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
Everett Roberts
A Mourning Performance; or, Prepared Remarks
If I’m guilty
of anything,
It’s that I slip easy
into elegy.
The words incurred,
the notes I wrote:
Responses ready
When mourning’s heard.
While you devoured
each breath you stole from death,
Checking borrowed time
on a broken watch,
I went along. I hummed
the song, even if I didn’t
know the words.
I still don’t think there’s time to learn.
Vesper
Did you think you’d leave me
Unmarked?
Or don’t you remember,
Together, in the dark,
The sigh upon your lips
That I devoured?
How you poured yourself
Into me?
Long past sunset;
The fragrant evening, and
night’s descent
Remember how we spun onyx
Into the hours?
Vigil
Did you miss my light?
I waited up for you, hours past
When I should’ve slept.
I spent each minute just like the last
Enveloped in the lambent night,
Lamp light, my promise kept,
The quiet house, my easy breath;
I know the roads and know the route
Your loosened tie, the wrinkled suit
But even in the dream you don’t return.
Even here a candle can’t forever burn.
Silence as the dishwasher’s cycle comes to an end.
My ears don’t strain. I still pretend.
Everett Roberts
, 33, is an award-winning poet, polyglot, technical writer, and former sanctions violations investigator living in Washington, DC. His work has appeared in Sixfold, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and the Write Launch, and his cleave poem “John the Baptist” won the 2021 Oberon Herbert Poetry Prize.