Poetry Winter 2021 fiction all issues
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Cover
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
Olivia Dorsey Peacock
beady bead blues
tightly coiled tufts
fall on cold linoleum tile
for a moment suspended
aghast at
their forced separation.
it’s my fault
often content letting
roots remain tangled
introducing wide tooth comb
coercion only
when nimble fingers
could not ease away
fragile strands
never was there
time to nurture them
and when did I
start to value
weekday 9 to 5s
over my own cultivation?
will my daughter
take after her mother?
Lord knows I was tender-headed.
commencement
to the girls
who made me squirm
inside the rawness of my cocoon
conducting marionette dances
early evening late-night sleepovers
the droning of quick buck, rebel just because skater-girls
you taught me
how light pancakes
quickly brown turned burnt
in Georgian sun,
who was icky and
dirty and stinky and gross,
how to be one of few,
and those who could not
and how no matter how many times
itchy scalps scab drowning in lye pools,
my hair would never bounce the same
that when white boys called me,
it was to see what it was like
to be with someone of a different shade.
I grew through bravado
willing my esteem to bare
through citrus husks
in the hopes that one day
apathy would will itself,
flowing, burning through clenched fists.
how to lose a clarinet solo
it began gradually
forming in status inherited
on a high school football field.
I was loudest out of self-sacrifice
petite stature
unafraid to bulge cranial veins
free notes from wooden cage
if it meant our instruments
being heard
the moment was to be brief—a retreat of brass
a whispering of woodwinds
letting me soar
high above the unkempt grass
I emerged alone.
caught my parents’ eyes first
across the 20-yard line
aware of the freshmen,
peers at my back
expectation-filled and hanging—
this was seniority.
I was act four.
it wasn’t more than 8 bars
quick, crisp perfection
pounded into memory, fingers
clicked metal
night, day
but chipped reeds, rotted padding
formed my shell of confidence
fumbling musical spew reached short of
that single high A
the catalyst for its fracture
silence born from the keys
mere exhausted puff
failed to connect
I submitted myself
tears and sweat streaming
down polyester jacket,
crumbling back into the uniformed mass.
the iron maiden and other adornments
incessant self-criticisms remind me to wrap the unreachable enough
in gauze mummy-style tight around my brittle frame
I carry myself as slippery ceramics
that fall between butter-fingered grasp
I grind details into the ground until ash
loop indecisions into infinities
think too much, talk too much and too little
blinded by what I don’t know
my flaws have become the pyre,
those who are better than myself, the ropes
self-deprecation, the eager match
desperate, frantic,
my last words were—
trust me my thoughts will follow through this time and
I’ll perfectly balance strategic spontaneity
on bird’s nest head
hold my weight confidently as voluptuous pillows
not twigs and flat bottom
I’ll unpack the densest lines into a single thread of continuity,
find my competence—
if I sacrifice my ego
on this altar,
what will remain?
Olivia Dorsey Peacock
is a creative technologist from North Carolina. Her poetry has appeared in A Garden of Black Joy and Sixfold (Summer 2018). She holds degrees in Information Science from UNC Chapel Hill. When she’s not writing poetry, you can find her researching her family history, experimenting with new ways to share underrepresented histories, or eating good food with her husband.