by L. J. Sysko
by Julie Murphy
And now my mother is the person I call
when I can’t get out of bed and it’s already
after ten, where I am now, at the end
of the second year, when I’m not crying
every second but wish I could. And when
she says I know, her tone is so kind,
as if all of the kindness in the world is concentrated
in the quiet timbre of her ninety-three years.
As if it’s turned to roses, pink—like her cheeks
and her cashmere sweater—its fullness
the honeyed petals of the Peace Rose,
the spicy center of the flower, and then
there’s a bit of rough edge somewhere down
near her voice box that tears at her words
like thorns would. And because the whole flower
of kindness is in her voice, not some sweet platitude,
I can get out of bed—late as it is—careful to mute
the phone so she doesn’t hear the covers
turning over or my steps on the stairs,
the coffee canister opening. Muting and unmuting
as we remember our dead husbands, the nights
rolling dark and numberless before us.
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Julie Murphy’s poems appear or are forthcoming in How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, Atlanta Review, Written Here: Community of Writers Poetry Review 2019, Massachusetts Review, The Buddhist Review, CALYX, Common Ground Review, The Louisville Review, Red Wheelbarrow, and The Alembic, among other journals. A licensed psychotherapist, Julie developed Embodied Writing™, a somatic approach. She teaches poetry, as a volunteer, at Salinas Valley State Prison. Julie lives in Santa Cruz, California.
by Shannon Sankey
by Cynthia Knorr
No one remembers you at the party.
You’ve made yourself too small.
Not small as in a miniature dachshund or
a tea rose but small as in constrained.
Without warning, your mind goes blank.
When you speak, your words,
if remembered at all, are attributed
to someone else. If you drop your glass,
people ask afterward, who was that person
who dropped her glass?
It takes skill to vanish your one hundred
and thirty pounds of self into thin air—
a stillness, a downward gaze,
a traffic cop-like dexterity for moving
out of the way, a throwing back of attention
from whence it came
much as ventriloquists throw voices.
You have no switch to turn your skill on
when you need it, off when you don’t.
It is stamped onto your psyche,
which makes things difficult when
your need for safety lifts, which it did,
long ago
so long ago
you wonder now if you made the man up,
if your mother was right,
if the eyes that pierced you were your own eyes
turned inward, if the whisper in your ear
was your own blood coursing
through your veins, if the oily scent
that hung over your bed
was from your own unwashed body,
if the weight on your chest
was the breath that you held
and hold still.
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Cynthia Knorr is the author of the chapbook, A Vessel of Furious Resolve (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Naugatuck River Review, Café Review, Main Street Rag, The Comstock Review, Healing Muse, Chiron Review, and others. After a career in medical communications in New York City, she relocated to Strafford, New Hampshire. She was awarded First Prize in both the New Hampshire Poetry Society’s national and members’ contests, and is a regular participant in the Frost Place Conference on Poetry.
by Maria Nazos
Bartender, my pussy is a shoebox locked up like Fort Knox.
Play that country song on the jukebox, about a girl
on death row with nowhere to go. You can do
anything, said grown-ass men like you when I grew
mountains for breasts. Tonight, I don’t need a Ouija board
to know this is one haunted-ass place. Still, I’m staying
until you shove me out. Back home, my walls nail-scratched.
Bedposts carved with so many notches, they’re whittled
down to toothpicks. I contain starving multitudes and keep
giving back. My crown droops so low I can barely see you.
Maybe it’s better this way. You remind me of that woman
in the park asked to leash her dog, who shrilled her vocal
pitch, pressed cell phone to cheek, and called the cops.
It’s hard to tell if you’re even in danger from anyone but yourself.
It’s raining. I’ve gone wishing and have to reel myself back.
The problem with letting men like you in, is you keep coming
and breaking me, again and again. Boy, it’s time you grew
up and learned to speak for yourself. My thighs thick as tree
trunks, though black elm grows up around me. You can’t
cut me off. This land is your land, this land is my land,
but Dutch Elm disease is everyone’s sickness. To say
I’m unhopeful doesn’t mean I don’t have hope. I’d like
to pass this torch, but I won’t. You’re family, like the flat
earther uncle. Every day, I stand at the estuary, wondering
if I should gently pitch in. I want to bait and feed you
to my fish. I want to cry you a river of tears. I hate you.
I love you so much I can barely stand.
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Maria Nazos' poetry, translations, and essays are published in The New Yorker, Cherry Tree, North American Review, Denver Quarterly, and Mid-American Review. She is the author of A Hymn That Meanders (Wising Up Press, 2011) and the chapbook, Still Life (Dancing Girl Press, 2016). Maria has received scholarships and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives with two crazy cats and a patient husband in Lincoln, Nebraska. You can find her at www.marianazos.com.
by Eve Grubin
Walking through summer
towards the hair salon in Primrose Hill
two women drift by, one saying to the other:
I have always wanted to do two things:
learn to play the electric guitar and
the other desire lost
among voices and the space
between their mouths and my blue skirt
trembling around my ankles.
I cross the bridge, men and women
speaking on cell phones, running to the train,
their longings unknown,
sharp, pressing into the ground, your longing
hovering somewhere between my fingers,
mine in the heat just above the pavement.
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Eve Grubin is the author of Morning Prayer (Sheep Meadow Press) and The House of Our First Loving (Rack Press). Her poems can be found in American and British literary publications such as American Poetry Review, The North, PN Review, The New Republic, and Poetry Review. She teaches at NYU in London. See www.evegrubin.com.
by Laurie Klein
by Jennifer Martelli
lay spread eagle on the sidewalk
bleeding out state after state: airless blue deep red.
(The men will come with chalk to trace her shape: white edges like hooks,
some like small penises, or a single mitten, and some crawl through the desert
and under a river.)
Three times the country screamed:
the first scream, an old car’s shrill brakes;
the second, a lovers’ spat, but the country knew the man who slapped her around, perhaps
she asked for it;
third, could’ve been a dog in heat or in want.
And the lit windows were spaces between jack o’lantern teeth, backlit by a fat candle
nestled inside the scraped-out shell.
Honest to god, it could’ve been stopped. Rain-
storm after rainstorm barely washed the blood off this crime scene:
off the hot top, off the granite, off the pitch.
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Jennifer Martelli is the author of My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), as well as the chapbook, After Bird (Grey Book Press, winner of the open reading, 2016). Her work has appeared in Verse Daily, The Sonora Review, and Iron Horse Review (winner, photo finish contest). Martelli is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in poetry. She is co-poetry editor for the Mom Egg Review.
by H.E. Fisher