Poetry Summer 2016 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Carly Larsson
Sarah Sansolo
Bedtime Stories
& other poems
Miranda Cowley Heller
Things the Tide Has Discarded
& other poems
Alexa Poteet
Escobar's Hacienda Napoles
& other poems
Cynthia Robinson Young
Triple Dare
& other poems
Nicole Lachat
Of Infidelities
& other poems
Amy Nawrocki
Bad Girls
& other poems
Lawrence Hayes
Winter Climb
& other poems
AJ Powell
God the Baker
& other poems
Gisle Skeie
Rearranging
& other poems
Bruce Taylor
Always Expect a Train
& other poems
Ricky Ray
They Used to Be Things
& other poems
S. E. Ingraham
Storm Angels
& other poems
Laura Gamache
Outing
& other poems
Keighan Speer
It Rained Today
& other poems
Emma Atkinson
Grocery Stores Make Me Feel Mentally Ill
& other poems
Erin Lehrmann
Block
& other poems
D. H. Turtel
Margaret, Again
& other poems
Chris Haug
Bovine Paranoia
& other poems
Kimberly M. Russo
Definitive Definition
& other poems
Holly Walrath
A Tourist of Sorts
& other poems
Angel C. Dye
Beauty in Her Marrow
& other poems
Angel C. Dye
Her
this poem is for her
stitching up wounds from twelve years ago
out of her teens and still unsure if she goes
both ways
hating birthdays cuz they’re reminders that
she’s closer to death
at one point she wanted that
cut/purged/hurt herself in an effort to forget
she was herself
this poem is for her
in a clinic for the third time with a womb
he suggested she turn into a burial ground
but the real tomb is her heart every time
he knocks her down cuz she don’t understand
why she still loves him
this poem is for her
married/divorced/remarried/single/alone/
reclusive/elusive/polyandrous/straight/gay/queer
here
this poem is for her
too narrowly defined and more than meets the eye
too easily denied and more often dismantled and untied
than uplifted and inspired
this poem is for her
wherever it finds her
and i hope she writes her own version of it
when it feels right for her
Tapestry
There are dangling threads and strands
frayed and loose hanging around the hems
of my skin.
Two knotted a long time ago then ripped to
shreds and were never able to mend.
And I am their tapestry, their crooked
cloth, their patch on ripped knee jeans
and snagged shirts.
Sometimes we all tangle into each other,
and I feel one’s blue-black eyes the same
way I feel the other’s doped veins and venom.
They are separate ends of the same bolt of
fabric, and I am all that joins them now.
Sometimes I want to be my own, not theirs.
I am them even when I hate it.
Hate hanging on to what I think is their
regard for me by a thread.
Hate safety pinning the pieces they’ve left
me with just to make something wearable.
I am wearing too big and too small skin that
they draped and stretched over me when
they felt like it, and now I am old enough to
tailor myself into whatever I want to be.
Of course I will have to washboard bathe the
rags I have been for twenty years,
but once I am wrung out and hung to drip dry
I will soak up sun like it is all that can revive
the colors of my cloth that have faded.
And I will wear the two ends of my newly
stitched garment, and their knots and
tangles will not strangle me
but they will make me whole.
Inquiries on the Meeting of Birth and Burial Ground
—for Sybrina Fulton, Lesley McSpadden, Gloria Darden,
Geneva Reed-Veal, and every mother who has buried a stolen child
Have you ever asked her what it’s like
carrying stillborns in her womb?
To know her seeds are flowering
only to be snatched up like weeds?
Have you tried to look past her eyes
and into the empty space carved out in her soul
for ruptured membrane and crushed bones?
If she told you would you understand
how bathing babies feels like readying to
wring out bloodied clothes?
How nursing her children foreshadows
breathing resuscitation into their bodies?
If she said she expects the doctor to hand her
birth and death certificates on the same day
would that mean anything to you?
Does it make her heroic or insane
to birth children who might never
reach adulthood?
Is her heart home or hearse to her lineage?
Can she hear hope rumbling in her belly
over the sound of barrels and bullets
midwifing her fear?
Will she hug and kiss
or eulogize and bury her future today?
Will her motherhood always be marked
by questions and memory?
Symphony in D
When darkness enters you
there is no way to push back its hands,
groping and grabbing at yet undeveloped chords,
stroking and stealing the naïveté of prepubescent melodies
Darkness has a familiar face,
gentle, welcoming, reassuring, childlike—
friendly
Your insides clink and clatter
like maracas, tambourines, high hat cymbals
but your music is crashing to a crescendo
you cannot control
You have never broken a bone before,
still you are certain that darkness has
fondled fortissimo fractures all over you
And by the time your notes and clefs
rearrange to sound beautiful again
nothing is fine-tuned enough to undo
darkness’s cacophony
Beauty in Her Marrow
Inhaling paradise feels like kissing
the glass partitioning forever and the end.
Amethyst rain pirouettes through begging vessels,
and she is fifteen minutes freer than five seconds ago
shrouded in superhuman flight.
She hovers
over thirteen-year-old yesterday;
flashes of women who look too much like she
entwine their trembling fingers with hers
teaching her how to b r e a t h e .
And the air up here is glorious—
white, shining, sparkling ‘til it glares, ‘til it blinds,
bounteous and aromatic enough to choke
her into unconsciousness.
Breath is heavy, heavy
when it is a relevé and plié gasping through her pulse and ribcage,
somersaulting to a sudden scream,
when it is the soundtrack to her priceless transaction.
Selling and buying she knows.
Colliding and collapsing she knows.
Shatters and splinters she knows.
Even redemption and renewal she knows.
But does she know that there is air yet more divine than this?
The clouds gathering for torrent and storm around her cyclone
can grand jeté too.
Though she is looking through lenses
fogged and blurred by ragged breathing now,
once she is ready to collect the cracked and calcified frame
meant to hold her upright,
she will again see the beauty in her marrow.
Angel C. Dye
is a poet and spoken word artist from Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas by way of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Currently she is a senior at Howard University studying English with a concentration in Creative Writing. She is passionate about using poetry as a medium through which she questions, explores, and makes sense of the disparities in the communities that she represents as well as to approach liberation and communal healing.