Poetry Summer 2019 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Antoine Petitteville
Laura Apol
Easter Morning
& other poems
Taylor Dibble
A Masterpiece in Progress
& other poems
Julia Roth
Lessons From My Menstrual Cup
& other poems
Jamie Ross
Ceaseless Wind. The Drying Sheaves
& other poems
Nicole Yackley
Mea Culpa
& other poems
George Longenecker
I’m sentimental for the Paleolithic
& other poems
Taylor Gardner
Short Observations by Angels
& other poems
Greg Tuleja
No Thomas Hardy
& other poems
Joanne Monte
War Casualties
& other poems
Nathaniel Cairney
Potato Harvest
& other poems
Steven Dale Davison
Wordsmouth Harbor Founder
& other poems
Heather 'Byrd' Roberts
How I Named Her
& other poems
Greenheart
sunny ex
& other poems
Ashton Vaughn
Through the Valley of Mount Chimaera
& other poems
Linda Speckhals
Borderlands
& other poems
Lucy Griffith
Breathing Room
& other poems
Steven Valentine
Written
& other poems
Emily Varvel
B is for Boys and G is for Guys
& other poems
Jhazalyn Prince
Priceless Body
& other poems
Marte Stuart
Generation Snowflake
& other poems
S.J. Enloe
Kale Soup
& other poems
Meghan Dunsmuir
Our Path
& other poems
Taylor Gardner
molding (kinship with the eldritch)1
honeysuckle cherubim wings were
shaped from the petals crushed in between god’s
hands. soft like pulp, they still bleed when they hear his voice.
seraphim wings were torn into crow feathers
were carved from thorns and the edges
of leaves. they bent and cut and survived and
god’s hands still wear the scars. they hurt to look at.
god didn’t make the archangel’s wings.
they made themselves from the
chaos left behind. they stole the dark, the
before, and held the horror sharpened from
the light. god smiles when he looks at them
and the wings shiver back. there is nothing
beautiful in misshapen petals. the book did not say beauty,
god did not say bloom, he said creation and
everything is ugly about that.
1 An atheist looks at the biblical version of angels and feels a kinship
we are different parts
of the same thing
a girl is told she was made in the image of
god and she wonders which part, wonders
how it is good to be part of scraps.
god pulled out his herbivore teeth one molar
at a time, left nothing left but ripped flesh and
blood and us. he carved angels out of the
bone, peeled them into flowers,
and made them into the carnivore
he couldn’t bring himself to be. twisted
demons from nerves and they are nothing but
pain, eating the leftover bone shards in
a surgical endeavor to try and
not feel such agony anymore.
god smiled, sunken mouth and gums and all,
holes where we’re supposed to
be, and said “eat. think of me in the hunger
and know that to be hollowed is to be
hallowed, that there is beauty in the
emptiness and that you are empty with ache.”
lost cause
she felt too much and saw too much in a
world that would not look back—in a god who
would not answer. she was created without
wings, only a force of fury; beautiful
and beastly, a dragon inside of a snake,
and she wondered if it was because he
knew she was to fall. she feels too much
and she cannot believe that there is something
larger—how could anything exist
in a greater magnitude to what she feels?
she does not believe but she will blame.
short observations by angels1
i. that ringing in my ears when the sky takes us sings like ecstasy cradled in their throats—i am bound by the vibrations in my bones—by the angels digging into my skin—by the altar i’m being pried open into.
ii. absolution tastes like finishing silence, clementine and salt—it’s pinned by the wings on god’s bed—spilling hallelujahs to the sheets and feeling the light leave marks bruised onto its thighs.
iii. god belongs to the devil in the way you moan his name—the way you carve desire into a halo—and how you then break it into horns—god and desire are hidden claws that drag down your back and into your hair—mouthing prayers and verses down to the skeleton beneath your flesh.
iv. when god said kneel—lucifer was the first to say “kinky” and was the first to say “no”—all glowing hoard before a dragon—and then he was the first to take power while on his knees and make a crown out of bowing—make dragon wings out of gold.
v. saints lick constellations onto your lips and novas in your mouths until you are bursting—they have no wings—just names they make you scream until they feel like they can fly
vi. creation, creation, creation—
1 The atheist rewrites Genesis into an orgy
god is just a personification
of things we’re too scared to say
she learned how to pray through the mouthful of words
caught in her throat by spitting onto the paper
and turning the shards into lines that spoke
to her better than any other god ever could.
yes, she worships. yes, she aches. but isn’t that just faith?
that she’s still coughing up slivers and loose thoughts,
that she’s not letting her blood drown her from the inside,
is just faith in a day where she won’t have to hurt to write.
dandelion seeds and sun stretched rays will
be all she needs to grow a confessional instead of being one.
she believes—in herself.
Taylor Gardner
, nineteen, is an amateur writer who enjoys tiptoeing, and sometimes outright annihilating, the line between poetry and prose. She endeavors at this from her small dorm room at SUNY Oneonta, located in Upstate New York, where she studies English and Creative Writing.