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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


Harald Edwin Pfeffer

Only if you lie very still

Only if you lie very still,

Breathe calmly in the dark

Will you become aware

Of motes of gold,

Moving in the shadows.

And only if you will,

You can dance with them

In a flaming rapture

With the fire torching

You mouth, scorching

Your tongue. A voice

Speaks a command,

Incomplete. A longing

From the dark side

Of the moon pulls

Your voice to sing

To an unknown tune.



Let there be

Let there be star-filled galaxies,

Oceans filled with plankton lessons

Bubbling up from the deep, dark sea.


Or more wanton: Four-leaved clovers

field-full for luck, dappled light,

Flowers, flight,

Known and unknown

Faces, another life.


Also terrors best forgotten,

Fangs and fur, tearing teeth,

While you sleep

In a skin on skin embrace,

Tangle of limbs.


All will Be clear. Be careful

What you take.

It comes with you

When you awake.



Still stiff with morning cold

Still stiff with morning cold,

The hinge of the season

Is about to creak open

To let in spring.


Green lances from bulbs

Are tipped with flaming daffodils.


The wind changes direction.

Through the door a scene

Of blues mixed into blue

And air so clear, that soon


We will listen to every breath

And everything will sing.



One day

One day you or I

Will wake and reach

For what was ours

And touch emptiness.


A landscape between us,

As familiar as our face

Will have only

A vaulted grey sky,

Hours of lead

Times of snow.


Grief will enter

Eye and nose

Sharp as mace

Or the memory

Of a warm embrace.



I know it is only temporary

I know it is only temporary,

Like taste dissolving

With the ripe fruit

On our tongue,

Like the colours

Of dawn or sunset

Like the smell,

The soft-shaped curves,

Voice, breath and shudder

Of us wrapped and entangled

In this warm bubble,


But the happiness, the joy,

Lingers, lingers.....

Harald Edwin Pfeffer Austrian parents, born and raised in South Africa, trilingual (German , English, Afrikaans). Living and working in New Zealand since 1987 (M.B.;Ch.B.,FRNZCGP) Married to Desiree. 2 daughters Astrid and Ingeborg. Loved reading and writing poetry since high school. Started submitting poetry to competitions and journals last year. “Stars in an endless sky” is my first published poem in Comstock Review (Spring/Summer 2021).

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