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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


Oak Morse

Hard as Teeth

i’ve come a long way from being a crippled tongue.

i use every vein in my body to speak clearly, but it’s

like trying to snatch a cloud out the sky. but you

choose to act like my words are so distorted. my

darling, my words slid in your ears with ease when

you wanted to get in my pants to make a fountain

out of me. i understand your cravings, we all have

them—mine was finding a companion, a woman

who could make herself at home in my heart. but

now all of a sudden everything sounds like clatter.

you made your favorite word what, ran me over

with it, and made a mockery out of me, even when

the words flowed out like a symphony—played

perfectly in unison. why use me? why use my

speech against me? in this moment, i’m a frozen

volcano and my darling, i own a heart and i would

rather spend my time helping people than

humiliating them when their imperfections shine

bright in my face. i recommend you try going for

kind next time. maybe in this moment, i need to as

well. so i’ll leave you with this: even though my

speech walks on one bad leg, it gets the job done.

Oak Morse lives in Houston, Texas, where he teaches creative writing and performance, and leads a youth poetry troop, the Phoenix Fire-Spitters. He was the winner of the 2017 Magpie Award for Poetry in Pulp Literature, and a semi-finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize. He is a Houston Texans’ Stars in The Classroom recipient and a Pushcart Nominee. Oak’s work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Pank, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Menacing Hedge, Cosmonaut Avenue, Gone Lawn, among others.

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