Poetry Winter 2018 fiction all issues
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Cover Elena Koycheva
Bryce Emley
Asking Father What’s at the End
& other poems
AJ Powell
Butterfly-minded
& other poems
Faith Shearin
Biology
& other poems
Claire Van Winkle
Admitting
& other poems
Sarah W. Bartlett
Summer Cycles
& other poems
Nooshin Ghanbari
Vincent
& other poems
Meli Broderick Eaton
The Afterlives of Leaves
& other poems
Jeddie Sophronius
Refugees
& other poems
Paula Bonnell
In Winter, By Rail
& other poems
Addison Van Auken Waters
Girls
& other poems
Daniel Sinderson
Hallelujah
& other poems
Andrew Allport
All Nature Will Fable
& other poems
Marte Stuart
What an Insult Time Is
& other poems
Matthew Parsons
My Father as an Inuit Hunter
& other poems
Emily Bauer
Gently, Gently
& other poems
Bruce Marsland
A once lovelorn bard’s final journey
& other poems
Beatrix Bondor
Night Makers
& other poems
Isabella Skovira
Lawless Conservation
& other poems
Juan Pablo González
Colombia, 1928
& other poems
Molly Pines
The Pillbug
& other poems
Jamie Marie
On the Lake
& other poems
William A. Greenfield
If You Show Me Yours
& other poems
Bill Newby
Tuesdays at The Seagate's Atlantic Grille
& other poems
Elder Gideon
Male Initiation Rites
& other poems
Joel Holland
Dear Gi-Gi
& other poems
Martha R. Jones
How Lewis Carroll Met Edgar Allan Poe
& other poems
Isabella Skovira
String Theory
Some scientists say there are more
Dimensions in our multiuniverse
Than number of days I spent with you.
But I tied so many strings between us—
Memories of your hair whispering its way
Between my fingers, how you put on socks
Standing up—that, in theory,
I can never be without you.
Maybe there are other universes
Stacked above and below our own
And in all of them we fail.
Maybe we don’t even exist.
But there are echoes of you
Even in these flat, visible three dimensions
And if I close my eyes
I know every possibility is a reality
Somewhere.
The Relativity of Space
Sometimes I feel so small
Compared to you
That surely you must see me
From outer space
Where all things are curved
And nothing is absolute
(At least in the Newtonian sense).
I’d still like to believe it’s true
That the shortest distance between two objects
Is a straight line,
But we’ve been talking
So many circles around each other
That I truly feel the relativity of space
And the distance between us,
So small before,
Now seems insurmountable.
But I still wish on stars,
Whose light might be past tense
By the time I’m seeing it,
That with the snap of your fingers,
With just the flick of your tongue—
If for once you’d just tell it to me straight—
There’d be no space between us at all.
Zeno’s Paradox
I’m fragmented
By the fact that
I can only send you
Bits of myself
Which only become further
Diluted by distance
Which only ever
Tears me apart more.
Lessons in Anatomy
I read somewhere once
That the tongue was
The strongest muscle in the body.
This made sense to me:
Just the tip of mine carried the weight
Of questions unasked
And sentiments left unsaid,
The dreams I didn’t tell you
When I’d begun to feel I was boring,
And the quiet, innocent declaration of emotion
That would startle your sleepy eyes.
I know now that was wrong.
The masseter is the strongest muscle in the body.
Located in the jaw.
Designed to keep your mouth shut.
Lawless Conservation
Catch and release
is a practice within
recreational fishing
intended as a technique
of conservation.
Just because
there was kindness
and compassion
from you at the end,
it doesn’t change that
it was all sport.
If in protecting me—
and my rarity
and the way you
made me out to be
so adored and special to you—
you must let me go,
then I’d rather have been
slit, gutted, and flamed
just so I could live in your belly.
The ocean may be the same
and she’ll swallow me whole with her love
the salt water will heal me
but I am different
because your hands
slid over my body
as I gasped soundlessly for air
and you still sunk your hook into my mouth
just to examine me,
decide I wasn’t worth keeping,
and toss me back in.
Isabella Skovira
started writing poetry in grade school as a response to LoTR. She had an elf name. These days, she writes poetry to fit big emotions into small spaces. If you read one of her poems and you think it’s about you, then it probably is. Isabella lives in Spain, works as a higher education admissions consultant, adores her dog, has never drunk coffee, and whistles too much.