Poetry Summer 2023 fiction all issues
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Cover
Joel Filipe
Kristina Cecka
Rabble
& other poems
Gillian Freebody
The Uncivil War of Love
& other poems
LuAnn Keener-Mikenas
Skunks at Twilight
& other poems
Alyssa Sego
Passage
& other poems
Anne Marie Wells
Forest of One
& other poems
Brent M. Foster
Ode to Darwin
& other poems
Jack Giaour
trans man is feeling blue
& other poems
Alan Gann
how strange
& other poems
Richard Baldo
The Privilege
& other poems
Michael Fleming
In
& other poems
Holly York
As it turned out, there was no bomb on board
& other poems
Celeste Briefs
Late Poppies
& other poems
Kayla E.L. Ybarra
Goose Song
& other poems
S.E. Ingraham
Leaving to Arrive
& other poems
Rachel Robb
Molting Scarlet Tanager
& other poems
Bruce Marsland
Sauna by a Finnish lake at Midsummer
& other poems
Ellen Romano
Seven Sisters
& other poems
Greg Hart
False Coordinates
& other poems
Greg Tuleja
Shanksville
& other poems
Corinne Walsh
Southern Charm
& other poems
Jack Giaour
license
as i take his words into my mouth i am glad for their taste
glad they have been released and given to me
in the interval in the seconds between his texts
i have time to think of a fruit in a dream garden
the serpent no longer has license to strike
the tree sheds its leaves with almost joy makes a carpet over the parking lot
he says that i am desirable
that i am handsome in the office light
i want to make a fruit from the pulp of a nail
the last leaf shivers and falls
it is frightening to offer myself to the tree to the fruit
it is frightening to swing the burning sword he says
and though his body is full of seeds and mine is full of shells and discarded skins
we are compatible
i taste of the fruit but i don’t know if i like it
or if it reminds me of the bones he crunches on sometimes when we’re watching netflix
i don’t mind the bones but i like much more the residues
the warm inner marrow
he wants to make a coin from the juice of the fruit
it’s commerce he says that is the only infinite
they were right about the wind
it’s sharp and seems to carry something that it shouldn’t
the snow is worse than the sun
the trees seem almost gold in the early morning light
the snow is worse than the sun but somehow i’m drawn to it
drawn to the glint of black ice by the roadside
i dream for this
a natural enclosure a world inside a word
has our knowledge made us free /?/
and when they finally call my number do i bring water or
a portrait or a curtain or a bridge
or a conclusion /?/
to hang up our lights is always a project
there’s just no place to plug them in
i am always thinking of light and time and the flashing of the messages on my screen
you cannot accuse me of inattention
i no longer have license to drive and the decision to forego renewal for so long
has consequences
clusters of possibilities whiz through our heads he says
electric charges clogged with coffee grounds and brain bits
the fruit is so easy to bring to the mouth
to seize with eager lips
he says we go to the tree with equal needs
which honestly is bullshit
we are in the habit of him on top of me of tasting and teasing
at the residual flesh
impersonal
only an animal could be so
the holy angel dashes the snake against a wall
quietly tastes of the fruit we have rejected
these are old photos he says because there’s nothing else to say
it’s so hard to think of her as me
a new license means a new picture a chance to more officially be the he that is really me
and so i do my best to be myself as it were and questions are easy to answer
but mistakes are hard to right
wet dream with lord byron
i answer you and it rends me like old silk
you take me through each room
your tears red then turning slowly the color of silk
do you know why you dream of marrow ?
that’s what you asked me in the long dark after sex
i survived birth
but i failed in my need
my hunger for stamens licked clean
when the long dark came you worked me
so roughly between your grey fingers
you asked how else can you beg under the red
silk buckle and heave of my need ?
rockport sunrise
nothing for us in the morning but the smear of fog bank
against the pure sky-shift of sunrise
i heard the sunlight grating against the rooftops
one morning this sound won’t bother me
but this morning it did and you were there
clutching at the roots of the ocean
when i read to you last night i was listening for the
rustlings of your blood in the ugly pinking veins of your eyes
i shouldn’t have spoken to you
you didn’t know how drunk i was you didn’t know
but you got into my bed anyway we read to each
other anyway and believed this is what delight is
like what the morning is just before sunrise
sky and sea are pinking but they’re never quite the same color
as the fog
Jack Giaour
’s (he/him/his) poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Sonora Review, Albatross Magazine, and Poetry South, among other journals. He holds an MFA from Chapman University, was a writer-in-residence at the Belgrade Art Studio in Belgrade, Serbia, and has volunteered with both Mass Poetry and the Salem Arts Festival. He sunlights as software manager for a steel fabricator just north of Boston.