Poetry – Page 9 – PLEASE SEE ME

Deaf & Dumb—Paul Hostovsky

Poetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Deaf and Dumb by Paul Hostovsky Deaf and Dumb The Deaf man in the waiting room asks me how long I’ve been working as an interpreter. I tell him many years. “Awesome,” he says. We sit there chatting, waiting for the doctor to come. He tells me a little about himself. His parents and grandparents are Deaf. His siblings are Deaf. His two young children are fourth generation Deaf. The hereditary master status of a kind ...

Because of the Wolf—Kendra Leonard

Poetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Because of the Wolf by Kendra Leonard Because of the Wolf I. when the diagnosis comes it fits it clings it feels slack like sheets flirting on a clothesline in a breeze— now bedding, now ghosts— will I die in strawberry time or live to see leaves on bricks or ice in the windows? II. The wolf has eaten the beach. It’s snapped up the sandpipers, running on their fast little legs. It’s taken the bright afternoon in the water twisting the sailboats around. Sunburn on ...

3 Poems—Sarath Reddy

Poetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Three Poems by Sarath Reddy Inheritance After the curry-stained dishes had been cleared, our dinner table became a stage— the cosmic dance of Shiva, Durga destroying the buffalo demon, Rama vanquishing Ravana. Father was a god who vanished every evening only to reappear at breakfast ready to finish those stories as if night was only an intermission. He never spoke about his bloodstained shoes, his splattered white shirt, never shared a heroic anecdote about those he had saved ...

Two Poems—Kasha Martin Gauthier

Poetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Two Poems by Kasha Martin Gauthier A Poet Homeschools, Week 2: Biology With each footfall, blood courses to your brain. Can you feel it? * Pinch the nerve to make it grow. Your grandfather pinched springtime buds from the coreopsis— thought he was deadheading them. Try not to confuse living with dying. * The doctors don’t know how he’ll react to the morphine, or the strength it took to ask for it. They don’t know how he still knows our ...

Three Poems—Jessica Mehta

Poetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Three Poems by Jessica Mehta Do You See the Stars? This is waking up. Remember when you pressed your thumbs, thick and unforgiving, into my eye sockets, slow as death until I gave in to the dizzy and you whispered, accent sticky, dripping in rose syrup, Do you see the stars? And I did. They burst in the darkness like kisses. This city has a heart, fluttering crazed and drunken as a beast, fingers itchy and always ...

Painkiller Seeker—Dara Kalima

Poetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Painkiller Seeker by Dara Kalima Painkiller Seeker After three years, and so many visits, as I sat with much angst in that ER bed, she said, “It sounds like your gallbladder.” I laughed. After all, it was almost three years of seeking help for a mystery that led to self-medicating after a ton of tears and unceasing nerve-burning pain. I laughed and said, “Funny, I don't have one. See, I complained of a pain three years ago, immediately after the operation that ripped ...

Lodged In My Throat—Emma Connally-Barklem

Poetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Lodged In My Throat by Emma Conally-Barklem Lodged In My Throat Lodged in my throat, is it a sticky willow or is it a conker? Spiky. Shot down at the age of five and festering ever since, No rinse can clear it. Instead, the child curled inside the wardrobe must be allowed her time, Daisies held, hopeful to reclaim what was hers and mine Before trauma trailed her dusky skirts across her ...

What Holds—Christine Himmelfarb

Poetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 What Holds by Christine Himmelfarb What Holds 1. Word Problem Partly it’s a linguistic problem. I don’t like the nominalization, the noun made of a verb. Even the word itself holds within it another noun, the way I did. And then there’s the carriage. A reminder of an empty one. So let’s try an active approach. The verb “miscarry.” I carried incorrectly like a child bearing a watermelon to a picnic, unsteadily and any second ...

The First Thing She Lost—David Duncan

Poetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 the first thing she lost by David Duncan the first thing she lost when you want to remember their name some actor or actress and when it doesn’t come you just let it go it shows up later at some odd time when you walk into a room and you can’t think of why so you go back to what you were doing and then you remember it’s not like that at all it’s like you’re ...

Three Poems—Marceline White

Poetry Issue #9: Open Call November 19th, 2021 November 19th, 2021 Three Poems by Marceline White My Son Studies the Stars He makes calculations: graphs numbers, forms equations of stars in graphite, leaden stars,++math formulas form galaxies— ++++if stars are math, which they ++++are and aren’t. There is a planet, Farout, otherwise known as 2018VG18, which was recently found. Or rather, recently discovered. ++++It was not lost. I study letters, which I assemble and reassemble into formulas, forming words that re- present the world: creating form from 26 letters rearranged into: ++++universe; galaxies; stars. My ...