Category: Poetry

Dirty Moon Dog

Francine Witte

 

Tonight is the night
of the Dirty Moon,
where dust and scrub
show up thumbprint
on the lunar face.
Visible here on Earth
for only a speck,
showing itself quiet
in July or maybe
November. No one
talks about the Dirty
Moon the way no one
talks about the second
Love goes cold, maybe
one less phone call,
one less kiss, or
the way your parents
go see-through,
translucent on
their way to being
gone. But tonight,
right now, a dog
is howling it out.
He is alone
in a field, around
him the worry
of wheat, a shush,
a soft wind trying
to quiet him, his snout
full up, his mouth open
wide into the night.

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Two Poems

Rebecca Foust

Ocean Beach

I am not quite thirty again
on a beach under a three-quarter moon
slung low in the sky, stars pricking
darkness & so cold where the tide
rushes in, swirling ankles then knees
& you swooping me up in your arms
like any fantasy of rescue & I’m ravished
in John Donne’s sense of the word
& pretty much every sense
of the word, licked up & down my spine
by freezing flame, slicked wet
like a dog in the rain, every nerve
buzzing bees in a beauty bush June—
it happens every time I return
to memory’s long, low curve of cold sand,
the swallowed surge of a wave,
held breath knocked out & away
into liquefaction & release,
an icicle held in your warm, bare hand.

 

Pasiphae

In a myth from the southern sea
a woman loved a god
in the guise of a bull, or maybe
it was the sea, or maybe
it was a bull made of waves
that came from behind
all muscle & surge
to her knees, waist, chest,
throat, mouth & eyes, then left
with the morning tide.

 

They say she near died, burned
by sorrow & salt & sun
before she thought to build
a bull of wood she could live
within. For she was also a god
who could drain all she filled
& fill all she drained
like us, who daily dwell
in a world that swallows us whole,
while we take it, holy, inside.

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Captive

Nicole Santalucia

 

for Lesley, Patty, Kathy, and Eileen

 

I woke up in a zoo feeding penguins
that looked like grandmothers I would’ve
knocked down to get a cigarette,
but I quit smoking two years ago
when I came face to face with
a skunk in my backyard. Monday
is garbage night—this I know.
There was a time when I didn’t
know I had a drug problem then
there was a time when I did. The knowing
trapped and released me. We fenced
in the backyard last spring to keep out
little critters, and now I have land sickness.
Anne gave us Jack-in-the-pulpits that have been
in the family for generations. I never thought
this scarlet, orange fruit would blossom again and
again and again—that I’d take responsibility without
taking blame. Taking has nothing to do with Mondays
and Tuesdays. I take the weekend to grow tomatoes.
I always take more and the devil’s ear listens
to my spiritual disease. So does Mr. and Mrs. Brown,
and Mrs. Jones down the street wants to put the house
in her name. If the loan doesn’t go through, she might
get drunk and I might get struck by lightning.
I thought it was just me, but it’s also the landscape.
Here at the river of denial, I refuse the weather,
and people who drank like me have been hiding
in the bushes this whole time. The people who
drank like Kathy just sent her a nice check from
a bar she invested in years ago. And my inner
Eileen says we won’t get struck drunk. She hated
zoos and every penguin in town knew it. She
also had pulmonary emphysema and was rescued
by inhaling and exhaling. She taught us not to think
about thinking and how to die without dying.
We are at war with the skunks. This inner protest
and hot head of cauliflower are part of the ritual.
I place my palm on the source of heat and prepare
to listen with my whole body. I begin with tubers
and work my way to the leafy greens then open
myself up to the rage and wild onions climbing
over the fence to choke out the tree-of-heaven.

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8 Facts about the Atlantic Horseshoe Crab

Bex Hainsworth

 

1.) They are not actually crabs, but faux-crustaceans,

aquatic scorpions; arthropods with arachnid-kin.

 

2.) Triassic reverberations, they are their own ancestors,

unchanged fossils, 230 million years in the making.

 

3.) Called Limulus Polyphemus, after the Odyssean cyclops,

but unborn embryos have nine eyes and a sense of irony.

 

4.) Liminal in existence, they live in the gaps between land

and sea: the brackish, the shallows, the world’s edges.

 

5.) Their distinctive carapace – armour, disguise, barnacled

island – is regularly moulted, left behind like pottery.

 

6.) Females are larger than males, often scarred from mating,

when suitors cling to the rafts of their bodies for months.

 

7.) Each spring, they are spades, digging nests in the same sand

where they were spawned; 64,000 eggs shine like blue pearls.

 

8.) Their blood is used in medical research. We claim catch and

release, hands slick, harvesting the sea in search of immortality.

 

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Honeymoon

James Davis May

 

We were about to die, but it seemed so funny:
the sudden storm cloud unfolding above us
as if we were a pair of cartoon characters
having a bad day. We could see the beach,
our empty chairs, and the other couples
holding drinks and each other’s hands,
while for each stroke shoreward, the sea
(the wind or the waves or both?) pushed
our rented kayak two feet seaward. You knew
my hockey-shattered shoulder weakened us
in one direction. I knew that pain
was better than drowning. Ten years later
you ask what I’d say to the couple we were
in those first years of debt, lost jobs,
and the baby we almost lost but didn’t.
I tell you I’d want to say, “Calm down, kids,
don’t worry so much.” But I take that back.
Think of the storm and how our fear made us
paddle harder and taught us to do it together.

 

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POEM WITH NO FORWARDING ADDRESS

Cynthia Atkins

 

They left without warning, no note taped

to a mirror, no trace or teaser.  No lipstick

marks, sealed an envelope.  With boarded up

windows like the soul of it gone astray—

like a dog lost from home.

At a moment’s notice—

Pizza crust left on the counter.

Dust balls on the sills. Mice eating the mattress offal.

An emptiness where there was a banter of life—

                         —music, doorbells, loud hammers.

A couple arguing in a new language,

then making up all night. The smell of eggs cooking

at dawn.  The children groggy from sleep, awaken to finish

their homework.  Pencils tapping syllables into place.

Hats hung on a hook, the fire crackling in the stove.

A drawer of mittens and gloves.

Winter snow boots waiting to make tracks.

       Why must we practice leaving and loss?—

The tender missives on the refrigerator door—

Family snapshots, quotes, buttons, magnets.

Simple objects that tell us where we live, who we are.

Home, where we take the stones out of our shoes.

 

 

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Zipper

John Paul Davis

 

We were born in the era
of having to balance
our checkbooks

 

& we’ve lived
through that to the time
of tracking transactions
with handheld computers

 

which are also telephones
we only use when we must
though I’ll confess

 

when you were overseas
I’d call your voicemail
just to hear you
say your own name

 

which is my first favorite music.
Second is your keys
dancing in the deadbolt
when you get home from work

 

& third, the sound of your laugh
on the other side of a wall.

 

You mumble in your sleep
& do vocal warm-ups in the shower
& eat cereal in bed yes

 

this is the age of eating in bed
while watching the best television
on tiny screens, this is the era

 

of falling asleep in our clothes
with the light on holding
each other, this is the year
of staying home & mumbling

 

sweetly to each other locking
fingers & inventing novel
ways of expressing our feelings
without words for example

 

there’s the metallic
percussion when I tug
apart your zipper

 

in the doorway by the bucket
where we keep our outdoor shoes,
there’s the creak of floorboards
as I kneel, there’s the quiet rabbit
of your hand in mine.

 

Even when we’re miles apart
my body is a playlist streaming
to yours, my ankles & beard
& earlobes & forearms & belly button

 

& every hair, all of my pink
skin, I’m an afternoon of song
arranged in this specific order
for you. Dance to me, wash

 

dishes to me, sing along to me folding
laundry, read a play
with me on in the background
take me with you on your long commute,
dark of my voice in your headphones.

 

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From the Jeopardy! category SPOILER ALERTS

Julie Marie Wade

First, the light & how to describe it—part Manila envelope, part Ticonderoga pencil. Casserole golden at times, then orange as a giant brick of cheese, then brown as tater tots crammed into cargo pant pockets. Idaho may make you squint & squirm, crave some nachos, drink raw eggs from a glass. Yes, the chickens have large talons. It’s an underdog state fit for an underdog story. Note the tetherball sun & the boondoggle clouds. Note the iconic llama cameo. (There’s a small chance our cat is called Tina because of this film.) Second, the plot & how to recount it—Uncle Rico never did throw a football over them mountains, never did strike it rich selling knock-off Tupperware or breast-enhancing supplements. But Pedro shaved his head & became class president. Kip & LaFawnduh fell in love online, then boarded a Greyhound bus together. And our eponymous protagonist, unlikely hero of the Gemstone State, won a talent show dancing to Jamiroquai’s “Canned Heat.” Preston seems a sparse, dry place, far from the grid, nary the site of a tourist’s pilgrimage. Dust coats bicycle tires & Rollerblades, hovers above the highways like an unholy halo. It would be nice if you could pull me into town. Third, the supporting cast & how we remember them—Grandma breaks her coccyx on a dune buggy ride; Starla blushes at a Bust Must testimonial; Rex dubs himself sensei of his own dojo while clad in Hammer pants fashioned from an American flag. Critics called it a “quirky charmer,” a “one-hit wonder,” a “weird-ass fairy tale.” They’re not wrong. If you got it, odds are you drew some ligers in your notebooks, too, took some Glamour shots in your basement once upon a time. Now just imagine you’re weightless, in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by tiny seahorses. If you loved it, you’re probably more Deb than Summer Wheatley to this day. More enterprising than prize-winning perhaps, but with a certain staying power, the paradox of which is the way it helps you leave. (Even then, Deb was earning money for college with her home-woven handicrafts.) What amazes me is how we all know a Summer Wheatley, don’t we? Mine was Marissa Sheldon, was Kendra Kostrich, was Julie Winder—who still lives in my town & works at the bowling alley. The other two are unfindable on Facebook. They were cheerleaders way back when, with ESPRIT sweatshirts slipping off their slender shoulders & Keds tennis shoes forever bright-white as the day they bought them. They washed their hair with exotic products like Pantene & VO5 clarifying shampoo. Somehow they always chewed gum the teachers never confiscated, ate Funyuns & SweeTarts by the carton but never gained weight. These were the girls who had it easy or made it look easy—it’s hard to know which. They never seemed to sweat or stink or spill on their clothes, let alone bleed. Whatever they said became Gospel. Whatever they did set the newest trend. But they don’t make many movies about the goodfits, do they? Summer Wheatley isn’t a film in my Netflix queue. I wonder about her, though, like I wonder about Marissa & Kendra & Julie, who shared my name but not my story. Is Summer snickering at her boss from behind her Steno-thin cubicle walls, sending NSFW memes at work, cyberbullying on the Moms of Preston message board? Or maybe she’s flirting with customers at Big J’s Burgers, some of whom remember her when, one of whom offered to pay for Botox if she’d spend one night with him. “What do you think this is—Indecent Proposal?” But then she did it because Trisha, her still-BFF, said she should. Both of them are tired of the old joke: “Is it I-da-ho or you-da-ho?” Tired of guys who stop by for some curly fries & to reminisce about the Happy Hand Jobs Club. “I swear that’s what it was called,” Don smirks, like he’s been smirking all his life. Maybe Summer married him right after high school. Maybe they have a tribe of towheaded children by now. Or maybe they’re divorced but still fight daily over the phone. Can’t stop running into each other in their one exit ramp town. If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that you can make a piñata of whomever you like. Better, perhaps—a piñata of whatever you want. Don’t ask the principal for permission. Just go outside, close your eyes & strike with all your might.

“What is Napoleon Dynamite?”

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At the Delachaise


Julia Johnson

You tell me your husband is really a leopard.
I tell you that you've had too much wine.
You insist that he has all of the qualities and attributes and characteristics
and the coloring of a leopard. And that he loves you for your beauty.
I ask why you didn't know this when you first met him
and you insist you did and I ask why you would marry a leopard.
You say that you knew no one would want to meet him but that you
had to marry him. I tell you I can't wait to meet him
and I promise I really do.
I really do want to meet him.
We share a tall cone of fries in white paper.
At the end of the night, we take off our masks and step onto the sidewalk,
and kiss each other in the air instead of touching.
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Announcing the Winner of the Editor’s Prize for Poetry

Congratulations to Caleb A.P. Parker, our 2023 winner for the Editor’s Prize in Poetry! His poem, “Palinode,” will be available to read in our Spring 2024 issue.

Caleb A.P. Parker, a writer and musician from the industrialized Gulf Coast of Texas, was raised by two Episcopal priests. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Ninth Letter, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and currently lives in New York City.

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