Poetry Summer 2020 fiction all issues
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Cover Vecteezy
Rodrigo Dela Peña
If a Wound is an Entrance for Light
& other poems
Shellie Harwood
Early Evening, Late September
& other poems
William A. Greenfield
The Deacon’s Lament
& other poems
J. H. Hall
Immersion
& other poems
Kimberly Sailor
Two Aphids
& other poems
Sugar le Fae
Bagging
& other poems
Lauren Sartor
Shopping Cart Woman
& other poems
Nathaniel Cairney
Mushroom Hunting, Jackson County, Kansas
& other poems
Elisa Carlsen
Cormorant
& other poems
Daniel Gorman
The Boy Achilles
& other poems
Samara Hill
I Look for Her Mostly Everywhere
& other poems
Nicole Justine Reid
Returning to Sensual
& other poems
David Ginsberg
Butterfly Wings
& other poems
Katherine B. Arthaud
Café Sant Ambroeus
& other poems
George R. Kramer
Young Odysseus
& other poems
Amy Swain
In Praise of Trees
& other poems
Frederick Shiels
Bad October: 2016
& other poems
Matthew A. Hamilton
Summer of '89
& other poems
Chris Kleinfelter
Getting from There to Here
& other poems
Martin Conte
Ghazal for the Shipwrecked
& other poems
Natalie LaFrance-Slack
I Do Not Owe You My Beauty
& other poems
Susan Marie Powers
Dark Water
& other poems
Elisa Carlsen
Nest Initiation
it begins
like all stories begin,
a particle of light
exploding into the sun
expanding uniformly,
until we appear
to shoulder the wonder of it all,
carve our story from time
and make count
the exact number of days
we have to be here,
because when they pass
we’ll call back to them
full of nostalgia,
for the dive bars
and hullabaloo crowds,
for our weird and hungry hearts
still longing to be filled
like a river,
waiting for rain
like I was
waiting
for you
Fledgling
all my life
I’ve tried to slip the knot,
tied to the bow of my body
from birth,
wanted to lift my life up
and conform the shape of me
to something the world could love,
instead, I enter every room
awkward and un-ordained,
stuck in that space between space
where lost things live,
who only want to feel
the promise in their life again
like a pursuit-diver
on a broken piling
near the mix of salt,
and cold dark water
in the orbit of its own time
who can point its chest
to the tip of the world
fuck off and fly that way
Human Dimensions
stern-faced and beautiful
you set your life to sail
like a butterfly boat,
ported from the city
crowded with desire
going your way
until I got on mine
and we crossed
under that same
ever-dark, Astorian sky
where you / divided me
I could tell you were tired
from everything,
all the time, everything
but still you leaned in
as if to say . . .
I hope someday, something
wakes up inside of you,
tenders your darkness,
catches your fall
and turns you back
to water
Scientific Integrity
there is no doubt you went
between the folds
of interstitial space,
in deterministic beat,
I bet you’ll measure
the many moods of waterbirds
behind a perfect blind
with your still, empirical heart
and even though it’s been years
since your last sighting,
there are echoes of you here
a lasting, long-winded coo
roosting in the snags of
second-growth Sitka
from the yellow, curved shore,
where a cormorant, double-crested
dives in the air,
and where someone
who has loved something scared,
gives it back to its wild,
like you were given to yours
Social Attraction
I wonder about you
my maybe friend
with your tin-tin heart,
a wolf-trap for misfits and their kin
you love wild things so much
the fingers on your hand
blur into a web and look
like pelican feet standing
one-legged on driftwood
your bright-brown sea lion eyes
shining, ever watching
that great blue bear, the ocean,
your raspy voice
sounding like a DOS printer
running out of time
until it was,
if I could wish you back
with my dark birdy poems,
if just for the few sunny days
we get here, I would
Elisa Carlsen
is an artist, poet and rusted metal fanatic. She recently completed her first chapbook about her experience working for the federal government to develop a cormorant management plan. She lives with love, in the Youngs River Valley. She is an outlier, untrained, with no awards of merit in her craft. And still, she persists.