Poetry Winter 2021 fiction all issues
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Andrej Lišakov
Laura Apol
I Take a Realtor through the House
& other poems
Rebekah Wolman
How I Want my Body Taken
& other poems
Devon Bohm
The Word
& other poems
Gillian Freebody
The Right Kind of Woman
& other poems
Anne Marie Wells
Gravestone Flowers
& other poems
Laura Turnbull
Restoration
& other poems
Andre F. Peltier
A Fistful of Ennui
& other poems
Peter Kent
Reflections on the Late Nuclear Attack on Boston
& other poems
Carol Barrett
Canal Poem #8: Hides
& other poems
Alix Lowenthal
Abortion Clinic Waiting Room
& other poems
Latrise P. Johnson
From My Women
& other poems
Brenna Robinson
repurposed
& other poems
may panaguiton
MOON KILLER
& other poems
Elizabeth Farwell
The Life That Scattered
& other poems
Bill Cushing
Two Stairways
& other poems
Richard Baldo
A Note to Prepare You
& other poems
Blake Foster
Aubade from the Coast
& other poems
Bernard Horn
Glamour
& other poems
Harald Edwin Pfeffer
Still stiff with morning cold
& other poems
Nia Feren
Neon Orange Tree Trunks
& other poems
Everett Roberts
A Mourning Performance
& other poems
Alaina Goodrich
The Way I Wander
& other poems
Olivia Dorsey Peacock
the iron maiden and other adornments
& other poems
Laura Apol
Photo of my Mother
at Eighteen, Seated
I want to lean into the woman
in the white Adirondack
as boldly as she leans back, dark lipstick
and pincurls, sleeveless pale blouse,
slim arms wrapping her own waist—
and her smile. That irrepressible smile.
She is Fourth of July fireworks,
sunflower turned toward the sun,
and I am somewhere deep within her,
swaddled in a future so far off
she can barely dream it. She is
so goddamned happy, and so young.
How long before her beautiful cells
will begin undoing themselves,
myelin dissevering, nerves ruined and raw?
When is the outset, the unseen scarring
before the scars? There will be decades
between this Adirondack
and the electric-powered chair—
years when she’ll roll down
her socks, roll up the waist of her skirt,
make the world hers, until one day
she no longer feels pain
and the sole clue to too hot or too close or
too much is the smell of her own flesh,
scorched. Those glorious arms.
I want to lean into this stranger
in the white Adirondack,
head-thrown-back laughing—
so goddamned happy. So young.
I Take a Realtor Through the House I’ve Lived in for Twenty Years
Once again I was there and once again I was leaving
and again it seemed as though nothing had changed
even while it was all changing
—W.S. Merwin
Windows that wouldn’t open, a door
that wouldn’t close; the worn-carpet
room of my son, cobalt
room of my daughter, flowered-over grave
of the backyard dog. Sump pump,
shingles, emergency contact and every shadow
a ghost. Up these stairs I was young, filled
with tomorrows as I took
lovers and lit candles; sang
with my children and prayed
for my children,
and wept and bled each month
and it is all past. The laundry off the line.
Pears rotting beneath the tree. Fireflies
and maple leaves, lost cat’s print in concrete
like the stories I read aloud
to my daughter before bed, my son
at the piano, Rachmaninov
in his sleep. New stove, used fridge,
all the dishes I washed, lunches I packed;
push mower, extension ladder, gutters cleaned
spring and fall. Wisteria and weeping
cherry, heights
penciled on the painted
frame of the door, painted over.
And now? Siding and ceiling fans,
hard-wood floors and fencing;
trees that fell
—as nothing, as everything,
changed.
Laura Apol
is a professor at Michigan State University and the author of five full-length collections, most recently, A Fine Yellow Dust. She is a two-time winner of the Oklahoma Book Award and silver-medal winner of the Independent Publishers Book Award, and from 2019-2021, she served as the poet laureate of the Lansing area in mid-Michigan. Her current work focuses on the therapeutic uses of writing and literature in response to trauma.