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
Robyn Joy
Sisyphus
This is my body,
but I am not here in it,
and you don’t know me enough to know this.
I am quietly rolling the boulder
daring the shadows of splintered effigies
to tell my secrets.
Your gaze is icy, and I am frozen
repeating an old story.
I feel small, much like I did then,
before I knew you existed.
But I am not here in it.
Awful things could be happening,
but I will only capture flashes and blips.
When we meet again in a new format,
my body will have a quaking memory.
My throat will burn my words hot against my tongue
and I won’t be able to shake out of it,
or tell you what you did.
The pressure of your hands
will infect everything in me
silently rotting from the inside out.
But I invited this,
when I laughed at your joke
and touched your thigh
while drinking myself dull.
My well-deserved Samsara.
Heavenly Places
My feet are bare
sinking into a carpet of lush green moss.
There is no liquid apple here to tempt me
or replace inherited shame
with an insatiable sexual appetite.
When he sees my unconscious body before him,
like a birthday gift,
already partially unwrapped,
he does not continue to remove the paper.
He does not insert himself into my DNA
where his wants will echo ad nauseam
letting everyone see what a whore looks like.
Because it isn’t his birthday
and this gift isn’t his to open.
His Hair
In the middle of it all
he asked me to help him
wash his hair away
as it completely fell out
all at once
I stood behind him in the shower
and I loved him
so delicately
like a wife who had been by his side
for 40 years
not just six.
Cancer makes you age,
even when it isn’t in your own blood.
It’s in your family DNA.
Hail Mary
(A Migraine and A Stem Cell Transplant)
The noises coming from the floor grate
of this hotel room sized apartment
have become the soundscape
for my migraine nausea dreams
The slow hum crescendos
into rhythmic waves
like a giant metallic swamp bug
splayed on the basement floor
rubbing its legs together
in a private performance
This is perhaps what basements do here on weekends
I am new to the neighborhood
while we throw a Hail Mary to the cancer gods
and I’m not staying long enough
to become familiar
You patiently live in an inpatient bed
twenty minutes away
I am learning the street names
while you learn the names of
your nurses and medications:
This one makes the dog park appear on the right
This one makes your blood cells grow while you sleep
Hail Mary
full of grace
Making up prayers from tidbits I’ve heard
because I don’t really know what I believe in
I only know what I’ve ruled out
The sockets in my skull throb
behind a silk mask
just the right pressure to lull me to sleep
to become one with the siren song from below
listening for clues
understanding the telekinesis of the current situation
Maybe I will tell it as a story later in my life
where I am pinned to my bed like a specimen
and you to yours,
tubes needled in and out of your body—
but the conclusion has yet to make itself known.
Never Go Back
We have seen behind the thin curtain
and if you haven’t,
you are not paying attention.
I wade through every day now,
treading water,
but it is the mucky kind
and my skin feels dirty.
I am wearing the deeds of people
who came before me,
people who are here now.
Clearing the yellow crusty bits
from the corners of my eyes
trying to meet each day
with a little more clarity.
I knew it before
But I did not KNOW it
And it is quite a privilege
to have swam in the crystal blues and greens
of complacency before now.
I have always been afraid
when I couldn’t see the bottom
and often chosen to stay out of it.
But now when I revisit
the headlines from my childhood,
I see the venom that fed them,
the ignorance of my colorblind upbringing.
It’s on the faces
of others
who already knew.
There is no going back.
Robyn Joy
has been published in two volumes of One Imagined Word at a Time, The Hippocrates Initiative’s 2020 anthology and by West Trade Review as an Online Exclusive. She was also a finalist for Hunger Mountain’s Ruth Stone Poetry Prize in Spring 2020. She lives in Vermont with her husband and cat, while enjoying assembling art and delicious food, dissecting dreams and thoughts, communing with animals, and practicing yin yoga.