Poetry Summer 2023 fiction all issues
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Cover
Joel Filipe
Kristina Cecka
Rabble
& other poems
Gillian Freebody
The Uncivil War of Love
& other poems
LuAnn Keener-Mikenas
Skunks at Twilight
& other poems
Alyssa Sego
Passage
& other poems
Anne Marie Wells
Forest of One
& other poems
Brent M. Foster
Ode to Darwin
& other poems
Jack Giaour
trans man is feeling blue
& other poems
Alan Gann
how strange
& other poems
Richard Baldo
The Privilege
& other poems
Michael Fleming
In
& other poems
Holly York
As it turned out, there was no bomb on board
& other poems
Celeste Briefs
Late Poppies
& other poems
Kayla E.L. Ybarra
Goose Song
& other poems
S.E. Ingraham
Leaving to Arrive
& other poems
Rachel Robb
Molting Scarlet Tanager
& other poems
Bruce Marsland
Sauna by a Finnish lake at Midsummer
& other poems
Ellen Romano
Seven Sisters
& other poems
Greg Hart
False Coordinates
& other poems
Greg Tuleja
Shanksville
& other poems
Corinne Walsh
Southern Charm
& other poems
Celeste Briefs
Ars Primavera
The sky belched out a wet snow today,
heavy
white flakes,
not enough to disguise early spring
as old winter.
Enough to know
that it’s spring in Colorado.
Thousands, millions of snowflakes
will spit-shine the pavement
before I leave
the house.
I’d like to dream the future
under all this
soft drizzle,
dazzle the trees with the gift of
their children
before a distant car horn
calls me back up
to remember departure, remember
restlessness,
impermanence.
I didn’t expect to dress my hard skin
in golden compost, but
I suppose if I am becoming
the cultivated earth
then I had better look
the part.
I haven’t smelled like myself since
the tilling.
What comes of grieving former youth
instead of growing into new—
what comes of carpet bags filled with brass
knobs and cold, dim rooms
where people used to dance:
forgetting to bleed like autumn and cauterize like summer.
People have been throwing pennies down my throat
for as long as I can remember, saying
cut down the stem of the brain and build a raft,
drag its pitiful roots right out of the spine.
Put your lips together and blow a song
through the empty reeds,
sing something that can rebuild a house,
wield brick and mortar.
Forget
about the snow
and
the trees
and their new
children.
But I cannot sing another’s song,
tap roots that aren’t mine, or
build something out of what I do not have.
I like when it stays cold enough to
snow in spring,
so that is the wish I will grant,
the raft I will sail.
I’ll put
my hand to
the back
of my neck
and know
when it is
warm again.
Dyke
I was sixteen the first time
someone called me a dyke
& I liked the way it felt,
sharp & curved
like a hammer’s claw
a scythe reaping dead things from under
my skin, tearing
them out by their bony
roots,
detoxifying soil
that had yet to be
plowed.
It snapped against my tongue like sour
candy, ringing against my
teeth, razing the pink
puckered flesh until the air tasted
like fire. I was sixteen & I knew
an unwhet bowie knife had sheathed
itself between my breasts.
The blood-chested bullfinch
perched on a rib
calling out with its one-noted voice
for something that might answer
in a familiar tongue.
I was sixteen & it cut
like a blue bite to the neck, sucked dry
of all my innocence in that moment,
unable to mimic the alien syllable. So
I sing it out into the world
with smoke in my throat,
blood welling up like groundwater
where the blade has culled
its fill,
& hope
that somewhere an echo
will return to fill my aching troughs.
medusa with the head of perseus
I see a girl-beast staring out at me through
stone eyes that look on the verge of tears,
rain-slicked serpent tendrils dangling down
her left shoulder,
fluted ribs arched gothic towards cascading
river canyon sternum.
I see a woman standing still, hips
canting to one side, her curves carved raw
from the heft of her grief. Hips
cradling something too black to be seen by the
naked eye. Pallas Athena knew what she was doing
when she granted her the gift of breathless beauty.
A stoned woman whose flesh is unmarked,
whose flesh is not choked with demons but who is
the demon. From the Greek daimōn, meaning deity,
guardian, genius. Unexorcisable.
Her abdomen is an urn full of ashes,
telling a story of how she was cursed and hunted
down like an animal, like an abomination.
She could never have unwritten those scars without
something alive and pure as fire inside. I see
her wrath, a clean blade cutting through silence.
To feel conquered by her, I walk around
until I am standing directly behind her.
It’s worth it to see her back muscles straining
from the weight of scimitar and severed head.
Late Poppies
for Sylvia Plath
Your daddy points out the car window. You don’t
Have to look, you smell them blooming
Bright red and early, or late, depending on how you view time.
You’ve been here before. This place needs
No open-eyed gaze from you
To be real. It sits between sunrise and sunset, wavering
Like a mirage, or a metronome. A memory
Burning like the sweet blood of blackberries on your
Tongue.
There’s a hole in your head. Steam shrills out of it like a
Boiling kettle, singing
Louder than an ocean, louder than your memories.
You think to stick a needle in your daddy’s eye
To see if it would burst open the way his heart used to do.
But the poppies have made your hands heavy. They sink into your chest
As you sink into the passenger seat. You never used to believe in heaven;
You’ve confessed this many times, in as many ways as it’s
Passed you by. This might be it: your daddy says, so it must be true.
The car has stopped, pulled up to the edge
Of the orange-faced cliffs. The ineffable smiths haven’t
Broken for sleep; their hammering wakes you.
Too early; the morning hasn’t yet seized
The earth with its molten fist. Breaking dawn scrambles
To catch its own falling pieces.
The sun spreads over glowing green fields
Like a lion’s mane, yellow and
insane. Sylvia.
You’ve made your body an immortal work of art,
Captive in stone, sung down like a legend,
Upended and stolen by a silent angel whose face is
The rounded smoothness of an egg. When they try
To pry your fingers apart,
You can be certain that they will break.
We shall never get you put back together entirely,
Pieces shuffled, recombined, shattered again into atoms.
Girl that was the shape of a blue, unbroken egg,
Girl that could not be told
When to stay and when to go
And when to leave out food and milk for her babies
For when they wake to find mommy
Has gone on a long, strange trip with her daddy.
Sylvia.
Sylvia.
Don’t you know it’s not a dream
This time?
Celeste Briefs
is a Colorado native and emerging poet whose work has been previously published by Applause Journal. Much of her work revolves around nature and the imagination, grounded by her experiences as a member of the LGBTQIA+/neurodivergent community and her passion for the timeless magic of the mundane. She graduated from Arapahoe Community College in 2020 and received her B.A. in English, Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Colorado, Denver.