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
Andrea Reisenauer
The bridge
“I am seeking for the bridge which leans from the visible
to the invisible through reality.”
—Max Beckmann
Look for me in the ripples, the dripping eaves, the leaves
and honey-foaming butter. Rummage through the split-
pea soup, feverfew, the sink, the flutter of dew-soaked
youth. Check the streetlamp shadow, the puddle
that hovers between light and dark
because I am the bridge
over the invisible. Search the charcoal sparks, the flames
in the cave, the untamable page with its palpitating space.
Seek me in the fog that tip-toes across the sea, the moss
on the trees, feet. Forage through the wrinkled maps, ashes,
grass. Enter the trance of the milkweed breeze,
that pause in-between
but please
find me.
What quiet ache do you wear?
Do you place it on your dresser
or under the bathroom sink?
Do you spray it behind your ears,
rub it on your wrists,
or wait until late at night
to graffiti-streak it along sleeping streets?
Does it softly sink into your skin,
or is it a distant memory ready
for whoever can tug away
your cotton-edged layers
and brush it with their lips?
What soft scent of sorrow lingers
when you walk past;
what lemon melancholy
hovers in your wake?
Komorebi
There’s a heaviness
that smells like the inside
of a breathalyzer
but I haven’t had a drop to drink.
It tugs at my tourmaline
bones and sinks me
into the sleeping peat
where the earth percolates
in leaden surrender
and my womb of roots
begins to reach upwards
like nesting birds.
Let me lay here as I wait
for whatever gentle shape
I’m becoming
and watch the light
filter past the branches
like a promise.
In that brief passing with a stranger
I don’t know you.
I don’t know where you bought your jeans
or the color of your toothbrush.
I don’t know the number of mornings
you’ve woken up in this world,
what makes you sigh,
or how many times you’ve cried.
I don’t know where the skin creases
on your forehead when you think,
how fast you can run,
how old you were
when you first made love.
But for that fleeting pause,
that split in time when our eyes meet,
we love.
Andrea Reisenauer
is a PhD candidate in translation studies who was born in the United States and now lives in Spain. You can find some of her older poems here and there, but she likes to think of herself as an emerging poet, which is her way of saying: stay tuned—there’s more on the way.