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Poetry Winter 2020    fiction    all issues

Cover of Poetry Winter 20

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Cover
French silk sample book

Paula Reed Nancarrow
Morning Coffee
& other poems

Jill Burkey
Mala
& other poems

Oak Morse
Boys Born out of Blues
& other poems

Beatrix Bondor
Engine Ode
& other poems

Monique Jonath
a mi sheberach
& other poems

Lisa Rachel Apple
Bounty
& other poems

Gillian Freebody
The Human Condition
& other poems

Kirsten Hippe-Rychlik
and we are echoes
& other poems

Devon Bohm
Forgiveness
& other poems

Jeddie Sophronius
I Rest My Mother Tongue
& other poems

John Delaney
Poem as Map
& other poems

Elizabeth Bayou-Grace
Fire in Paradise
& other poems

Monaye
In Utero
& other poems

Michelle Lerner
Ode to Exhaustion
& other poems

William French
I Have Never Been
& other poems

Josiah Patterson Wheatley
Coeur de Fleurs
& other poems

Karo Ska
womb song
& other poems

Robyn Joy
Sisyphus
& other poems

Han Raschka
Love Language
& other poems

Rebbekah Vega-Romero
The Memory in My Pinky
& other poems

Gilaine Fiezmont
Europe, too, Came from Somewhere Else
& other poems

Scott Ruescher
At the Childhood Home of Ozzy Osbourne
& other poems

Emily R. Daniel
Visitation Dreams
& other poems

Lindsay Gioffre
Toxicodendron Radicans [Sonnet 1]
& other poems


Emily R. Daniel

Visitation Dreams

after Adrienne Rich


I.


I dialed his number

it rang Electric Light Orchestra


from a phone hooked to the wall

by a long coil unfurled


just wanted to tell him

in partial French for no reason

to be his own ally, gentle

but willing to fight


he’d said he would answer anytime, but he is

away from the phone right now


last I remember it was in his hand

and the message read to hold on tight


fingers curled into the bowl of our palms

we call it carrying, but it is something else


what is left behind rots eventually:

expanding, then folding in on itself


haven’t seen rain for weeks, but the earth

still sometimes gives way under foot


there are fires we hope will become ember by morning

stay up just in case


flames sprout tentacles, blaze exponential

hearth overflows then disappears


wish it to hold

since we have no other way



II.


his expression told me

he could only stay for a moment


that he was glad

earth-side time would be brief


long enough but not for me, yes

his face fell only a little


as I watched him melt into the ground

waist deep, waving



Tuesday, 10:15 a.m.

I stood at the copy machine

he saw an invitation

belt buckle pressed into my panty line

paused, deep drag of my scent

I held mine in did not turn my head did not see

his face I imagined grinning, satisfied

by how still I stood for him, man

whose name I never knew

except the name of his sigh, his right

to breathe me in, collide just long enough

to hear the silence of a throat closing

around a breath where a shout should have been



Decline

After Jenny Xie


Handful of cast-away elders


La Feria: taken away from homes on untilled land


Their genial linen and limp hair


They forgot how to grimace as action heroes do, as if facing down an enemy


Bodies offered to swallowing sky


Cerebral pleasure caving in


Bland bread pudding in evenings, one person per room


Where to find their expectation, when life has outlived its meaning


It was the return to adolescence, those blurred years


They never understood the dying dwindle by growing heavy


And that there would be no children


Whose eyes would light like their own



Two Weeks after
George Floyd’s Death


Today we clean house together

though it is bright and mild outside where the breeze

on her face while bike riding is heaven

and our Japanese Lilac tree makes shadows

she pretends are fellow superheroes

ready to fly, ready to fight.


Sirens sound from all directions

so frequently we wonder if it’s the same one circling

or new emergencies every five minutes.

We cannot determine how close they will come,

whose need they answer.


She holds the mop in protest, pushing

wet dust bunnies in wayward motions,

defying the list I made that clearly read sweep first,

and I make a joke about how hard it seems for her to contribute

to the cleanliness she knows at home.


She looks up at me, lower lids holding tears

and says how

how can anyone be happy

how can anyone be happy with everything

going on in the world?

She brings a hand to her throat in a loose hold,

confirms there is an exhale that follows an inhale

there is a pulse, there is

her mother’s heartbeat beside her ear

as I pull her to my chest.



The Clinton Legacy

If she’d gotten down on her knees

more

he wouldn’t have gone looking for someone

who would

she said with a mouth that

without a doubt

had a dick in it last night

hard to imagine anyone wants it

there

even after a shower

with that fig scented soap lingering

on the shaft

with no time

for odor to develop in crevices

once it hits the throat’s edge

smell matters less than controlling

the gag reflex

anyway

it’s a job for which liking it

is not a prerequisite

some things

have to be done

consider it insurance

if your eyes water

tell him that’s what happens

when your mouth holds

something so big

that can’t be swallowed

Emily R. Daniel’s debut chapbook, Life Line, was selected as a winner of the Celery City Chapbook contest and published in 2019. Her work has been featured in The Bangalore Review and Sylvia Magazine. Emily lives with her family in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

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