Dotted Line Dotted Line

Poetry Winter 2018    fiction    all issues

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Cover Elena Koycheva

Bryce Emley
Asking Father What’s at the End
& other poems

AJ Powell
Butterfly-minded
& other poems

Faith Shearin
Biology
& other poems

Claire Van Winkle
Admitting
& other poems

Sarah W. Bartlett
Summer Cycles
& other poems

Nooshin Ghanbari
Vincent
& other poems

Meli Broderick Eaton
The Afterlives of Leaves
& other poems

Jeddie Sophronius
Refugees
& other poems

Paula Bonnell
In Winter, By Rail
& other poems

Addison Van Auken Waters
Girls
& other poems

Daniel Sinderson
Hallelujah
& other poems

Andrew Allport
All Nature Will Fable
& other poems

Marte Stuart
What an Insult Time Is
& other poems

Matthew Parsons
My Father as an Inuit Hunter
& other poems

Emily Bauer
Gently, Gently
& other poems

Bruce Marsland
A once lovelorn bard’s final journey
& other poems

Beatrix Bondor
Night Makers
& other poems

Isabella Skovira
Lawless Conservation
& other poems

Juan Pablo González
Colombia, 1928
& other poems

Molly Pines
The Pillbug
& other poems

Jamie Marie
On the Lake
& other poems

William A. Greenfield
If You Show Me Yours
& other poems

Bill Newby
Tuesdays at The Seagate's Atlantic Grille
& other poems

Elder Gideon
Male Initiation Rites
& other poems

Joel Holland
Dear Gi-Gi
& other poems

Martha R. Jones
How Lewis Carroll Met Edgar Allan Poe
& other poems


Jeddie Sophronius

I Memorized the Lord’s Prayer

             I memorized the Lord’s Prayer

& with every wrong kingdom I named

             I met the teacher’s cane


                                       I raised the Five Pillars of Islam

                          the night before I kissed a Moslem girl

                                       outside the invisible line of purdah


             According to the sacred texts

Krishna is the God of love

             & one of us is going to naraka


                                       There was no way an old man from China

                          could have believed in the God of the Israelites

                                       But what do I know?


             —For thine is the kingdom,

In her sick bed, I tell my mother

             about Saṃsāra


                                       —& the power, & the glory,

                          God, she is coughing blood

                                       & insulin


             for ever & ever.

Amen.

             Please, I don’t want to lose her in heaven



Interlude: Refugees

If I were

a bird,


I’d be too

claustrophobic


to sing.

I’d drown


my wings

long enough


to become

man again.


You can call it

evolution,


except

that it isn’t.


We’ve all

been here before:


singing and drinking

until our lungs


collapse

like buildings


during

an airstrike.


Indiscernible

refugees


die every day

without their names


ever mentioned

in the newspaper.


Children born

of war

die in war.

But why


bother? The work

of God is this:


for every snowflake

that kisses


the ground

a child’s sand angel


gets closer

to getting buried,


and so does

the child.


Somewhere,

a farmer shares


his last cigarette

with a soldier


over a field

of limbs.

Jeddie Sophronius was born in Jakarta, Indonesia. He received his B.A. in English: Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. His work has been recognized by The Adroit Journal, Fairy Tale Review, Proverse Hong Kong, and has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, Juked, Vinyl, and elsewhere.

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