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
Ellen Romano
Seven Sisters
Linda sings in her kitchen
about the murdered and missing,
songs written for her indigenous mother
and those who have disappeared.
I warm my hands over the flame of a candle,
listen to the song of a woman who looks out
a window and sees an image
of her murdered sister in her own reflection.
In the winter sky the seven Pleiades
are pursued by a hunter and flee
across the night sky, a story
so ancient and widespread
it could have first been told in Africa
when we huddled around the same fires
before dispersing among the continents.
I walk home under a crescent moon,
to the rhythm of a mournful song,
too far from the light of a friend’s kitchen,
thinking of sisters and loss,
of the ways families fall apart and never
regain their old configurations.
Pictures of Mary, 1983
Gina had a crush on Agnetha from ABBA,
took pictures of her on the television
while her friend stood next to it, posing.
What, Mom? I just want some pictures of Mary.
Her mother didn’t know she liked girls.
When the pictures came back nothing
could be seen on the TV screen.
Gina’s mother yelled at the waste of film,
ten pictures of the same thing,
Mary next to the television
gazing into the camera.
The Rocking Chair
My husband bought a rocking chair
before he died, Grandpa’s chair
he called it, long before
any sign of a grandchild. Now
I take a picture of my son rocking
the child his grandfather never met.
One generation brightens
as another fades, the gift
of continuity, the reason to be human
is to suffer, though a handful of days
are nothing but joy.
If the world survives, one day a child
will see this picture and say,
there is my grandfather rocking my father,
others will see great-grandfathers,
and second great-grandfathers, on and on,
down the long chain of grateful, suffering humans.
My son gazes at his child, his feet move
up and down, working the chair,
the pivot connecting all that has passed
with everything still to come.
Mocking
He returned in the spring,
his song a car alarm. Eight years
was his expected life span.
My husband did the research
and wished it shorter,
then the mockingbird outlived him.
His was the loss I was not prepared for.
I feel like I’m going to die.
On purpose? asked my sons,
whose love anchored me to the world.
Only a mockingbird desperate
for a mate sings through the night.
Alone in my bedroom
I was conscious of the bird’s effort,
the convulsions of the diaphragm
and breast muscles as he sang
his discordant notes hour after hour,
seeking a mate with a warning of danger.
Ellen Romano
, an educator, mother, grandmother and widow, lives in Hayward, California with her cat, Billy. Her themes are memory, family and grief. Some of the publications where her work has appeared are December Magazine, Lascaux Review, and Crosswinds Poetry Journal.