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
Rebbekah Vega-Romero
The Memory in My Pinky
Fingers have memories.
I never knew that
till I saw my father’s crispy husks
at the hospital that first day after the fire.
The elegant nails & agile tips:
Blackened
Shriveled
Unrecognizable.
The sinew between them
pulled taut
like the strings of his beloved
guitar, wound sharp beyond
the proper pitch—
Though these strings were so sharp
they pulled the frets out of order
and bent the very neck of the vessel.
My first thought was not
of the harm those fingers had inflicted—
No, it was not how mi papá had used them for
ill & perhaps earned their loss.
I saw at once:
There is no harm he could have caused to
earn that grief.
My first thought was
of the music those fingers
held in their memory.
Was that music now ashes,
lost to the dust
like the skin & fat & bone
that had stored them?
But this is not a poem about my father.
This is a poem about my fingers.
How my fingers always know
when I am touching the right chord
— they tingle & grow warm.
How my fingers do know
when I’m singing the note right
— they freeze & they tremble.
How did my fingers know
your hand, the first time we touched?
Why do they ache, down to their
connecting joints
when you are out of reach?
Even my pinky remembers how
good you feel
in my hands.
I cannot unknow
los recuerdos de mis manos.
To unlearn your touch, I fear,
would require a fire that twisted
my instrument into something
mythically unrecognizable.
And even then, would my fingers take
after mi padre in their stubborn knowledge,
just as they do in their length & skill & grace?
You see, my father is making music again.
It’s not the same—
no, it may never be lo mismo,
pero it is something
Promethean to witness.
And so I reach for you again,
and my fingers sigh their relief
into yours,
and your fingers respond in kind.
The Coffee Table
When I was four years old
I shattered my parents’ glass coffee table.
Decades later, I still dream about it:
The initial crunch & ensuing waterfall tinkle of the glass,
the reflecting light over my head on the ceiling,
how surprising the flaming lick of pain
was in the soft pink flesh of my feet,
the viscous heat of my blood
coating the cold foreign pieces of glass.
When she told me the truth with a condescending sigh,
I was kneeling on your bed
in a pool of pink & purple light from
the early spring sun pouring through your window,
refracting through the glass print of our kiss.
Every hair on my body stood up
and fell back down. I forget
how I ended the conversation. I know
I grabbed the half-full tequila bottle & drank the whole thing while I called
you eight times then finally texted:
Pick up, you coward.
The coffee table dreams, though:
they always start with me in the middle of the
sea of glass & blood & empty frame.
I forget exactly how such a small person
made such a big mess.
If I asked my mother, she would probably say I was dancing on it
or claim my sister did it
or question whether we had even had
a glass table to break in the first place.
Memory is fiendish that way:
I remember specific lines from this play
but not what I was holding in my hand
when I asked if you had lied to me
when I asked if you had fucked her
(twice)
And you said “yes” & “I’m sorry.”
At that point, I know I was standing on the other side of the bed,
looking at the love light,
and whatever was in my hand
flew
and broke the window
and rattled the pink kiss pane.
It was the clinking sound of glass on glass,
the way our melting kissing selves seemed to
mock me with their joy,
that made me scramble, tiger-like,
over the bed to pull down that fragile gift.
It was the empty “sorry”s that drove my hand
or it was the memory of the night before,
how you laid your head on my breast
and whispered that you loved coming home to me,
or it was the ghost of the pain in my feet
from childhood, that raised that portrait
and systematically shattered every
glass surface in your room—
each pane of the window / the tv /the antique mirror you almost gave to
one of your sisters, till I insisted on giving it to you for Christmas—
until I was left barefoot & somehow
not bleeding
holding the one thing that would not seem to fracture
no matter how I battered it:
The portrait of our kiss.
When it finally broke on the now-empty
window frame & landed in the alley below,
I didn’t notice the pink sliver
left behind on the sill.
My parents never replaced that
glass coffee table.
Maybe they realized a small apartment
with toddlers is no place for
mid-century modern decor.
You said you wanted to order another
glass print of our love,
but I don’t think you will.
I think you will hold on to that sliver
and dream about that kiss
and the waterfall of glass
for decades to come.
Obviously this metaphor requires balance,
a light touch,
it is so symbolic as to be laughable:
He bought me a bike.
Here, love: here is your freedom.
But also, here, love: here is the proof:
Here is my love, solid & dependable,
with a frame I patched up with
my own two strong hands.
(Riding a bike after fifteen years is
not at all like riding a bike.
My body does not remember,
not fully,
how to balance
how to launch forward
when to pedal
when to coast
when to switch gears
how to smoothly brake to a clean stop
without kicking at the curb.)
I do love the push, the climb
the exertion of defying
gravity to sail up a hill,
keeping eyes ever vigilant for
cars or worse their doors,
but as I coast along the ridge
as it begins to descend again
doubt comes in,
crawling up my hips & into my belly
coating my palms on the handlebars
with a dew of fear that makes
clicking the gear higher stakes:
will this be the moment I am
unable to slow down
to halt when I should,
is this the time I cross the uncrossable line
and will I be rewarded with the press
of gravel & metal & pain & blood?
Is that punishment what I am
seeking when I send him that text:
thinking about going for a ride
?
I know enough to know
sometimes (often) smart women make
bad decisions, like the better you
are at being there for your friends
the worse you are at showing up
for yourself, like being able to interpret
Chopin, or quote Shakespeare,
or cure the plague,
preoccupies so much of your facilities
there is simply not a burner left
on which to keep the kettle
of your heart warm.
So I snap on my helmet
which can’t protect my most fragile organ
(as a wise but problematic professor
tells each incoming theatre class,
“You cannot put a condom
on your heart,”
by which she means,
“Don’t fuck your classmates
and bring the mess to class,”
but which many students take as
a personal invitation to a quest
to fuck as many as possible,
and by now, surely, she knows this?)
and I meet him on the road.
On two wheels
we can’t look at one another
as we speak the wind
steals key words, growing the mystery
and making a mockery
of our fickle friend the truth.
When we pause to change directions,
breathless, it is impossible not to blossom
in the warmth of the shared sun
between us.
When I ride ahead, I almost feel
safe, with him at my six
and the open lane before me.
I am relearning
how to ride, singing in the evening breeze
that tugs the strings of my mask loose
flashing my smile for the grieving world to see.
I am rewriting my definition of love
but haven’t yet landed on one
where we’ll both be free,
a love that encompasses my dignity
and forgiveness,
a love that can rise from the ashes:
is it too much to ask of such a light word?
Too soon the ride is ended
before it has really begun
and we are each left to chart a new course
alone.
Defenestration
Is such an ephemeral word
For such a violent act.
Once when my baby sister was pregnant
She had to get her phone replaced twice in one month:
Her baby daddy
Defenestrated
The phone
And its replacement.
At my lowest moments, for some reason
I think of this word
Defenestrate
And want to cry at its terrible allure:
Why
Why fly
Why fly so high
Why fly so high in the sky
(We used to wail these words as a warm up
in Voice & Speech, remember?)
And I think of the people who chose
Defenestration
On that bright September morning
And I think of the people watching them,
Not on the news
But on the other side of the office.
For surely there were souls who,
Instead of running down those endless stairs
Or leaping into the abyss of blue
Stayed put, stayed still
As the building crumbled & closed in
And took them down too.
I feel seared to the floor, too:
I can’t seem to lift a foot to run
To flee from the crumbling carcass of our love
And I can’t seem to trust
And make the leap to fly.
Instead I stand staring dumbly
Growing more numb by the millisecond
Till I am no longer connected to the flesh that
Longs for you.
It feels like my love has
Defenestrated
From my body.
They call the eyes the windows of the soul:
Maybe now that these windows have been opened
To the truth long enough,
My heart sidled over to them
While I slept so many nights alone
And silently, without warning
Leapt free.
Never Can Say No
A Villanelle
I know I never can say no to you
And worse, I think that’s what you want to hear
Each time you smile & say you love me, true.
The truth is that you obfuscate my view
And when you dimple at me & hold me near:
I know I never can say no to you.
And I wonder: do you have a clue?
It touches some wet wound inside, my dear
Each time you smile and say you love me, true.
When you leave, it cleaves my world in two
And in your absence, I see my heart quite clear:
Return, I never can say no to you.
My bones ache, you turn my vision blue
With the churn & yearn of primal fear:
No more to see you smile, your love’s untrue.
Each time we meet again like déjà vu
We touch, we kiss, we cross the next frontier.
I know I never can say no to you:
No, not when you say you love me, true.
Rebbekah Vega-Romero
is an NYC native, a proud member of Actor’s Equity, and a triracial Latina bruja. A YoungArts award-winning writer, Rebbekah graduated from Boston University with a Bachelor’s in English Literature and Theatre Arts. Rebbekah has a wide-ranging career as an actress, from her “luminous” portrayal of Maria in “West Side Story” at the 5th Avenue Theatre, to her upcoming short film, “The Question,” which she also wrote and produced. Her poetry has been featured in The Quaranzine Zine. Rebbekah hopes her work will inspire other mixed-race girls to realize that “there’s a place for us.” Visit her virtually at www.RebbekahVegaRomero.com.