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
Karo Ska
my mother says everyone
has to learn how to swim
but i can’t float. i fear the water
won’t hold me. no one else has.
i fear risks, except when i’m
intoxicated. then i’m impulsive
in re-living my trauma, kissing
strange boys, pressing them
up against walls, riding their
cocks with my crotch, until
they’re gasping for breath.
i lost my first kiss to a man
in his 60s. his tongue teaching
me lessons i wasn’t ready
to learn. i kissed a boy
my own age when i was thirteen,
his mouth tasted the same,
like day-old cigarettes & cheap
cologne. i drowned in his mouth,
remembering my inability
to float. if i were to define
my own desire, i’d have to
confront memories i can’t
recall. their fuzzy imprint
leaves me gasping
in the middle of the pool,
arms floundering to keep
me above the water, my mouth
like a fish’s when it jumps
out of its bowl. trauma is
an ocean i can’t swim in
without losing my will
to breathe, an ocean
where i don’t have limbs
that can carry me across
the rip currents of life.
in my mind, i close a door,
so i forget & can sometimes
feel normal. what is normal
when you’re drowning
in a grave of your own bones?
my mother says i have to learn
how to swim, but she never
taught me how to float.
i can’t love like a wild animal
after unbodied by billy-ray belcourt
i love like a lion prowling
savannahs, seeking prey
because what is love
if not teeth piercing
skin, digging into flesh,
slurping up blood. this
is love & i am gazelle.
he says i want you
to be predictable, i
want you to make
sense. as if sense
is an oasis & i’m
a desert without
a beginning,
middle
or end. i love
like a starving seal,
swimming under
melting ice. please
accept me, scars
& thin skin. i tire
of bodies, their
molecules of sweat
as they fall
from slopes
of his brows
& onto my chest. i tire
of loving like a turtle
without a shell. i can’t
love in moans or areolas, i
can’t love like a wild animal,
not anymore. i crave
burrowed connections
& a hole in the ground
i can call my own.
womb song
i enter my womb, it is dark,
wet & warm. my womb
welcomes me, feeds me
pistils, pollen, nectar—
i am her honey
bee, while she prepares
for the egg, wears her red
tuxedo with a taffeta of nutritious
tissue. her fingers flit down
my neck, spine, tail
bone. i arch my back, head
angled towards the sky, greeting
the double moons of my fallopian
tubes. inside each moon,
a chance of renewal, a lotus
flower floating toward its uterine
pond—petals opening, growing,
before leaving my womb, traveling
through my body to the crown
of my head, where it unfolds,
receiving the moon’s maroon glow.
i am home, i ache, i am home, the pain
reminding me of my body’s presence. i
enter my home, i enter my womb. echoes
of breath massage its walls. i am here
in the moment, i am here, breathing
& for this i am grateful—each oxygen
molecule a gift from the universe, each
blood cell a reminder from my body—
i am your sacred vessel: treat me right.
Karo Ska
(she/they) is a South Asian & Eastern European non-binary femme, migrant poet, living on occupied Tongva Land (aka Los Angeles) with their black cat muse. Anti-capitalist & anti-authoritarian, they find joy where they can. Their first chapbook, gathering grandmothers’ bones was released on February 29th, 2020. For updates, follow them on instagram
@karoo_skaa or check out their website karoska.com.