Poetry Winter 2019 fiction all issues
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Cover Florian Klauer
Meli Broderick Eaton
Three Mississippi
& other poems
Andrea Reisenauer
What quiet ache do you wear?
& other poems
Alex Wasalinko
Two Dreams of Vegas
& other poems
AJ Powell
The Grammar Between Us
& other poems
Emma Flattery
Our Shared Jungle, Mr. Conrad
& other poems
Nathaniel Cairney
The Desert Cometh
& other poems
Sarah W. Bartlett
Unexpected
& other poems
Abigail F. Taylor
Jaybird by the Fence
& other poems
Brandon Hansen
Bradley
& other poems
Andy Kerstetter
The Inferno Lessons
& other poems
Michael Fleming
Space Walk
& other poems
Richard Cole
Perfect Corporations
& other poems
Susan Bouchard
Circus Performers
& other poems
Edward Garvey
Nine Songs of Love
& other poems
Mehrnaz Sokhansanj
Sea of Detachment
& other poems
Jeffrey Haskey-Valerius
Aftershock
& other poems
Claudia Skutar
Homage II
& other poems
Donna French McArdle
Knitting Sample
& other poems
Megan Skelly
Puzzle Box Ghazal
& other poems
Tess Cooper
Charged
& other poems
Greg Tuleja
Auschwitz
& other poems
Catherine R. Cryan
Raven
& other poems
Tess Cooper
Thirst
Dry Texas makes me remember that I have been away from
water too long,
Spent too long in drought of the earth and love; lack of rain
in clear California and lack of touch in sweating Cincinnati
In the valley I discovered my need of drink to quench my
head and fill my heart,
and Taurus born, it is back in the cracks of the south
where bulls strike the earth with sharp heavy hooves that I
remember the long lost echos of the ocean,
Her cool memory engraved in stone, big darkness, living
quiet.
Sink to your knees and run your fingers into the earth here
and you will feel me,
handfuls of clay without water, stolen and parched, face
upturned and thirsty tongue seeking rain
No Storm
I live in what used to be an old motel, new boards
nailed over the same rusted guts
Sometimes I go knocking on her old bones and hear no
echos
The cactus in the courtyard is dead, not even spiders seem
to dwell in corners
Fake wooden floors where no dust falls, but there’s
something in the walls
Held here like me, cycled in the same day with the same
thunderstorm ever approaching
I’m drunk and awake at midnight when the sirens sound,
sourceless
Shoeless and empty, I go out to be filled with what I know
comes from a warning sky
I consult with a neighbor; cling to the weak railing but
nothing falls and neither do I
Inside bed takes me but sleep does not come, waiting for my
storm as the sirens scream for retreat
Into the reaches of the night they wail but my love it does
not come.
Episode
Awake and burning
Burning
I am an arkangel—a god. A thousand terrible eyes and wings
of flame, I devour men and from my lips spill black ash
Forever running, a Hart’s heavy beating heart
Full of life, bitter life, hammering at the walls of my chest as
I lay in bed
Never rest, not even in sleep; wakeful eyes and clawed
fingers clenched tight into flesh.
Bruising. I am nothing and at once everything, the echoing
emptiness of a dry nautilus and it’s chambers filling
with vast ocean.
Release me.
Charged
I am electricity, bright in the night
Sleepless buzzing in the hollow of my chest. There is no
heart there
Only the knowledge that there will never be forgiveness on
my tongue
I am holy, but only in the way of suffering—only in the
Catholic sense they say
I am the crossroads witch, I live in the betweens, the “if”s
and the insecurity of the unknown
Tonight I am prometheus shackled,
straining against the chains of another day as a failed god
Another night awake
Churchwed
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned
Dragged you to bed despite the white on your collar
Licked you with the flames of hell and
showed you what falling feels like
Adam’s first wife, we are wed under the eves of redwoods
though in your eyes that will not do and I pray for a white cotton dress
A promise:
I will bring no squalling life to this red earth
Will not raise it in the church
I will remove my prayer veil only for a wedding veil
Shelve my pagan ways only for a ring
A wolf will raise wolves
Pray you domesticate me
Tess Cooper
is a writer, artist, and sometimes bear living in the woods outside Detroit. She creates beauty from pain and, historically, gets into fistfights with everyone.