Poetry Summer 2021 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover
Diana Akhmetianova
Monique Jonath
Viscosity
& other poems
Alix Christofides Lowenthal
Before and After
& other poems
Rebbekah Vega-Romero
La Persona Que Quiero Ser
& other poems
Oak Morse
Incandescent Light That Peeks Through Secrets
& other poems
George Kramer
The Last Aspen Stand
& other poems
Elizabeth Sutterlin
Meditations on Mars
& other poems
Holly Marie Roland
Clearfelling
& other poems
Devon Bohm
A Bouquet of Cherry Blossoms
& other poems
Ana Reisens
In praise of an everyday object
& other poems
Maxi Wardcantori
The Understory
& other poems
William A. Greenfield
Sometimes
& other poems
Karen L Kilcup
The Sky Is Just About to Fall
& other poems
Pamela Wax
He dreams of birds
& other poems
Mary Jane Panke
Apophasis
& other poems
a mykl herdklotz
Mouettes et Mastodontes
& other poems
Claudia Maurino
Good Pilgrim
& other poems
Mary Pacifico Curtis
One Mystical Day
& other poems
Tess Cooper
Airport Poem
& other poems
Peter Kent
Congress of Ravens
& other poems
Kimberly Sailor
White Women Running
& other poems
Bill Cushing
Creating a Corpse
& other poems
Everett Roberts
Hagar
& other poems
Susan Marie Powers
Canada Geese
& other poems
Mary Pacifico Curtis
One Mystical Day
“What do you want? Why are you here?”
I said to the deer that lay in my lawn
a mottle of brown on grass like straw.
He gazed at me I waited ‘til answered
by a rustling breeze blowing golden
bay leaves from branches through trees,
flakes gusting the yard between the buck
and me. Then he rose six points
to the sky ambled uphill
into the trees into the shade away.
“What do you want? Why are you here?”
I say as a young deer rests at lawn’s edge
two craggy horns angle ears twitch and turn
to new sounds on the breeze.
Haze and pine dust
barely conceal six points behind him
the big blinking buck.
The two bring back another day when we learned
our time would be short We knew when deer after deer
appeared and stayed.
White Wings
—June 2011, Endeavor’s final flight
The thrust, the dare
to dive and penetrate
a hadal realm of eyes
that don’t know light
Sticks rubbed together,
ice made into lens,
flint against steel,
the spark
Endeavor hurtling
above continents
no longer.
She lumbers,
a vessel atop a cylinder
crossing borders
invisible
from the firmament
white wings under cumuli
clear to cornea upward
turned
the steady climb
to cirro clouds,
vaulted into
a Gods-eye view.
Ubi cáritas est vera, est vera. Deus ibi est.
Easter 2019
I.
A thick wood ridge runs the length of the sanctuary. Between its downward sloping beams, wood rectangles frame 28 ornamental tiles. Multiply that by seven sections & by two sides of the church. My oldest daughter confessed she calculated the number of ceiling tiles for 8 years during weekly masses. We baptized our girls here, memorialized their dad when he succumbed to cancer. “He didn’t want to die,” said the priest. † Holy doorways sheltered Joanie who sat upright in her bed of tatters shouting, “ Leave me alone, get outta here, fuck you, leave me alone.” † The Spanish teacher taught that homosexuality is a sin. Bullying began in the primary grades. Parking lot chatter broke marriages & provoked the occasional restraining order. Moms met up for kickboxing & shared wisdom on sizing implants for perfect tits. “We are the body of Christ. We have to be God’s hands, feet, voice.” † One Christmas Eve, the priest asked who had come to earth. In an echoing moment of silence, a 3 year-old answered, “Santa Claus!” † Christmas yet again. I snarl under a mask of smiles in the sanctuary. Year after year.
II.
Notre Dame de Paris burned at the beginning of Holy Week.
Our Lady of Paris.
Mother of continents and genocides.
Mother to immigrant boats tossed in high waves.
Mother church to fathers and mothers
torn from little children.
Our Lady’s steeple falls.
Votive memorials persist.
flame against flame.
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble . . .
Mary Pacifico Curtis
is the author of Between Rooms and The White Tree Quartet, both chapbooks published by WordTech’s Turning Point imprint, as well as poetry and prose that has appeared in The Crab Orchard Review, The Rumpus, The Tupelo Quarterly, LOST Magazine, The Naugatuck River Review, and Narrative Magazine. Her work is also included in numerous anthologies. She was a 2012 Joy Harjo Poetry Finalist (Cutthroat Journal), 2019 Poetry Finalist in The Tiferet Journal, a non-fiction finalist in The 48th New Millenium Writings contest, and a 2021 finalist in the Tupelo Quarterly non-fiction open.