Poetry Summer 2021 fiction all issues
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Diana Akhmetianova
Monique Jonath
Viscosity
& other poems
Alix Christofides Lowenthal
Before and After
& other poems
Rebbekah Vega-Romero
La Persona Que Quiero Ser
& other poems
Oak Morse
Incandescent Light That Peeks Through Secrets
& other poems
George Kramer
The Last Aspen Stand
& other poems
Elizabeth Sutterlin
Meditations on Mars
& other poems
Holly Marie Roland
Clearfelling
& other poems
Devon Bohm
A Bouquet of Cherry Blossoms
& other poems
Ana Reisens
In praise of an everyday object
& other poems
Maxi Wardcantori
The Understory
& other poems
William A. Greenfield
Sometimes
& other poems
Karen L Kilcup
The Sky Is Just About to Fall
& other poems
Pamela Wax
He dreams of birds
& other poems
Mary Jane Panke
Apophasis
& other poems
a mykl herdklotz
Mouettes et Mastodontes
& other poems
Claudia Maurino
Good Pilgrim
& other poems
Mary Pacifico Curtis
One Mystical Day
& other poems
Tess Cooper
Airport Poem
& other poems
Peter Kent
Congress of Ravens
& other poems
Kimberly Sailor
White Women Running
& other poems
Bill Cushing
Creating a Corpse
& other poems
Everett Roberts
Hagar
& other poems
Susan Marie Powers
Canada Geese
& other poems
Devon Bohm
Bukowski Tavern
Remember that bar
we used to go to, when you
lived in Boston?
On Boylston maybe, near
where it crosses Mass Ave—
Bukowski Tavern
in yellow letters on the red lintel,
decades of beer sticking your shoes to the floor,
fried food swimming in cheese, gravy,
the feeling of being completely and contentedly
lost.
They had dark red booths
lining the narrow space,
a jaded bartender with a hat,
and a wheel to spin when you
couldn’t decide on a drink.
I told you
I didn’t think
Bukowski
would like it here
and we were laughing and kissing and drunk and traveling
from nowhere to nowhere
but suddenly and faithfully
arriving nowhere together.
My belief in you then wasn’t
bravery,
but I pretended it was for a while,
pretended
my love for you wasn’t already
incurable, inexhaustible, gruesomely certain.
I liked to eavesdrop
on people on bad dates
because
we were always having a better one
and then we
walked back to your apartment on Comm Ave
and climbed
onto the roof to see Boston’s rusty lights
flying across our eyeline.
I always knew
that people were idiots, musicians, poets,
but
I never knew
how real it was,
that your heart could feel like
flying, dancing, burning,
until we went to the bar,
that roof,
your bedroom,
with such strange, imperfect steps.
My shoes were still sticking
when I drove back to Connecticut
in the morning,
nowhere
to go but
to wait
for you
to come back to me,
to come back to our
future,
to come back
home.
Foster’s Cove
The difference between
an estuary and a cove?
More ways out.
The dog is in the boat as ballast
and I am drifting my brine-stung
fingers through the weeds,
scattering minnows through
the water’s dappled halls.
We have come to this place
as supplicants, penitents, pilgrims,
this bathing suit my surplice,
salt on my lips in prayer.
I am trying to remember
how to pray.
I am trying to forget
the anathema my own
heart called out,
believing me
undeserving of peace.
It is almost June,
but the mornings here
are still fog-leeched,
cold sunshine unseen,
dew-drenched
and closed shut as a fist.
When the wind picks up,
I remember the cuckoo,
think what it would be
to be lifted out and thrown
away.
There is a hammering against
my eardrum, a haunting,
a violation: you are not here
to resolve yourself to die.
Cardinal, robin, blue jay—
if we planted a yew tree
they’d all be here
and we’d be protected.
When I swallow water
all is salt, basalt, brimstone.
When I look at you,
I see me.
I see a way out.
Forgiveness, the wind’s susurrus.
Bear witness, the bee’s throaty buzz.
Kindness, the cove’s heartsong.
Imagine,
I tell myself,
I make myself,
I create myself:
Imagine not needing a way out.
Ghost Story
I don’t blame you for not believing me.
I’m unsure, in the light, if I believe me,
too. But I can’t be the only one who’s
heard them, the voices in the house
when I’m home alone. Not the radio,
not some kind of mimic, no nightmares
explain the voice that says my name—
clear and bright as moonlight and right
behind my ear, but only on nights
the house is empty and silent. The dog
turns his head, his ears prick. I’ve
seen it, my heart throbbing in my
throat. This house was built in 1922
and that’s it, that’s all I know of it,
nothing personal or damned. I guess
the question isn’t if it’s real, but if
I want it to be. What I really want
is a story: letters pried up from beneath
floorboards, doomed love, thieves and
warriors, the transfiguration of my life
from a quiet house into a story worth
writing about. People will, writers will
find meaning in anything, even if they
have to make it up, even if their own
heads do it for them. Dawn comes in.
That romantic, pastel light doesn’t belong
in a ghost story and it’s easy now to believe
in the sun and luck and requited love
when I know you’ll be home before
the heat of the day cages the town in its
teeth. I make coffee, make this into
a different story, maybe boring, maybe
unnoticed by the annals of history, maybe
true. I wait for you on the porch and when
you arrive and say my name I think:
isn’t it strange, what being seen can do
to us? You don’t believe my story, I can
tell and I don’t blame you. But you see
me telling a story, you hear me, and you
listen. For now, it is enough to believe
in that.
A Bouquet of Cherry Blossoms
As Ovid wrote of absent lovers,
I write these words to you, today:
even when you’re beside me in bed
I dream of you, defying all
dreamly logic, waking me
only to help me go back
to sleep. What reveries
are these? It’s all too real—
the coarse touch of your
hand on my naked back,
your voice a low-toned
bell in the seashell
of my ear—echoing,
echoing—your breath
a softness, a bouquet
of sleep. If we were
planets, we’d be orbiting
each other only for
the pull of the attraction,
the gravity of the situation
invisible and too powerful
to fight. Why wouldn’t
we hold close what makes
the void not only livable
but beautiful again? Why
not love, even if it
leads to destruction?
For all the lullabies
the dream-you provides,
I always wake first,
the robins sweetly warbling
a punch of reality.
The cherry blossoms
have all fallen from
their branches. But
you know what that means,
love? We’ll have cherries,
soon enough.
High Winds
Our dog is scared of the wind,
but only when he’s inside
where it can’t touch him.
I find this a reasonable fear.
Who wouldn’t be scared of
unseen noise outside a third story
window? Two years ago, a robin
made a nest under the eaves
of our covered porch. It hurts
me to see what was left behind—
an abandoned home attached
to the one I’m trying to build.
My engagement ring catches
the light out here in a dappling,
like trees are involved, like
stars’ cold but luminous fire
burns here, here. That’s how
natural it feels to be marrying
you. Even the dog feels this
revelation—turns his head
to pant as the wind kicks up,
the way it is wont to do
in late spring, but he doesn’t
cower. No matter how hard,
or violent, or excessive, as long
as he can feel it he isn’t anything
but a dog on a shaded porch
watching for squirrels. It’s been
two years since the robin and her
jakes bolted from their daub
and waddle home, but this deepening
morning we came out to find
eggs smashed on the peeling,
splintering planks of the porch.
The colors of sky and sun and bone,
the dog tried to roll through
the destruction, could smell
the magnetic pull of that which
was never fully realized. You
left a beer can out here last
night, a paper towels as crumpled
as the shell, a light. Moths
spent all evening alighting to their
deaths as we laughed and touched
and pretended we were more than
mortal, for a moment. The light
of day isn’t stark, but forgiving.
Whatever detritus we leave
behind, let me hammer
one last bit in: the dog is
right to be afraid, and we
are right to keep going
anyway, keep falling anyway,
keep loving when there’s no
proof we won’t be
taken out by a high
wind.
Devon Bohm
received her BA from Smith College and earned her MFA with a dual concentration in Poetry and Fiction from Fairfield University. She was awarded the 2011 Hatfield Prize for Best Short Story, received an honorable mention in the 2020 L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, and was long-listed for Wigleaf’s Best Very Short Fiction of 2021. Her work has also been featured in publications such as Labrys, Necessary Fiction, Spry and previously in Sixfold. Follow her on Instagram @devonbohm or visit her website at www.devonbohm.com.