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Poetry Winter 2018    fiction    all issues

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Cover Elena Koycheva

Bryce Emley
Asking Father What’s at the End
& other poems

AJ Powell
Butterfly-minded
& other poems

Faith Shearin
Biology
& other poems

Claire Van Winkle
Admitting
& other poems

Sarah W. Bartlett
Summer Cycles
& other poems

Nooshin Ghanbari
Vincent
& other poems

Meli Broderick Eaton
The Afterlives of Leaves
& other poems

Jeddie Sophronius
Refugees
& other poems

Paula Bonnell
In Winter, By Rail
& other poems

Addison Van Auken Waters
Girls
& other poems

Daniel Sinderson
Hallelujah
& other poems

Andrew Allport
All Nature Will Fable
& other poems

Marte Stuart
What an Insult Time Is
& other poems

Matthew Parsons
My Father as an Inuit Hunter
& other poems

Emily Bauer
Gently, Gently
& other poems

Bruce Marsland
A once lovelorn bard’s final journey
& other poems

Beatrix Bondor
Night Makers
& other poems

Isabella Skovira
Lawless Conservation
& other poems

Juan Pablo González
Colombia, 1928
& other poems

Molly Pines
The Pillbug
& other poems

Jamie Marie
On the Lake
& other poems

William A. Greenfield
If You Show Me Yours
& other poems

Bill Newby
Tuesdays at The Seagate's Atlantic Grille
& other poems

Elder Gideon
Male Initiation Rites
& other poems

Joel Holland
Dear Gi-Gi
& other poems

Martha R. Jones
How Lewis Carroll Met Edgar Allan Poe
& other poems


Writer's Site

Isabella Skovira

String Theory


Some scientists say there are more

Dimensions in our multiuniverse

Than number of days I spent with you.

But I tied so many strings between us—

Memories of your hair whispering its way

Between my fingers, how you put on socks

Standing up—that, in theory,

I can never be without you.


Maybe there are other universes

Stacked above and below our own

And in all of them we fail.

Maybe we don’t even exist.

But there are echoes of you

Even in these flat, visible three dimensions

And if I close my eyes

I know every possibility is a reality

Somewhere.



The Relativity of Space

Sometimes I feel so small

Compared to you

That surely you must see me

From outer space

Where all things are curved

And nothing is absolute

(At least in the Newtonian sense).


I’d still like to believe it’s true

That the shortest distance between two objects

Is a straight line,

But we’ve been talking

So many circles around each other

That I truly feel the relativity of space

And the distance between us,

So small before,

Now seems insurmountable.


But I still wish on stars,

Whose light might be past tense

By the time I’m seeing it,

That with the snap of your fingers,

With just the flick of your tongue—

If for once you’d just tell it to me straight—

There’d be no space between us at all.



Zeno’s Paradox

I’m fragmented

By the fact that

I can only send you

Bits of myself

Which only become further

Diluted by distance

Which only ever

Tears me apart more.



Lessons in Anatomy

I read somewhere once

That the tongue was

The strongest muscle in the body.

This made sense to me:

Just the tip of mine carried the weight

Of questions unasked

And sentiments left unsaid,

The dreams I didn’t tell you

When I’d begun to feel I was boring,

And the quiet, innocent declaration of emotion

That would startle your sleepy eyes.


I know now that was wrong.

The masseter is the strongest muscle in the body.

Located in the jaw.

Designed to keep your mouth shut.



Lawless Conservation

Catch and release

is a practice within

recreational fishing

intended as a technique

of conservation.


Just because

there was kindness

and compassion

from you at the end,

it doesn’t change that

it was all sport.


If in protecting me—

and my rarity

and the way you

made me out to be

so adored and special to you—

you must let me go,

then I’d rather have been

slit, gutted, and flamed

just so I could live in your belly.


The ocean may be the same

and she’ll swallow me whole with her love

the salt water will heal me

but I am different

because your hands

slid over my body

as I gasped soundlessly for air

and you still sunk your hook into my mouth

just to examine me,

decide I wasn’t worth keeping,

and toss me back in.

Isabella Skovira started writing poetry in grade school as a response to LoTR. She had an elf name. These days, she writes poetry to fit big emotions into small spaces. If you read one of her poems and you think it’s about you, then it probably is. Isabella lives in Spain, works as a higher education admissions consultant, adores her dog, has never drunk coffee, and whistles too much.

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