Poetry Summer 2021 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover
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
Ana Reisens
At first I thought
I wanted to be a poet
I yearned for paper birds,
for words that echoed
from the deep cathedrals of the earth,
words that gave birth
to the stories of bark
and wove into the evening
like starlings.
I wanted to open a space
for the dappled strands of day,
to trace the reaching veins
of the leaves and transcribe
the ancient language
of the waterlilies.
I longed to understand
the alchemy of sand,
the great silence of stones,
to paint the edges between
the river and the minnow.
But words are elusive birds
and I am still learning to sing.
So I offer my fledgling voice
to the sky to rejoice
in the wild symphony
of all things—
to be a note in this brief
and holy melody,
an ocean,
a firefly,
a poem.
In praise of an everyday object
Can you see it?
Just there, resting on the wood,
the morning light draped over it
like a wool quilt.
Color was invented
for the ballet of pigments,
this simple secret
begging to be witnessed.
Take it in your hand.
Can you sense
the spinning
imagination
of atoms?
How can something be so quiet
yet so alive?
Quickly, now,
before the mind decides
to cry out its bad advice—
hold this dazzling moment
in your open palm and answer:
Is there anything life could give you
more beautiful than this?
Quietude
There’s a place
where the ache
of the city
fades
like a blurred screen
and the cypresses
rehearse their symphonies.
In the evenings,
the crickets visit
to weave their memories
into the air
as the whippoorwill
holds vigil
over the clearing.
Meet me there.
We can sit back
as the lines of day fade
and listen to the melody
our cells have not yet forgotten.
Ana Reisens
is an emerging poet and writer with a background in translation. She was the recipient of the 2020 Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award and you can find her poetry in Subterranean Blue and forthcoming in the Belmont Story Review, Sunlight Press, and Inkwell Journal, among others. She lives in Spain, where she enjoys spending time in nature and is perpetually in search of a good meal.