Poetry Summer 2016 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Carly Larsson
Sarah Sansolo
Bedtime Stories
& other poems
Miranda Cowley Heller
Things the Tide Has Discarded
& other poems
Alexa Poteet
Escobar's Hacienda Napoles
& other poems
Cynthia Robinson Young
Triple Dare
& other poems
Nicole Lachat
Of Infidelities
& other poems
Amy Nawrocki
Bad Girls
& other poems
Lawrence Hayes
Winter Climb
& other poems
AJ Powell
God the Baker
& other poems
Gisle Skeie
Rearranging
& other poems
Bruce Taylor
Always Expect a Train
& other poems
Ricky Ray
They Used to Be Things
& other poems
S. E. Ingraham
Storm Angels
& other poems
Laura Gamache
Outing
& other poems
Keighan Speer
It Rained Today
& other poems
Emma Atkinson
Grocery Stores Make Me Feel Mentally Ill
& other poems
Erin Lehrmann
Block
& other poems
D. H. Turtel
Margaret, Again
& other poems
Chris Haug
Bovine Paranoia
& other poems
Kimberly M. Russo
Definitive Definition
& other poems
Holly Walrath
A Tourist of Sorts
& other poems
Angel C. Dye
Beauty in Her Marrow
& other poems
Kimberly M. Russo
The Home Depot
Even the inclined plane
we walk,
mirrors our journey.
Together . . . but worlds apart.
You’ve found a replacement,
Iron Man.
I am isolated,
Recluse.
You speak of new opportunities,
options.
The lump in my throat,
Nostalgia.
Automatic doors offer
solutions,
An immense warehouse of
answers.
Materials promise repair,
neglected.
Tools for the taking,
untouched.
You say, it’s my chance to
start over.
I can re-introduce myself,
sever ties.
(Like some defective product
made-over . . .
manufactured and marketed to a
top-drawer buyer.)
I am looking back, refusing to
let go.
You are looking forward, choosing
your future.
In a wall of stacked boxes, an empty niche,
Sylvia’s oven.
I pour myself inside and cover
my face.
My last visit to this “House of
Improvement”
left me on a short
rope
Tethered to “experts” of
the mind
and memories of the child
within.
With their shelves of
tools
and crates of
drugs,
what did they really
fix?
Sobbing in the presence of the
Hydrangeas,
I exit through the door we entered
together.
You pay for the filter to clear our
water
and leave by the alternate route.
Wreckage
My house survived the storm.
Damaged, undoubtedly . . .
but still upright.
Tearing through our home,
collecting seemingly random items,
an escort to oblivion.
Debris left behind . . . stacks of books
and their hopeful characters,
unshelved, displaced.
With force enough to eject furnishings,
and thorough enough
to pack your toothbrush,
You’ve left me
with the wreckage
and empty spaces.
Joint-Custody
Rolling suitcases and repurposed gift bags,
stuffed with clothes and memories.
How did we get here?
Four kids and two homes and six bruised souls.
The numbers don’t make sense to the heart.
Noted mistakes, tally marks in your mind,
engraved on my conscience
strike-over the ink of promises.
Years of shared dreams and intimate moments,
have you fled so discreetly?
I see you bleeding through the parchment
refusing to give up.
Don’t you realize, it’s too late?
The suitcases and their innocent handlers
are gone.
Definitive Definition
Keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss;
sharp sorrow; painful regret . . .
So reads the definition of
Grief.
Mental suffering.
Steady weight presses my mind against the confines of my skull from the moment I wake until the moment I wake,
punctuated throughout the day by a hammer that yields ruthless force.
Sharp sorrow.
It found me below my ribcage today.
Staring at the lumps of packaged chicken, I inhaled through my teeth
and knew I could not side-step its arrival.
Painful regret.
Cooking for one is a parody of normalcy.
And not bitter, nor sharp, nothing tastes so bland
As grief.
An Unsubtle Metaphor
The pages turned, and I hadn’t tended to them ... at all ... just like the garden in the backyard. Neither of us spent a portion of our time clearing out the dried up messes, or planting new seeds, or even watering the life that existed despite our neglect. Now, the hour is late, the brittle leaves are the foundation of the plot, any recent growth withered beneath the truth of daylight, and neither of us seems able to produce a seed of hope.
Darling, Dearest,
quite neglectful,
How does your garden grow?
It doesn’t.
End of chapter.
•
I weeded the “garden” today — If you call a few strawberry plants fighting for space amid a jungle of tree-sized weeds a garden. It was hot. I wore gloves to protect me from the thorns, but some of them pierced deep enough to bring blood. I had to bend and squat and assume a variety of uncomfortable positions. Sweat kept finding its way to sting my eyes, and my hands were dirty, and several times, I wanted to quit. I thought about rushing through it, kind of half-assed ... you know? ... just focusing on the enormous stalks that even the neighbors recognize. Instead, meticulously, I plucked the tiniest sprouts, one at a time, until their remains formed a sizeable pile. Even as I pulled the last clinging root from the earth, I knew that tomorrow new stems would break through the dirt. The labor was long and detailed, and no one was around to notice what I had done. Standing upright, I admired the boxed plot of overturned soil and the cleared stone pathway. I’d forgotten how lovely it was.
Kimberly Russo
is an English teacher in Aurora, Colorado where she resides with her husband, Tony, and her four children (Nick, Audrey, Grace, & Maritza.) Kimberly spends her free time gardening & bird watching. Much of her writing is dedicated to Marriage/Family, social issues, including the perpetuating inequality among genders/race, and the stigma associated with mental illness. Her poetry has appeared in River Poets Journal, Open Minds Quarterly, and PDXX Collective.