Poetry Winter 2021 fiction all issues
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Cover
Andrej Lišakov
Laura Apol
I Take a Realtor through the House
& other poems
Rebekah Wolman
How I Want my Body Taken
& other poems
Devon Bohm
The Word
& other poems
Gillian Freebody
The Right Kind of Woman
& other poems
Anne Marie Wells
Gravestone Flowers
& other poems
Laura Turnbull
Restoration
& other poems
Andre F. Peltier
A Fistful of Ennui
& other poems
Peter Kent
Reflections on the Late Nuclear Attack on Boston
& other poems
Carol Barrett
Canal Poem #8: Hides
& other poems
Alix Lowenthal
Abortion Clinic Waiting Room
& other poems
Latrise P. Johnson
From My Women
& other poems
Brenna Robinson
repurposed
& other poems
may panaguiton
MOON KILLER
& other poems
Elizabeth Farwell
The Life That Scattered
& other poems
Bill Cushing
Two Stairways
& other poems
Richard Baldo
A Note to Prepare You
& other poems
Blake Foster
Aubade from the Coast
& other poems
Bernard Horn
Glamour
& other poems
Harald Edwin Pfeffer
Still stiff with morning cold
& other poems
Nia Feren
Neon Orange Tree Trunks
& other poems
Everett Roberts
A Mourning Performance
& other poems
Alaina Goodrich
The Way I Wander
& other poems
Olivia Dorsey Peacock
the iron maiden and other adornments
& other poems
B. R. Foster
Roar
A good party is a fishbowl
on the high shelf. Hungry
tom cat pacing the pine floor below.
You have to remember to open your eyes. Have to remember the walls
are still there. You can use the glass
to pull the pruning tips of your
fingers tight again.
This room is a stock pot. Hear the clicking
clicking, clicking. The whoosh.
Everything is warm. The air hangs on our shoulders. Presses. Flattens. Kneads.
Relax. Relax.
Everyone here is blush & bashful. Everyone is gilded paper dolls
skin stretched thin by
lapis & opal & emeralds. Everyone’s a satin teddy bear. Bedroom tearstained—mommy sutures on the foot. Across the throat.
Right down their bellies.
It’s too hot here—too hot.
Everyone here is gorgeous
no one here is ok. The air thickens, sour smoke
& pheromones
fill lungs like sweatshirt cotton,
silent smiles fall to the floor.
The room is a barbecue pit—smoked thighs,
spare ribs, briskets, bellies, wings. Meat.
Are you the herb or the brine? The acid or the incisors? Gristle & tendon & bloodline.
Everyone here is small plate
shareable. Full of dirty, double dipped, quick
piss—unwashed finger marks. Everyone here tastes like unbrushed teeth &
cowboy killer mourning breath.
Everyone here is gorgeous.
& no one is ok.
Aubade from the Coast
I read once that time & gravity have
an inverse relationship. Don’t confuse
this for magnetism. The 2 sides of every coin
are opposites. Forever.
But it makes sense that when you compress
the calcium & marrow &
muscles of your fingers into a fist—the daylight
goes skittering behind the horizon.
Clock hands chase their tails. It’s almost cute.
But I guess that’s what makes the butterfly
beautiful. In the end, it ends. There’s no
returning to the warm gooey center
of its chrysalis. There are limits to milkweed
& honeysuckle.
But, I’m not saying this is a cocoon, or that I
am in any way a king. I’m saying I like
the light & the heat—the ghost story in me
feels at home by your campfire.
But when I look in the mirror I see a lighthouse.
& it’s always raining.
& I lose track of which way the tides are
going. I just sit here with the rocks
& the rotting rib cages
of shipwrecks, singing my stupid little song,
stay away stay away stay away
But when the film comes back from the
darkroom. Those same fingers, clenched fist
from before,
are a crab claw—clamped on the top bulb
of an hourglass. Did I tell you how I read about
time & gravity being the opposites that don’t attract?
But what if I’m strong enough to break this glass—
spill a million galaxies worth of seconds
across the ground & make a beach right
here?
Aubade in the Mist Ending in a
Practical Lesson on the Surface Tension of Water
After Hanif Abduraqib
There’s a rule in stories that says, if you
put a gun on the table in the beginning—it
has to go off before the end. Here,
we can start in the middle. In this ramshackle house they call friends.
The first rule of a footrace—take off running after
the gun goes off. This is that middle
of the pint melodrama, where they try to convince you every ending is a
beautiful beginning. The last sentence closed
with a period.
The next beginning with illuminated filigree, open & hungry
like a venus flytrap.
I didn’t think you’d run so fast. Never thought I’d taste
the dust kicked up in your wake & wish
for the texture of sludge clogging my throat. You know,
with enough mud & sun & time
I can make bricks?
& those bricks
will build a house that I will call me. While the person
frying eggs in the kitchen isn’t you.
I’ll take a walk along the beach.
Do you want to know what kind of gun was on the table?
It’s small & cold & fits
in almost any pocket. It can shoot 5 times before
giving out. It’s never killed a man.
I point it at the sun. I count to 5.
There is no coughing. No thunder clouds. The puffins stay in their nests.
Instead, I skip a stone into the tideline. It
takes off like a flying saucer & I
turn before the crash landing.
Did it sound like a gunshot,
to you?
Litany of the Best Ways To Be OK with Everything
After Jamaal May
Look—what’s this in my hand? Playing card
ace of clubs. Shed snakeskin—broken
condom, book of matches. It’s empty now. See
what it says here? I wish I knew you
before
you ripened.
Fold it over.
Now it says,
can you tell me how it feels to be a flower?
Fold it again, pop of black powder spark &
whisper of smoke, it’s
gone now.
Once upon a time, I met someone who said
she should have been born
an ocean. Said, she was sick of the
ash & soot in her feathers. Sick of the
stale air up here, sick of the greasy showers, sick
of the cold
eggs & potatoes & onions.
Imagine, swallowing a
star
every night for dinner.
Giving it back to the world every morning. I told her
that in a past life I was veal.
Served as sweetbreads to monsters with green skin
& no mouths. In a past life I needed to be
deep fried to be enjoyed. In a past life I fell from the branch, tart &
ready to be reduced. To be compote.
Look—what’s this behind your ear? Gummy
bear, piece of candy
cherry cough drop. The garnish at the
bottom of your cocktail.
Once upon a time, in a past life,
I would tie
myself into knots. Thinking there’s something
settling about sailboats on a smoothe ocean
at sunset; & something
sexy about a stem tied between
your teeth.
Water Moccasin
After Silas Denver Melvin
The first time I walked on water
each step
felt like building a sandcastle
on a slack tide—there’s a full moon tonight.
That is to say I’m sitting here in
a litter box packing clumps of
ammonia & cat shit into a
cracked hourglass. That is to
say—this too can’t last. Did you
hear the one about the old man &
his bologna sandwiches? Sat at the kitchen table, chatting to his potato chips, side
of pasta salad. He says, this too
can’t last. A boy sits at a small bent legged
card table, he giggles, he
rattles his pockets. He asks his bologna
sandwich, do you have
the time? That is to say, a boy
makes himself into a rattlesnake. Turns
every hourglass on its side, & laughs.
That
is to say, a boy
makes a sandcastle on
a slack tide, under a full moon, counts the seconds in his pockets &
thinks to himself, I
can make miracles.
B. R. Foster
lives, works, and writes in Portland, Maine. Foster graduated in 2016 with a bachelors in literature from Central Michigan University. His work is largely informed by his experiences surviving a pancreatic cancer diagnosis in his mid-twenties, and often focuses on the transformative qualities of both overwhelming grief and resigned optimism. His work has previously appeared in Sun & Sandstone and Train River. His debut chapbook Shriek, was released by The Midas Collective in 2017.