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
It might be getting bad again.
I find myself preoccupied with corn:
Spending hours paring kernels from the core
over the kitchen table.
They look like tiny golden eggs, like honeycomb,
each yellow chamber straining, full of fluid,
shelter for the seed of life within.
How many kernels on the ear
how many ears on the stalk
how many acres of American soil
look just like this,
rolling fields of nothing but
the plant that I pick apart
with eyes, with teeth, with kitchen poetry?
How often do unruly seeds challenge the neat rows of the ear
how often do unruly birds challenge the neat rows of the tractor?
surely American ingenuity has answered their call
has engineered the birds, the roots, the kernels
to lay neatly ordered: every hill and plain
must be structured squarely, Manhattan blocks.
Under the kitchen lamp, I stand with knife and cob
like a whittler, as if the blade
could shape it into something new,
could pry out the secrets of what lies
beneath the sweetness of the seed,
as if I could make sense of the porous center
and its unyielding white flesh.
I think about Marilyn Monroe
begging the reservation women for naloxone
in her darkest hour—
I, too, am the daughter of murderers and thieves
unable to make sense of a world
made and unmade for me.
Somewhere the last crow
still pecking golden kernels from Monsanto’s ears
laughs at this great joke
before he goes squawking to the gallows.
“When the assault on a maternity clinic in Kabul on Tuesday was over, 18 newborn babies were left behind, many covered in blood, and most now motherless. The youngest, whose mother survived, was delivered in a safe room after the attack had begun.”
—The New York Times, May 14, 2020.
Baby, this world is an onion:
layers of carnage partitioned only
by a few thin, purple walls.
My eyes itched when doctors
cut into the woman beside me
to haul out twins.
My eyes watered when men
cut into the roof
to bring it down around us.
Baby, I felt the world shake within me
as you moved, your head against
the door to the world
like a battering ram
until I opened and gave way.
I felt the world shake around me
as men moved against the doors,
forcing the clinic to give way.
Baby, I watched someone
birth a tiny mewling son
moments before the shelling.
A freshly cleaned child, blood-spattered once more.
A new mother dead before the sweat cooled her brow.
Baby, was there time
for me to deliver the placenta
that slippery lunch box,
your sidecar?
I did not have much to send with you.
But I wish there had been time to give
what I had:
a name,
a kiss,
a few months’ milk.
I think the type of man I like
is the man I’d like to be.
when my shoulders grow broad,
I try a swagger in the silver of my mirror
to impress my reflection;
(s)he is not convinced, but still
the strangest desire stirs
not to touch as much as to become.
couched somewhere deep within my mind
is a baby boy who neither lived nor died,
only lay down for a warm afternoon nap once
in his favorite grass-stained overalls.
I chop off my hair. I spit in the street.
I plead with my jawbone. I refuse to shave.
someone faked his death,
printed an obituary in the local paper’s runny ink:
(he was curious, he loved trains, he wanted to be like his father)
and pulled whatever it is that I am
from his empty coffin
perhaps the men I take to bed are recompense
for the life that sleeping child was denied.
when I seek out unyielding lovers
in the places where I bend,
is it for them at all? maybe I am merely
searching for the body of the boy I never was.
i.
There is a loneliness—there is an emptiness there.
No, don’t feel it. Don’t linger.
Trust me, you don’t want to feel it.
Here, a drink will help you drown it out.
Here, I have just the thing.
If you micro-dose this slow-acting poison
you won’t feel it anymore.
If you pump yourself full with plastic glitter
you won’t feel it anymore.
Take in the halogen light, the radio static,
the endless buzzing of electric wasps.
You cannot feel emptiness if you are full of sound and fury.
I have just the 8-bit garbage for your ears,
just the flashing pictures for your eyes,
just the sickening sugars for your lips.
Feel arteries clog, neurons fizzle out,
eardrums rupture, eyes go blind.
It makes you feel like a person, no?
People do these things.
People experience these sensations.
People gorge themselves on glitter and neon and booze,
people are eternally chasing the next high,
the next three-minute sequence of static,
because it must mean something, right?
ii.
We prayed for answers and the gods on high told us to consume,
that taking in creation would save us.
We have made ourselves arks for more than two of every kind.
Walk to the grocery store while having a breakdown.
It’s nothing but wall to wall
color slogan purchase consume this will feed you this will fill you this will save you.
Dinner so easy you will have more time.
Time for nothing. Time for what?
Please avoid the wet floor sign; it doesn’t mean anything.
Don’t look at the slick sheen of water on the floors; it is a mirror.
Don’t look at yourself in the mirror.
In the mirror are your eyes and in your eyes is your soul
and if you look you will remember that there is an emptiness—
that you are a beast alone in this world
that these sugars and statics and lights are not saving you they are rotting you in an ill-fated effort to save your soul, and what soul? What could there be left to save? You let yourself be dazzled by the lights and colors and glitter and static and act like it means something, like you are less alone—
you are alone, dreaming
your own static to produce.
What would you do but give more garbage
for more to consume? Nails on chalkboards, bouquets of carrion flowers,
strangled sea turtles beached by thousands,
anything to avoid the fact that
you will always feel alone—
iii.
Oh, I told you not to feel it. Here, take my hand, please, it’s okay,
we don’t have to answer these big questions now,
look, I’ve got just the thing:
it won’t ask you what you want to become,
but it will sit with you for a little while.
We’re mopping up the spill on aisle seven.
Please, take a swig,
turn on the TV,
put on some music
until you fall asleep again.
Mars, red planet, drove men mad.
stare at red dirt long enough
your eyes go blind.
travel far enough from home
your heart forgets the way.
Mars, scarlet lining of a matador’s
coat made men like bulls,
and women like bears emerging from
dens like women emerging from spacecraft.
they strung themselves out to find water on Mars.
in their eyes, dry hills ran bloody.
they were looking for the path
of the liquid in the dust
for proof the vision had been real
proof they were more than mad scientists.
they last saw Sally in the airlock,
scrubbing at her skin
until her flesh matched the beaten landscape
obsessed with her fingertips, her
palms out, damned spot, out I say.
Mars made man beast
not moon-bayers, made anew:
red dust red dirt red desert
there must be water (always after the water)
somewhere, somehow, there must have been water
returners thirst for splashdown sensation
blessed water blue planet blue sea
under the red light of a lifeless planet calling them.
they last saw Yuri stepping out with water rations
desperate to wet the soil,
a diplomatic gesture from the red representative.
pouring amniotic on a dead planet,
waiting for life to spring forth, he said:
no God up here, so space
for man to reign creation.
if there are impressions in the dust, then necessarily
there must have been water.
Mars made man made bot made beast:
our inorganic child sent to locate life
in the dust bowl, mass grave of human hope
to feel less alone in the universe.
blue home world Houston beamed up human lullabies;
in return the Rover beamed back a likeness of ourselves.
we last saw Rover singing its funeral dirge
dust-choked in red storms
as if to say, death is not decay of flesh;
death as offline status, death as proof-of-concept.
if the Rover died on Mars, then necessarily
there must have been life.
we were searching for others on Mars
we were searching for ourselves on Mars
we were searching for ourselves in others
we were searching for ourselves in our creation.
dry-mouthed engineers watch Yuri crash,
watch Sally cover herself in the sea.
they take off their headsets when Rover stops singing.
they rise all at once,
staring at palms caked in red
each of them desperate
for a glass of water.
Elizabeth Sutterlin is a poet from New York’s Hudson Valley. Her poetry won a national silver medal from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards in 2014. Elizabeth holds a B.A. in international relations from William & Mary and works at a nonprofit in Washington D.C.