his needs, some family whispering
of days to come, others partaking
of a meal prepared by community and
church friends. Outside, a lone red bird
thuds against the plate-glass window,
and the day wears on like a controlled burn. … READ MORE >
READ ISSUE 15:
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