Poetry Winter 2021 fiction all issues
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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
Peter Kent
Reflections on the
Late Nuclear Attack on Boston
In the dark hours—tucked
within a crease of nubbed mountains
that once reached upward like cathedral spires
—rest betrayed me like a dozing guard
at perception’s door, and I missed
your annihilation. I should at least have
witnessed the illumination that marked
the passage into incoherence
of every creature I cared for. Instead,
it was the alarm of birds, startled
by an instant of out-of-sequence dawn,
that woke me. I knew you were gone.
Maple and birch remain cloaked
in festival-bright reds and yellows.
Though now their leaves fall like burnt scraps
of skin, becoming a blanket of muted color
unable to offer comfort. Neighbors
up and down this dirt road to nowhere
come together, speaking in whispers, as though
reverence in this church of the inconceivable
might persuade the phantom-taloned vulture
of fallout to pass on toward Canada.
Our favorite table at Algiers was any one that
serendipitously became available. Though,
I liked best when we could sit near the steel wizardry
that manipulated beans and water into beverage.
Your face by lamplight remains a medallion
beyond value in recollection’s battered vault.
A shared slice of apple pie, bulk of winter coats
across the back of chairs, notebooks filled
with hapless words . . . all a prelude
to despair.
Remember those bitter Februarys
when we could race out onto the Charles
in boots and parkas that Admiral Perry
would have admired? The wind sharp as a slap,
the snow sifted and shaped like frosting.
We never went far from shore—uncertainty
heaving like a bellows against our confidence
in the ice’s underbelly. Your fingers were always so cold.
Flesh seemed to hold you in discomfort, as if
it were impossible to keep such a being for long
in corporeal form. I choose to think that you rode
the crest of the blast, singed but soaring into
those hidden dimensions where frost and warmth
meld like the memory of a walk down Marlborough
Street on an October evening.
The power is out, and panic is rising like a fever.
The forests groan like prisoners freed
to seek out those who hacked away their liberty
to colonize these hills. Nature never needed us.
There are gunshots in the distance. All those
shadowed militias that trained for this
are now marching in lockstep with mayhem
to finish us.
In the catalog of lunacies this must seem an inexplicable entry.
No random asteroid or comet did this. The vaporized creatures
built and triggered the very devices that ended their existence.
We’re trying to harvest food from refrigerators and freezers,
and realizing we don’t have enough insulated coolers to hold much.
How do the rest of us perish? Starvation is a more subtle violence,
and perhaps it’s been reserved for the least worthy
and unlucky.
Vanity’s a victim, too. No more pomade for my hair,
nor toothpaste. Though, I suppose I’ll wear my contact lenses
until my supply’s exhausted. Deodorant’s destined to dissolve
into the distemper of vaguely remembered indulgences, too.
And, of course, what will become of entertainment?
No Netflix or HBO. Though, one supposes our satellites
will orbit like tombstones for a long time without us.
Perhaps poetry will reemerge as the preferred diversion
to recall and carry forward what it’s like to huddle
about a fire on nights that growl with radioactive beasts
and spirits we hope are the ones who once loved us.
Gasoline is fool’s gold, and we are frenetic fools.
It will take longer than we have to adapt. No one
here has a horse. Ivan—odd and cranky—has his yurt,
and he’s likely our candidate to survive the longest.
We’ve agreed to give chainsaws priority. Even green wood
can be coaxed to ignite if one’s desperate enough.
We’re presuming that a standard winter will knock on
our doors initially. We confer like cattle in council,
stupefied and unable to assert reason
to untangle the dilemmas of obliteration.
And where, I wonder, are you now? Are you
knitting new skin over the cut on my forearm?
I was clearing a blowdown from a trail and didn’t notice
the stob on the still standing tree beside me. Clumsy.
Do you see me stopping beside a brook that bends
into the woods just beyond comprehension’s reach,
striving to become stoic as a bear seeking out a den
in which to endure survival’s sanctuary, searching
for clarity in a land of shadows, working still
to harness meaning to words? I trust
that your voice is twinned with the wind,
trying yet to fill the cup of my ear
with a hymn of solace.
Peter Kent
’s poems have appeared in Cagibi, Cimarron Review, Greensboro Review, Lullwater Review, New Millennium Writings, The Opiate and other journals. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.