Poetry – Issue No.4

The Purported Last Words of Ruth Blay
The Purported Last Words of Ruth Blay 1920 930 Erin Emily Ann Vance

Tell me where I’ll be hanged. The elm? The gallows? The balcony of my lover’s home? Don’t let my students watch, don’t let the girls see. I haven’t yet taught…
  • Lisa Folkmire

Oscoda
Oscoda 1920 1229 Lisa Folkmire

It was my first skeleton, the once birch forest now bare Look, the command like water dripping from our mother’s mouth as we all turned our heads to drink from…
  • Aremu Adams Adebisi

Mother of Blood and Bone
Mother of Blood and Bone 1440 1920 Aremu Adams Adebisi

When father wanted to take a new wife, he sang mother her panegyrics, bought her the finest boubous from a local shop, traced her wrinkled face, her feverish hands, then…
  • Renee Emerson

On Suffering, From a Mother of Four to St. Catherine of Sienna
On Suffering, From a Mother of Four to St. Catherine of Sienna 1440 1920 Renee Emerson

“I have always long to suffer for God and His Church” – St. Catherine of Sienna When you told the Pope to “be a man,” what did you know of…
  • Frances Boyle

Night Parings
Night Parings 1920 1440 Frances Boyle

Scattered peels of shine that lie on glassy water, shiver out of reach. Blue light filters neighbourhood rooms as you walk the dog, shadows lamppost to lamppost. Napped dark against…
  • SK Grout

Ursa Minor
Ursa Minor 1920 1433 SK Grout

There is a scar on your inner thigh, that looks like a bear, and when I traipse my index finger too close, you go rowr. Always Ray, always. I walked…
  • Tyler Howell

Pacman at the Arcade Casino
Pacman at the Arcade Casino 1920 1285 Tyler Howell

The gamblin’ Granny next to me pulls levers lets the wheels roll, smack BAR BAR BAR or the cherries she prays for. My cherries are in the maze. Let me…
  • Devon R. Ortega

Kintsugi
Kintsugi 1920 1465 Devon R. Ortega

When you are broken, you can feel the cracks and fissures with the tip of your tongue, you run your fingertips over the gaps reading the braille of what’s hurt…
  • alyssa hanna

in memory of someone who may not be dead
in memory of someone who may not be dead 1920 1080 alyssa hanna

for lillaree she was getting her doctorate on the last island she owns in my memory’s receding fogbank. it’s been thirteen years and i’d always figured she’d be dead by…
  • Sneha Subramanian Kanta

Ghazal with reference to Sylvia Plath
Ghazal with reference to Sylvia Plath 1920 1319 Sneha Subramanian Kanta

A part of your body ached, the doctor pressed it. Said—fine here, take these, Sylvia. But you replaced the pills with music. Fine. You knew enough to be a woman,…

But It Did Happen
But It Did Happen 1920 1390 Kristin Garth

and they will bring you medicine, bald spots beige suits, the other ones, averting eyes, grind teeth between pink cotton polka dots. You sniff their bouquets poppies, powderized to chase…
  • Jessie Lynn McMains

Upon a Time
Upon a Time 1920 1080 Jessie Lynn McMains

I’ll tell you a tale that begins upon a time when I was a wee slip like you, loves, the backyards and vacant lots dripped lousy with lightningbugs. I called…
  • Rachel Nix

Patriarchal
Patriarchal 1746 759 Rachel Nix

He used to come up behind me, tell me I’d make some man a fine wife. Didn’t know the kind of man I wanted, if I wanted a man at…
  • Todd Smith

Apologia, America
Apologia, America 1920 1440 Todd Smith

Listen: it’s raining ash. The one holding his nose tight in blueish kleenex is your dead neighbor’s only certified son,   heir to eleven thumbs and a language made of…
  • Adele Winston

Better Days are Coming
Better Days are Coming 1920 1339 Adele Winston

Mamma says when tears salt my face and every slap of ocean rises up to close my eyes. She squeezes me tight. So tight I taste the sweat of breast…
  • Jennifer Wilson

Ecce Angus Dei
Ecce Angus Dei 1920 1064 Jennifer Wilson

Behold the Lamb of God as chasing downhill butterflies behind its own lolloping head it croons in yellow tides like flowers flushed red when pressed, when cut. White wool turns…
  • Sara Anderson

Grandmother, Baking Bread
Grandmother, Baking Bread 1920 1080 Sara Anderson

Up to your elbows in yeast and flour, you smiled, hummed followed no recipe texture of the dough your own small empire My father bit his tongue though the muscles…
  • Mathew Yates

Seasons
Seasons 1920 1147 Mathew Yates

having come far you feel half-begun the tree’s leaves bud & bloom just as they had to all along i hadn’t eaten subsequence in ages i hadn’t aged since i…
  • Sprout Conner

-cide
-cide 1920 1440 Sprout Conner

I know my mother loves me. She tucks me in each night, puts the thick wool blankets over my face, her voice wasp-like as she reads The Little Match Girl.…
  • Jeanna Paden

Anxiety in a High-Rise
Anxiety in a High-Rise 1920 1080 Jeanna Paden

the stairwell smells like a barbeque joint tonight and also a joint; lightbulb on the last flight of stairs is out and if the broken doorknob at the bottom of…
  • Laurie Koensgen

Creed
Creed 1920 1080 Laurie Koensgen

We hold the slender threads we find, spin and triple-twine them –– mitten strings from the abandoned nurseries, tails of ditched kites, cement-stayed vines. We take comfort. We make comforters…
  • Courtney LeBlanc

Still
Still 1920 1285 Courtney LeBlanc

We sat side by side, a feather of air between us, the first time together in months. I wondered if you were imagining the salt of my tongue, the bite…
  • Jake Bailey

The Doctor of Electric Dreams
The Doctor of Electric Dreams 1920 1080 Jake Bailey

After Wallace Stevens’ “The Emperor of Ice-Cream” Call the roller of straightjackets, The muscular one, and bid him sling In Dixie cups cylindric pills. Let the nurses needle in such…
  • Kim Fahner

Triad
Triad 1920 1229 Kim Fahner

Glance, without words, but with averted eyes. Clouds, with wind, but without silvered rain. Longing, without logic, but with blood singing. Header photograph © Andrew Hall.
  • Trinity Herr

Rattlesnakes
Rattlesnakes 1920 773 Trinity Herr

Our smallest hands pulled rattlesnakes from the weeds. They were infants like us. Pads of our index fingers patted their doglike heads, we laughed. They hugged their bodies ‘round our…

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