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Poetry Summer 2021    fiction    all issues

Cover of Poetry Summer 2021

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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


Writer's Site

Oak Morse

Incandescent Light That Peeks Through Secrets

There’s a whore waiting on me, tucked under a duvet.

My headlights pierce a night’s sky, my shadow

bounces around brown leaves when I walk to her doorway.

I become dynasty. My car always honors me—gleaming

in the background, exhausted but nevertheless elated.

The journeys are always far-off from city lights, sometimes through

dirt roads where the woods swallow me whole; I want to thank

my car for its devotion. There’s a whore waiting on me,

a cacophony underneath my rib cage when I weave

around roadkill, wipe the moon’s tears with my windshield,

pray there’re no nails on my path, no police predators pulling me

over out of boredom—questioning until I curl up and become

shame. I’ve been stranded a time or two, but never on the way

to sin. Tire tread reliable as rubbers, oil tank full as an ocean.

Car, do you want a shower, with strawberry soap suds and a wax

that rubs you in all the right places? I give thanks, for the heat

you blow on arctic nights helping my cologne settle in my skin,

as the D.J. rambles, playing his midnight mix and regret tries

to cruise with me. There’s a whore waiting on me, looking out

her window like it’s an aquarium, anticipating my pull-up under

hotel lights, my bounty hunted-bandit walk, Listerine strips

in my pocket, body wipes in the other, soul noise left in the car.

Praising my engine for never coughing up hell no or collapsing

on its bones, leaving me cold on the curb, unhandy, heart

racing like it does when we’re panting, after.

Oak Morse lives in Houston, Texas, where he teaches creative writing and performance. He was the winner of the 2017 Magpie Award for Poetry in Pulp Literature. Currently a Warren Wilson MFA candidate, Oak has received a Pushcart Prize nomination, fellowships from Brooklyn Poets and Twelve Literary Arts as well as a Stars in the Classroom honor from the Houston Texans. Recently a recipient of the 2021 Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay Fellowship, his work appears in EcoTheo, PANK, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Nimrod, Cosmonaut Avenue, Solstice, among others.

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