Poetry Summer 2021 fiction all issues
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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
Mary Jane Panke
Apophasis
There are no rosary beads in my soul. No pumpernickel bread.
No oysters on the half shell.
There is no scratch ticket, used or unused, in its pocket,
or an extra pack of matches.
My soul seems opaque but if you shine a light from behind you can see
there are no paperclips, no broken shells, no
loose threads pulled from the hem of a skirt. No ice picks. No babies.
No dreams left half or whole undone.
There are no windows in my soul, but there are doors out back
and in the front and they swing
wide in the wind and sometimes chickadees get caught
on their way to the birdfeeder.
I bat my eyes for their tiny hearts, small puffs offering a way
out, no laments for the ones who stay trapped inside.
No snow is falling in my soul. Still the ground is white,
untouched, inviting me to find
my mittens, put on my winter boots, go outside to make angels
before the darkness shines.
Raising a Son
He has a serious resistance to feeling his feelings.
You’ll have to push him first
with kindness, then a little meanness,
a soft shove off the seesaw
so he loses his grip and falls back into the high grass,
bottom down, red sneakers flying up in the air.
He’ll feel the sting of unfairness,
of soured play.
His eyebrows will twist and bend—
the arched shock of betrayal, the slant determination
to hide his always fear,
the unbreakable bridge to not-strike-back.
All the huff and heat will drain from his cheeks
before he steadies to his feet
and when you hold out your hand
his watering eyes will tell you—
No, never! and What took you so long? and How come?
Transmission of Power
Amanda Gorman, the Poet Laureate who shines
sunbeam and pomegranate at Biden’s Inauguration suggests
We, each one of us, Be the Light in the World.
The young woman who could not enunciate
Right or WRong four years ago now plays with sounds
like a child with bright plastic cups in a bathtub,
uninhibited, unafraid to splash puddles on the old
tile floors. She inculcates and orchestrates
with talking fingertips—and I float and fall
to her drumming beats in the brilliant frozen air.
This twenty-two-year-old wrote this poem to recite
before King and Kingdom, proclaims Every Thing
“. . . just is — Justice.” And I laugh inside, I cry.
I lose my breath and find it. Break loose. I did not expect
to be swept to the foot of this patriotic hill, to be pointed
in this upward direction. Amanda Gorman is the indelible
ink, she is the undeniable Call to the empty page.
The Poem in her wakes up the Poem in me.
Mu·si·cal·i·ty
Notes live in his limbs,
seem never ending,
rush out in repeating patterns,
gutsy echoes pushed through
a broken hole. He exhales with exertion,
approximating song.
Not tamed by lips or tongue,
it comes from his blood,
this pulse of joy, this tickle of fate.
And he knows he cannot whistle
or tie his shoes. He knows
he will never drive cars, fly
airplanes. But it doesn’t scare him
from climbing staircases,
from shout-singing in the shower,
from welcoming this morning’s sun
with the full force of his breath,
untuned, unstoppable.
Mary Jane Panke
is a past Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with poetry appearing in various publications, including Poetry City, River River Journal, Word Fountain, The Ekphrastic Review and Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review. She is a member of Monday Poets, lives near Hartford, Connecticut and can be contacted at mjbpanke@gmail.com