Poetry Winter 2020 fiction all issues
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Paula Reed Nancarrow
Morning Coffee
& other poems
Jill Burkey
Mala
& other poems
Oak Morse
Boys Born out of Blues
& other poems
Beatrix Bondor
Engine Ode
& other poems
Monique Jonath
a mi sheberach
& other poems
Lisa Rachel Apple
Bounty
& other poems
Gillian Freebody
The Human Condition
& other poems
Kirsten Hippe-Rychlik
and we are echoes
& other poems
Devon Bohm
Forgiveness
& other poems
Jeddie Sophronius
I Rest My Mother Tongue
& other poems
John Delaney
Poem as Map
& other poems
Elizabeth Bayou-Grace
Fire in Paradise
& other poems
Monaye
In Utero
& other poems
Michelle Lerner
Ode to Exhaustion
& other poems
William French
I Have Never Been
& other poems
Josiah Patterson Wheatley
Coeur de Fleurs
& other poems
Karo Ska
womb song
& other poems
Robyn Joy
Sisyphus
& other poems
Han Raschka
Love Language
& other poems
Rebbekah Vega-Romero
The Memory in My Pinky
& other poems
Gilaine Fiezmont
Europe, too, Came from Somewhere Else
& other poems
Scott Ruescher
At the Childhood Home of Ozzy Osbourne
& other poems
Emily R. Daniel
Visitation Dreams
& other poems
Lindsay Gioffre
Toxicodendron Radicans [Sonnet 1]
& other poems
Emily R. Daniel
Visitation Dreams
after Adrienne Rich
I.
I dialed his number
it rang Electric Light Orchestra
from a phone hooked to the wall
by a long coil unfurled
just wanted to tell him
in partial French for no reason
to be his own ally, gentle
but willing to fight
he’d said he would answer anytime, but he is
away from the phone right now
last I remember it was in his hand
and the message read to hold on tight
fingers curled into the bowl of our palms
we call it carrying, but it is something else
what is left behind rots eventually:
expanding, then folding in on itself
haven’t seen rain for weeks, but the earth
still sometimes gives way under foot
there are fires we hope will become ember by morning
stay up just in case
flames sprout tentacles, blaze exponential
hearth overflows then disappears
wish it to hold
since we have no other way
II.
his expression told me
he could only stay for a moment
that he was glad
earth-side time would be brief
long enough but not for me, yes
his face fell only a little
as I watched him melt into the ground
waist deep, waving
Tuesday, 10:15 a.m.
I stood at the copy machine
he saw an invitation
belt buckle pressed into my panty line
paused, deep drag of my scent
I held mine in did not turn my head did not see
his face I imagined grinning, satisfied
by how still I stood for him, man
whose name I never knew
except the name of his sigh, his right
to breathe me in, collide just long enough
to hear the silence of a throat closing
around a breath where a shout should have been
Decline
After Jenny Xie
Handful of cast-away elders
La Feria: taken away from homes on untilled land
Their genial linen and limp hair
They forgot how to grimace as action heroes do, as if facing down an enemy
Bodies offered to swallowing sky
Cerebral pleasure caving in
Bland bread pudding in evenings, one person per room
Where to find their expectation, when life has outlived its meaning
It was the return to adolescence, those blurred years
They never understood the dying dwindle by growing heavy
And that there would be no children
Whose eyes would light like their own
Two Weeks after
George Floyd’s Death
Today we clean house together
though it is bright and mild outside where the breeze
on her face while bike riding is heaven
and our Japanese Lilac tree makes shadows
she pretends are fellow superheroes
ready to fly, ready to fight.
Sirens sound from all directions
so frequently we wonder if it’s the same one circling
or new emergencies every five minutes.
We cannot determine how close they will come,
whose need they answer.
She holds the mop in protest, pushing
wet dust bunnies in wayward motions,
defying the list I made that clearly read sweep first,
and I make a joke about how hard it seems for her to contribute
to the cleanliness she knows at home.
She looks up at me, lower lids holding tears
and says how
how can anyone be happy
how can anyone be happy with everything
going on in the world?
She brings a hand to her throat in a loose hold,
confirms there is an exhale that follows an inhale
there is a pulse, there is
her mother’s heartbeat beside her ear
as I pull her to my chest.
The Clinton Legacy
If she’d gotten down on her knees
more
he wouldn’t have gone looking for someone
who would
she said with a mouth that
without a doubt
had a dick in it last night
hard to imagine anyone wants it
there
even after a shower
with that fig scented soap lingering
on the shaft
with no time
for odor to develop in crevices
once it hits the throat’s edge
smell matters less than controlling
the gag reflex
anyway
it’s a job for which liking it
is not a prerequisite
some things
have to be done
consider it insurance
if your eyes water
tell him that’s what happens
when your mouth holds
something so big
that can’t be swallowed
Emily R. Daniel
’s debut chapbook, Life Line, was selected as a winner of the Celery City Chapbook contest and published in 2019. Her work has been featured in The Bangalore Review and Sylvia Magazine. Emily lives with her family in Kalamazoo, Michigan.