Poetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Osteoporosis by PS Cottier Osteoporosis So many holes in the word, it’s almost onomatopoeic as if the porous bones used the doctor’s mouth as a ventriloquist’s doll. Four ‘o’s in the diagnosis, and many little voids in my hips. My brain is forming a single big “O” of surprise. Have I not worked out? Have I not pushed weights? Why would my bones allow these tiny, traitorous caves, in which I sense the word “break” lurking like an omen? “Break” contains ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Two Poems by Doriana Diaz Brandywine No. 1 i blamed you/for this/for making me this way/for the vicious battle/i’ve been playing/back and forth/with all the parts/i want to get rid of/but still remain/maybe that night/i took fire to my own flesh/desperate to find/the exact location of you in me/to try to burn you out completely/enoughwasenough/i can’t lie/for a second before the stench excreted from my pores/i felt relief ++++++++eraseeraseeraseeraseeraseerase ++++++++holdspaceholdspaceholdspace bupropion 300 ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Two Poems by Dagne Forrest Mother’s Heart as Incandescent Lightbulb For too long I allowed this heart to be a porchlight, standing sentinel, always on, even in the glare of day. It blotted out anything else I could be, casting me in the role of a lighthouse or the sun. For a long time, I didn’t even notice, the light came naturally and I loved what I saw, children growing and tussling ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Two Poems by Emily Hockaday Anniversary As my father became thinner, ALS whittling his body to something we didn’t recognize, the weight my mother carried grew. As though each lost pound was added to her grief. I watched her way out in the waves, where I couldn’t swim, and I wondered how she kept from drowning. On lunch breaks I called from the Wall Street public space, surrounded by indoor palm trees and strangers, ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Magnitude 7.1 by Catherine Klatzker Magnitude 7.1 When the earthquake comes at night, you search first for your glasses, then your shoes. A flashlight would be a friend, a protector. There is so much splintered glassware. In the morning, before the power returns, you take in the ruins, the way your home, your neighborhood, has been lifted up, shaken, and dropped any which way. You plot ways to get more bottled water if there is enough cash, ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Migraines by S. Marie Watkins Migraines Split neck th(robbing) to temples and eyes, pain makes ++++++++++its presence kn(own) ++++++++++once I learn what normal could be. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++I wish I’d feel (screwd)rivers +++++++++++++++++++++++++++in homemade lobotomies – frontal lobe ++++s / c r a m / b l e d. ++++++++++Faces melt into s(wirl)ing ++++++++++messes, hiding truths ++++++++++++++in toxic light. Roots from the Mighty ++++++++++++++Migraine +++++++++++++++++pull at my skull, +++++++++++++++++seep th(rough) my vertebrae +++++++++++++++++tie knots around my stomach, +++++++++++++++++(wreck)ing plans +++++++++++++++++and blurring dates – ++++++++++erasing language ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Three Poems by Jill Michelle When the Orderly Wheels Me Out Afterward there is a family loading up their SUV fumbling with the baby seat as the morning sun winks off the shiny Mylar balloons with their blinding pink hues confetti exploding around the words: Congratulations! It’s a girl! and I can’t swallow the hiccupped sob before the new mother hears turns, smile caught on my balloonless wheelchair watery stare no cart of bouquets to be packed in the backseat no pastel-tissued ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Two Poems by Allison Whittenberg Hedy beauty, the curse that coursed through her aggressively moreover, how dare she have a brain under such a face? all this was said to be so . . . unfortunate pretty and smart? unfortunate? that’s a joke-- right? Allison Whittenberg reads “Hedy”: Lip Service that Hollywood star is so woke the only Black person she has on her instagram is George Floyd. Allison Whittenberg reads “Lip Service”: A Whittenberg is a Philadelphia native who has a global perspective. If she wasn’t ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2022 April 22nd, 2022 Poem Title or # by Author Voice It is raw. Purpled and chafed thin, worn and warned. It denotes mere meemies before white coats: ++++++++another Medicaid queen to diagnose. It is tight. Squeezed fingers dig with nails that pierce the silence and trust that whatever pain I’m in, ++++++++it’s better than treatment in this skin. It is sore. It has hollered and howled, generations of harvests and fibroids and is now a high-pitched white noise— ++++++++bloody murder into the void. It ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #10: Women's Health April 22nd, 2021 April 22nd, 2022 Poetry Letter from the Poetry Editor: A Requiem’s Saving Grace The Women's Waltz, The Other World, and ++++and The Professionals | Lake Angela Children's Hospital | David Banach Osteoporosis | P.S. Cottier Brandywine No. 1 and Home Sequence | Doriana Diaz Mother's Heart as Incandescent Lightbulb and ++++and The Art of Distraction| Dagne Forrest Anniversary and Red Shift | Emily Hockaday Magnitude 7.1 | Catherine Klatzker Migraines | S. Marie Watkins When the Orderly Wheels Me ...
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