Poetry Summer 2021 fiction all issues
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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
Bill Cushing
Creating a Corpse
the body didn’t decay from the inside
but from the amassed and mindless
parasites that festered
to kill a nation
they invaded collectively
permeated the soul of a society
and did
what no congress could
until a shroud of suspicion
of “the other”
descended to mask the land
with either fear
or justification
or rationalization
the inner rot came from outside
with a destruction
brought on one by one
like oncogenes
tens became thousands
to destroy the body politic
with infected thoughts justified
by clinging to affirmed beliefs
poisoned by the certitude
of conviction of those
who
held the approved thoughts
who
carried the right signs
who
wore the appropriate hat
or the most fitting outfit
subversion doesn’t need spies
just a marauding cult of zealots
taking action
like the innumerable insects
that can fell an elephant
with a parade of slight
but poisonous bites
Parting Pictures
A spotlight shines, center stage,
over a dozen white folding chairs
arranged in symmetry, waiting
for mourners to gather.
Front of house, facing a screen
between the seats, is the silhouette
of a wheel chair where an old man sits
bent from the weight of 98 years.
He has already buried a wife,
Rose of his life, and now faces
the visage of his namesake,
the young man framed on the screen upstage.
The face looks out, peers through the tight
shaft of light, a Playbill facsimile,
previewing a life of accomplishments,
now another casualty of cancer.
Even four decades of difference
residing between them cannot obscure
the similarities that fasten these two:
the pyramidal nose, the tapered chin.
Two Toms, frozen in time, framed
in someone’s lens: the one who remains strains
against age, defying gravity to lift
a weary arm to wave a final farewell
to his son.
Souvenirs
Waiting on the promised end times,
the erosion of age absorbs
but does not erase all remains.
They are out there all around us:
Skulls piled high by centurions;
blackened bodies, impressions
scorched into earth by flame throwers
of the Great War. Then,
glazed eyes gaze at the world from men
draped in aprons of skin and thrown
in wooden wagons like human
debris by soldiers of the Reich;
and wretched blood retched on sand
from biological weapons.
Feeling feral charm, men with clenched
fists and clenched minds descend
into woeful revenge, and passion
waxes as we join the westering sun,
and the heat of living flashes
and fades into desolation.
Spelling the Name
All-consuming
Indefatigable source of
Destruction of
Someone, somewhere
All the time; an
Insidious
Dragonnade
Summoning
All other
Illnesses to
Destroy its host.
Since its start,
Almost inevitably,
It has become our age’s
Disease: our cancer, our polio, our
Scarlet fever.
As
It
Dives into an immune
System,
A feeling of absolute and terrifying
Impotence
Demands
Satisfaction,
And
Its greatest ally may well be the
Diminutive minds of
Some who,
As
If
Deaf,
Shush those who speak.
Anyone
Is vulnerable; to assume safety,
Dependent upon hope, is entirely un-
Safe.
The Prodigal Father
Somebody told me
how you had grown
as a man worthy
of honor on your own.
I wasn’t there,
avoiding the weight
of giving you due care
forcing you to live enate
as I surrendered
to another life
that was false and rendered
me to live like one who died.
Now I come to you
to be absolved,
hoping to mask or subdue
a lifetime uninvolved.
Bill Cushing
has lived in numerous states, the Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico. Returning to college at 37 after serving in the Navy and working on ships, classmates at the University of Central Florida called him the “blue collar poet.” Earning an MFA in writing from Goddard College, he now resides in Glendale, California. Bill has three poetry collections: A Former Life, Music Speaks, and his most recent, . . .this just in. . . .