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
Bruce Marsland
Sauna by a Finnish lake at Midsummer
In the heart of the forest, we cut young birch twigs
to bundle into switches for our sauna.
You called them vihta, the plosive bouncing
off your tongue like a pebble skimming water
as we undressed for the heat. Enveloped
by silence and steam off wetted hot stones,
which you said was löyly, the frontal vowels
coiling your lips into a pouting tantalus,
we swatted our skin, tentatively at first,
then more bravely in redolent leafy swirls,
until we paused to let the sweat drip
off our backs and off our noses
before giving our bodies to the outdoor air,
scampering to the water’s edge, to dip and emerge
and wonder at the strangeness of clothes
and towels, and gaze at each other lingering
au naturel, reluctant to peel on
the layers and trappings of social fabric.
How do you measure joy
or contentedness or peace?
What is the scale for beauty
or attraction or satiety?
None of that matters.
In the morning, we swept the birch leaves
from the sauna bench, filled our bucket from the lake,
and gathered firewood and twigs to burn
for a luxuriously melancholy second sitting.
Bivalent dreamscape
Stumbling on Caribbean cobblestones
after tourist piña coladas,
dreaming of escape to here,
I lock glances with a local,
mirroring my opposite,
dreaming of escape from here.
Momentum shoves me downhill,
but in that split-second, our eyes ask,
was a day enough to watch big blue sky
turn grey and weep hibiscus
over eroding columns by the waves;
was a year enough to snag carnival bouquets
before youth departed,
evicted by biology, responsibility, and law.
In that split-second, our eyes dream,
bomba ‘til sunrise,
a lioness of steel
twirling in pink rose-petal shoes;
feast on periwinkles,
a salt-sweet buffet
laid and beloved by mermaids;
raise butterflies
and train them
so they susurrate our names.
I re-join the crowds,
but above the souvenir-stall hustle,
two hummingbirds are whispering
escape! escape!
Not saving the world at the last minuet
Gravel and dust flew in the air
as I steered my bicycle off the road
to claim a sightseeing spot.
The pedals, chain, and stand clanked briefly
before my sea legs stumbled forward
and I leaned too heavily on the wooden fence.
Breathing for a moment, like me,
the conifers turned away
and gazed into the sky.
Clouds nestled over mountain tops.
“That one looks like an airplane,” I said.
That’s the wardrobe door to Narnia, said she,
imploring me to be original.
I stared and tried a little longer,
until the sun had nearly finished its descent.
Tree needles rippled in a breeze,
and I noticed that just for a moment
no vehicles were passing,
no swoosh of rubber on tarmacadam.
Tree branches started rising.
Dancing, waving, undulating.
Cloud faces appeared and shifted,
dissipating like tropospheric aerosol,
pirouetting, minueting, do-si-do-ing
so much, so close, so hard,
I could smell the clouds perspire.
“What in heaven is that?” I asked.
Woodland nymphs, said she.
Then a teardrop brushed my ear
and she was gone,
just as a truck stormed past in its stench
of diesel, leaving the trees shaking.
Some difficulty with ants
The executioner leaves
soon-to-be victims
scurrying unaware,
sniffing at bait
behind a light-switch.
Ants, dear ants,
what have I done?
Like troops in mustard gas,
small corpses stagger,
piling up by skirting boards,
brothers, uncles, second cousins
now removed,
until one final dizzy worker,
blindly following his own trail
in ever slowing circles,
collapses
two toaster lengths
from home.
Obeying orders,
pest control,
ruthless,
has performed my genocide.
But now,
as tiny bodies multiply,
I doubt my solution,
wondering why
I have entrenched myself
as the Pol Pot
or Radovan Karadžić
of shattered
ant
folklore.
My forearms itch
as I put out the trash.
Remembering a reading at the literature club
I lean against the blackboard
with a love poem in my mouth.
Murmurs asphyxiate my words
as a swat dispatches a daddy longlegs
against the wall at the back of class,
where girls with sensible names,
Sarah with an haitch
and Sally with a why,
gossip, chew gum,
and aspirate at their boy crush.
But the teacher assigned me love
and gave the boy crush football.
So fouled desire
staggers goalless from my lips,
mugged by adolescents
who adamantly choose studs over hearts
and grass stains over eternity.
Bruce Marsland
was born and raised in the United Kingdom and has also worked in Finland and Bulgaria. He currently lives in San Diego, California, doing business as an editor and writer. He has been a winner of the Sentinel Literary Quarterly poetry competition, a runner-up in the Prole Laureate poetry competition, and shortlisted for the Hammond House international literary prize. He has self-published four poetry chapbooks. See more at http://www.brucemarsland.com