Poetry Winter 2020 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
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
Josiah Patterson Wheatley
I am from
the poplar tree at the creek’s edge
on my grandparents’ farm
where once my cousins and my brothers
wanted to see who could climb the highest;
my feet uncommitted
were rooted to the ground,
more like the poplar than my kin.
a place where my grandmother grew raspberry bushes
stretching from the dilapidated toolshed
to the dusty driveway, from which
she tasked us with collecting berries for pie—
we’d return ashamed, buckets nearly empty,
mouths stained greedy red.
the summers when I still slept between adults,
too scared of the dark and too fussy to admit
I needed a nightlight,
nudging my grandfather’s ribs with sharp elbows
until he roused and chased me back to my own bed:
a pullout couch in the oversized living room—
shadows in every corner.
but too, a second home, in leaner years
when my parents’ folly wounded us,
and they’d drive us past the butte and past the rye,
leave us at the steps of cracked concrete, unaware
the world I knew always grew a thousand times grander,
even believing the creek at the acre’s end
really did stretch on forever,
where grandpa’s charred burgers and lumpy potato salad
were an emperor’s feast.
a place that bubbles up first and fast
when someone might ask, “where are you from?”
there—
in my grandmother’s homemade pies and
secret cigarette breaks when she thought we were napping,
in my grandfather’s snore during his,
in a house’s endless rooms of hide-and-go-seek
and in cousins who grew faster than me.
I am from
dust, from smoke, shadows and burnt meat,
from the juices of fruit, too sweet to not eat.
Cœur de Fleurs
Petals pink hurricane
a heady, maddening perfume
as we walk the storm swaths made by thorns;
stiff stems atlas the folded heads of silk
that rise from too-large vases,
ballooning like puff adders
to camouflage her coffin.
The light catches anthers, pollen golden,
though the sepal leaves are midnight dark
pressing upon the rose flesh
like wanton talons
desperate, unbecoming;
“stop weeping, stop weeping,”
I hear someone say.
There is one drying pistil
who draws my eye
who aged too soon, or emerged too eagerly,
whose withered head rests weakly now
propped up amongst the living,
the vibrant others, giddy white
or blushèd red;
and suddenly
I am inconsolable
to realize
she was the receptacle, I the bloom.
The bouquets decomposing now,
soft dead raindrop petals—
the adders molting skin.
The organ swells, a final dirge,
and we slither the same path out:
now the littered floor,
little buds unopened;
crushed under shined black shoes,
whole rose hips
bleed into the gray carpet like spilled wine.
Mother gives each vase away,
like prizes at the end, to
the puffiest eyes.
Clenched fists, the huddled mass,
nor flagged flowers are mine:
I am saturated
against the devastation sky.
Fucking Kierkegaard
Each time I come,
it’s my mind who escapes.
I read somewhere—
in a library,
Kierkegaard perhaps?
—that life must be spent being filled up and not emptied out
not like a deflated balloon or dead flowers
given at the end of a rotting relationship;
they sit in a dark room
for days, as ska plays, booming
from somewhere in the apartment complex.
Every time I betray myself
my fucking heart on a crusted sleeve
—no. The shameful roundness of my mouth (yes.)
when my eyes roll back,
my hand between my legs
or braced against a cold marble bathroom stall
I’m emptied. Empty.
When will I fill up?
Once I stop asking questions I do not seek answers to
//
During college, Thomas used to let me walk with him
on days after class
after library hours had ended
or when I’d find times when we would cross paths
or create run-ins like a stalker
we’d talk and talk or I would just listen to his honey-words
to his thoughts about philosophy
down city blocks, down the path that led by his apartment
by the horse pasture hidden behind the hemlock bushes,
the horses I swore I told myself I’d ride today—that day
(every day)
Some weird fantasy of being connected to them
riding bareback
feeling the sweat of their power beneath me
//
But I have passed the breakaway
Thomas is gone,
my thoughts of him distracted me, and the horses too.
I go back now to find their enclosure empty
(just as I)
empty still
still questioning and deaf/blind
//
Kierkegaard compared the cries of a poet—the ones that now pass my lips—to beautiful music, though profound anguish existed inside.
I retort:
my orgasms are my battle song,
my barbarian screams to topple Rome
to go to war with my emptiness
(though still losing)
The blood-soaked fields repeat like dashes on my road home
and no more Thomas
the horses whinnying behind me, from someplace I can’t reach
still I long to ride them, but
my passion is
and has always been
weaker than my actions
my act
my acting
acting that I am full of
the moments when Thomas takes naps in the afternoon
like on that one lucky day
he let me come in after walking him home
(my puppy paw prints behind him)
I could have listened to his breathing endlessly
//
But here I ache for release,
find myself in the same old places
the hot breath
the cold tile
the shit-smell of a rest stop bathroom
hoping for someone to come in and
save me
empty me
fill me
and though they do,
over and over and over and over (and over)
I am still on the battlefield
still thinking of fucking Kierkegaard
and the horses unmountable
still asking my same questions
the question:
If the borrowed me (waiting to renew)
without repeated climax,
the shot of neurochemicals
into a rotted brain,
can claim myself
pull my tattered shell off the library shelf
open the pages
and exist
as one who is filling up for something better
as one who could ever
one day
(please?)
be whole.
Trans Formation
Perhaps some know the biting of their tongue
When it has swollen wide inside their mouth,
Imagine now the swell of body, soul:
The given name you wish to leave behind,
A voice of different timbre in the mind,
A rush of blood, a gnash of teeth internal—
Those born inside a skin ready to shed.
Inglorious fight: To claw out through the husk,
To paint anew with bold and clashing brush,
Cocooned in rainbow sleep yet yearn for blooming.
Denied by those who choose a hateful cry,
Who’d rob a body of its phoenix rise.
When only stone is given for the shaping,
The breath of lungs desires a molting form.
Though other bodies’ priv’lege recognized,
Prescribes no onus here for their demise,
Nor pity choices made by such cicadas.
Instead to grant by law this chrysalis,
To new-old souls, the freedom to exist.
At last, emerge the way an alate does:
With wings and light they’d always held inside.
Born and raised in Montana, 
Josiah Patterson Wheatley has been a baker, guardian ad litem, special education teacher, and late night bus bouncer. He worries a lot, writes poetry sometimes, and possesses both a whimsical appreciation of nature and a healthy curiosity of the supernatural. This is his first publication.