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
Michelle Lerner
Why the train stops here
Plowing gone
wrought iron gone
corn river limestone
steeple run quarry yes
I remember walking
town sign behind me
tree fingers jumping wind
smooth pebbles lost keys
when they told me
it was cancer in his neck
I stopped scooping leaves
and walked
down the driveway out onto the street.
cars barely metal peripheral
grey pavement gone boot
toes cold wind cheek
I thought if I walked
to her house it would stop.
yes stream amber white
on the stones gone the mailboxes the car
yes behind me slow come back she won’t
understand.
now trains move fast away
town lines whir
she in Texas still would not
his bones break into tulips,
wild roses, leaves
August 31 Kaddish
I loved you more intensely
knowing that you were going,
inhaled your scent like sky
in the moment after gale
before rain:
swollen air,
electricity.
Leaves fell
and still your nostrils flared.
You were always the last day of summer, even then—
the immensity of sun on the skin,
feeling the forecast.
Ode to Exhaustion
You’re my old man
the one I answer to
begrudgingly
at the beginning and end of every day
reliable
as the onset of winter, the sunset, the dark.
You cover me, twine around my trunk
like a vine, until it’s difficult to tell
where you end and I begin.
You are my kudzu, prolific, verdant
and I disappear beneath you like a southern forest
where every tree and shrub, buildings and power lines
metamorphasize into vine barrens, still green
from the satellite,
the biome below slowly strangling.
And yet I cling back—
you’re all that’s left
of every death, every grip I’ve held fast
as someone plunged
through the bottom of their life
like a shattered window
every mourning moment I stretched my hand
after them
struggling to catch the hem of memory,
hold the echo in my hand.
You engulf them, hold them in your tendrils
keep them breathing and trembling
always, almost
in my reach.
Afterthought
The youngest son always
wears a hood.
It covers tumors
and conspiracies
lets him hide
in plain sight.
Some call him a magician
the way he fits
in small spaces
the way it’s hard
to look away.
He was in love with
your wife, he
stayed in a back room
developing potions. He knows
he’s being followed.
First he vanished into cars, then woods
eventually
in front of you,
naked but for
his covered head—
you weren’t sure
he could see you.
He could.
Anxiety
You’re a snake beneath my breastbone
lashing your tail hard, muscular
fast against my heart.
Sometimes you lunge up my esophagus, push
pitted head, open jaws
into my mouth.
You aim to kill.
I shove Klonopin down your throat
one after another
until your head wobbles, falls back
and I feel you slump
scales slipping past every vertebra
in my neck
down
to the top of my stomach
where you slumber.
I am not fooled.
You sleep in a coil
tail rattling to your dreams,
one eye open.
Michelle Lerner
received an MFA in Poetry from The New School. She’s been a finalist for the Poetry Box Chapbook Prize, Bridge Eight Fiction Prize, and Book Pipeline Contest, and semifinalist for the Pamet River Prize. Her chapbook Protection is forthcoming from Poetry Box and her poems can be found in numerous journals including Lips, Paterson Literary Review, and Adanna, as well as several anthologies, and online fora such as VQR’s Instagram series.