Poetry

Two Poems—Jennifer Bradpiece

Poetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Two Poems by Jennifer Bradpiece Thin Hair Each Botox doctor praises my thin hair. At least seven times, during the migraine quelling thirty shots to the skull and neck, they comment encouragingly on my “nice thin hair.” How they “find the spots so easily” with their impressive needles full of botulism. “Oh, see how easy it is with your nice thin hair?” they comment repeatedly, without a hint of irony. My head blushes. My split ends ...

Two Poems—Elisabeth Weiss

Poetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Two Poems by Elisabeth Weiss The Teaching Hospital Interns gather around a rare specimen: my hands splayed out before them. The surgeon points to tender joints. A camera clicks a sneer of cold command. A swarm of eyes murmur at my sheghost— a body that no longer understands its own mass and weight, cannot grasp what is asked, cannot move as it should. I used to love to rowdydance, move through crowds lickety-split. Now I am a ...

Two Poems—Emily Shearer

Poetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Two Poems by Emily Shearer Wabi-Sabi This is how we get from pain to perfect: howl, gasp, grasp, swallow, bear. Hour between dog and wolf, as a body answers sleep’s texts, when everything bends around reality’s parabola. Wabi-sabi, Japanese art, accidental crack in porcelain repaired with a shimmery glaze, a scar to remember, visible line through the body’s imperfections. Once the void begins to fill, it is no longer named “emptiness.” Call it humble; ...

Two Poems—Jill Jennings

Poetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Two Poems by Jill Jennings Arthritis The thing nips at my heels, jumps up and claws my knees. I lie down, but the beast follows me, growls and barks, whining at my bedside hour after hour. There he’ll remain the whole night muzzle on my thigh, whimpering, keeping watch, making sure I can’t leave, as if that were an option. My ankles groan like pine floorboards beneath centuries-old feet, every step like dipping into a lake of fire, a burn fed by ...

Lynch—Maya Wahrman

Poetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Lynch by Maya Wahrman Lynch There is no “ch” in Hebrew. Yet lynch it was: four tough guys from the south and a black man. “We thought he was a terrorist.” And that’s what the newspapers said. Four men arrested for “doing a lynch.” The “ch” marked by a makeshift diacritic. The refugee’s body marked with gun-chinks, bruises from benches used as weapons. Maya Wahrman reads "Lynch": Maya Wahrman is a bilingual case manager at the Latin American ...

Two Poems—Susan Auerbach

Poetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Two Poems by Susan Auerbach Tending the Shrine, Two Years On for Noah Langholz, 1991-2013 Sky blue origami cranes hover in vigil over your portrait. My place is here tending the shrine, warding off the creep of time, keeping fresh the traces of your wit, the footprints of your travels. I perform my ablutions. I finger the cold soapstone heart, kiss the cracked seashell and marathon medal. I dust your album, open to a boy with a handful of grasshopper, a grinning teen atop a ...

Two Poems—Pamela Johnson Parker

Poetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Two Poems by Pamela Johnson Parker A Week of Arithmetical Notes Toward an Elegy 1. Fair of Face Whenever I lie on my side of what was once our bed, I become infix notation in the tombstone sequence of BORN–DIED. 2. Full of Grace Subtraction is an additive inverse: your blue sweatshirt, inside out, on the floor of our closet, behind my rainboots. Solve for what’s missing. 3. Full of Woe An augend was my first lover; an addend was each subsequent one, associative and commutative. ...

Poetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Poetry Letter from the Poetry Editor: Pain, Poetic Gifts, and the Reader’s Role Kingdom Come and Distances | Steven Ratiner How Ehlers Danlos Taught Me Numbers Are Insufficient | Jessica Oesterle A Week of Arithmetical Notes Toward an Elegy +++and One Word: Counted | Pamela Johnson Parker Tending the Shrine, Two Years On and Takeaway | Susan Auerbach Lynch | Maya Wahrman Listener | Jo Ann Benda Arthritis and Night Fright | Jill Jennings Wabi-Sabi ...

Three Poems by Suellen Wedmore

Poetry Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Three Poems by Suellen Wedmore Alzheimer’s It’s just that when I walk through a door, A different person walks out the other side. Mary, Mary, quite contrary, oh, where Are all my children now? Pease porridge cold, See me hobble along the floor, eighty-nine Years old? Or sit patient at my bedside, Waiting for my John, and when I complain My son whispers in my ear, He’s gone. Was he your father then, that ...

Unnameable—Sam Moore

Poetry Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Unnameable by Sam Moore Unnameable Speak no evil don’t say its name, talk in euphemism or innuendo. Say things like playing for both sides, like I’m some sort of Russian spy. Or use phrases like swing both ways, even as I swing away from you. But everything you’ve told me… Like you’ve heard all I have to say. Like you’ve heard every name I’ve been called.Sam Moore is a writer of poetry, prose, and drama. His poetry has ...