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
Elizabeth Farwell
Red Brick
On my walk in the neighborhood tonight I saw a house
red brick, with wooden boards on the side
it looked just like mine.
I paused, seeing it for the first time
on a street I had walked,
but had never seen the sign
The more I studied it, the more I saw my own
Crumbling, broken childhood home
I wondered who the people in this house were, inside.
When was the last time they cried?
Were they anything like my family?
Or was their domestic bliss easy?
The architect, surely,
must have been
the same,
And I had to hold myself back from the door, as I stood
wondering what could have happened in my house
on a street
with a different name.
. . . .and you can say things
very well may have completely gone
the exact same.
But I demand
acknowledgement of this other place,
somehow in this house, there’s more space,
living here would have given us any ounce of grace.
I turned my back to the house,
into the cold wind as it blew across my face,
for, like the memories I had begun to chase,
the moment was over,
gone, without a trace.
illness
I’m tired of hearing you cry, Mom
so late into the night, Mom.
Your troubles fall into tears
which tiptoe down the hall,
past his room
into mine
where I wait by the door
Collecting them into a bucket
adding to the bank of reasons why I have to act, to run,
something must be done, before the dam bursts
I’m tired of him making you cry, Mom.
You don’t deserve to suffer, Mom.
I know he is your own flesh and blood
the diapers you changed, the red hairs
you nurtured through
as if you grew them upon your own head
little league games, boy scouts, middle school, licenses,
fist fights, drugs, detention, suspension, retention, hopelessness
when he was old enough—
backs of police cars, the mind hospital
a Thanksgiving where our family ate two turkeys, one on a cardboard tray in a visitors’ room,
surrounded by strangers and their families
and my beloved little brother, too old for that place yet too young to belong with adults,
trapped and miserable
another turkey long dead and cold,
delicious, at home, on a glass plate,
consumed at a table with one vacant spot.
But Mom, you grew him
and he is now
rotting the same roots
which brought me into this world
loving, kind, providing
the very same diaper changing,
blonde curl brushing, soccer watching,
graduation day clapping,
cut and scrape cleaning
hands
now held up to your face
I cannot sit idly by and watch
your branches produce liquid leaves,
to hear you sob until tears run dry
any longer.
Unjust. But what can be done?
As I sit, behind my door
holding your tears
to my heart
with my hands.
Not justice, but grace
At a certain point in time,
I realized the ultimate irony in seeking justice is
regardless of someone being put away,
the situation has already been lost
on both sides.
It does not matter, it did not
ever matter to me
what became of the man responsible
for my brother’s murder
For my brother was already
irreversibly, unavoidably gone
from earth.
I’d never know him again in this lifetime
So what was the point
of taking a lifetime
of knowing and seeing
away from the man
who took it from me?
For that man, I learned,
also had
a brother.
The question I always come back to
You’re there, aren’t you?
In the space in my heart
that hasn’t stopped aching
since you left
You’re there aren’t you?
In the hole, in the cavern, in the pit of my stomach
which gnaws when I think of
what your fate was.
You’re there aren’t you?
In the glimmers of the water, on the tops of
the trees, in the notes of the music
in the background of my life,
notes only I can hear,
waves only I can see,
a rustle in the wind sent straight to me
watching from a shrub,
looking down from the clouds,
You’re there, aren’t you?
The Life That Scattered
Grief is the Big Bang,
an explosion of galaxies
an alteration of life as you had not known it,
something some still deny.
The death which erupts from the stars lit on fire,
sets forth new life
galaxies, planets waiting to be discovered.
I hope to die many deaths in my life.
I will so many Big Bangs, each one
bigger and louder than the last
for on the other side of the scattering pieces,
the cosmic eruption, and destruction of What Once Was
is the unthinkable, the frontier of What Will Be.
The new order of the galaxies, stars, moon, and tides
all created
from the dust
of the stars left behind
From the life
that scattered.
There exists a time capsule from when 
Elizabeth Farwell was four. This year I want to learn: “how to read,” she answered. And she loved to read so much, she eventually wrote her own words that could be read. 21 years later, Elizabeth has a degree in English, a day job in tech PR, and now a poetry collection. Writing has saved her life, her sanity, and helped her to find magic in the world.