Poetry Winter 2022 fiction all issues
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Cover
Li Zhang
Ana Reisens
Pam asked about Europe
& other poems
Krystle May Statler
To the Slow Burn
& other poems
Kristina Cecka
On Remodeling
& other poems
Belinda Roddie
Bless The Bones Of California
& other poems
Summer Rand
Alexander tells me how he'd like to be buried
& other poems
Alexander Perez
Toward the Rainbow
& other poems
Karo Ska
self-portrait of compassion…
& other poems
David Southward
The Pelican
& other poems
George Longenecker
Stamp Collection
& other poems
Mary Keating
Salty
& other poems
Talya Jankovits
Imagine A World Without Raging Hormones
& other poems
Laurie Holding
Sonnet to Mr. Frost
& other poems
David Ruekberg
A Short Essay on Love
& other poems
Elaine Greenwood
There’s a thick, quiet Angel
& other poems
Richard Baldo
Carry On Caretaker
& other poems
Jefferson Singer
Dave Righetti’s No-Hitter…
& other poems
Diane Ayer
A Fan
& other poems
Kaecey McCormick
Meditation Before Desert Monsoon
& other poems
Meg Whelan
Resubstantiation
& other poems
Katherine B. Arthaud
Possible
& other poems
Aaron Glover
On Transformation
& other poems
Anne Marie Wells
[I'm crying in a sandwich shop reading Diane Seuss' sonnets]
& other poems
Holly Cian
Untitled
& other poems
Kimberly Russo
Selective Memories are the Only Gift of Dementia
& other poems
Steven Monte
Larkin
& other poems
Mervyn Seivwright
Fear Mountain
& other poems
Anne Marie Wells
[I’m crying in a sandwich shop reading Diane Seuss’ sonnets]
I.
I’m crying in a sandwich shop reading Diane Seuss’ sonnets. Intimacy unhinged,
unpaddocked me… she wrote in one… so this is why people want other people
to put their arms around them, she wrote in another, bludgeoning open my tucked
away sorrows. Out spills the latest man who sees me as just for fun. And I am.
In the beginning when I drown out the oceanic hush of sand pouring into my hollow
womb. I am fun before I want more than Neruda read to me on Sunday mornings
in the original Spanish, before I want the fullness of love instead of the emptiness
of its Irish twin. But I’m only half-crying over this lovely man not loving me.
I wouldn’t have known his name, I wouldn’t be eating alone, not eating, I wouldn’t
be loveless and childless if I hadn’t lost the big love, or the illusion of it, on the first
day of spring last year. And even if this other love was capable of forgiving, even if
we were capable of starting again, I would only receive the outsides of the man I cry
over. His face, his muscles, his bones. Or even less. His exuvia. Like the molted skin
of a cicada that cannot fill my ears with its sound from the treetops, cannot make me feel.
II.
Dumbo broke my heart as a child, and still I cannot watch, cannot even think
about that movie. My ribs disintegrate on themselves, my mother’s name appears
in their dust each time Mrs. Jumbo reaches her trunk through the jail car bars to rock
her wing-eared baby while all the other babies sleep spooned in their cages. Five,
seven, fourteen, thirty-six. I never grew out of it. The violins introduce “Baby Mine”
before the choir joins in, Mrs. Jumbo’s trunk strokes her baby’s face in recognition.
Tears form in Dumbo’s eyes, then my own. I’d break through my mother’s door,
words no longer words. Spit and sound. Ululations. A cicada’s percussion across
her lap, pleading for her to soothe my rattles, lull me back from the cruel-hearted
circus, make me forget the cartoon calf walking away, waving goodbye to his mother
with his trunk. Dumbo again? You know you can’t handle that movie, she’d groan.
Don’t watch it anymore. Her arms wouldn’t always be there to swaddle my spiracles.
She tried to teach me, but I’m still learning: With all the suffering in this world,
all the agony I would endure in this life, why cause myself more? And on purpose?
III.
My tymbals vibrate on my drive home from Creekside Deli with a crescendo of,
I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. An avocado and swiss sits in a box in the empty seat
untouched. I don’t know what I hate, but I think it’s loss. Both certain and probable.
Or are they different? I think about calling my mother, but can already hear her ask,
Have you taken your SAM-e? And, no I haven’t, but these tears are for Diane Seuss’ sonnets.
They’re for a Spanish teacher who made me feel loved when he did not love me. For
a fictitious man whose absence my fingers still reach for on hungover mornings. For Dumbo
and his mother. For myself and my mother because someday my mother will rot in a box
like the sandwich left on my front seat, and it will be the worst day of my life. And maybe
there will be no one to wrap their arms around my screams. Maybe I’ll never recover from these
sonnets. Maybe I’ll let them wrench me apart for decades, let them wriggle free my anguish
like baby teeth, making room for the new. Maybe I’ll visit my mother’s buried ashes one day,
collapse across her stone. Maybe I will hear her cicadan hiss chastising me from the other side.
Diane Seuss again? You know you can’t handle those sonnets. Don’t read them anymore.
Mother: verb
No handprints on mirrors. No play-doh
crusted into the carpet. No penciled scribbles on
the door frame marking each year of growth. I sleep
through the night, only waking to use the bathroom. No tiny
voice cries for me to save them from a nightmare. I peek
through the door to the other room; it’s empty except for
boxes of winter clothes and photo albums. My lipsticks
and eyeshadow rest strewn around the vanity where I left
them. No tiny toothbrush leans against mine. No plastic ducks
or boats line the bathtub edge. No shampoo for sensitive eyes.
No towels with superheroes or mermaids in a heap on the floor.
No carseat in the back of my Forester. No stroller in the trunk.
No karate lessons, violin, soccer. I have no dioramas to glue
cotton balls and bird seed to. No homecoming game. No bandages
on scraped elbows. My lips have never touched a bruise. I eat popcorn
for dinner in front of the TV. The table in my kitchen has only one
chair. No reminders to chew with mouth closed or the importance
of vegetables. I already know how the broccoli I never cooked
will boost my immune system. I could fly to Portugal next week
if the urge moved me. Dance to Fado, shop for ceramic whatever
or cork such-and-such. No one needs me to pack a peanut
butter jelly and juice box before school, to read
a bedtime story. No one weeps in my absence.
I go by no other name. I worry over no one.
No one worries over me.
Long Distance Romance
The stew steams from the stovetop, simmers
above inchoate flames, waits as I wait. Basil,
sage, rosemary, oregano work their magic, tango
their scents out the kitchen door, through the living
room, and up the stairs. Spoon’s ready.
Mouth’s ready. All there’s left to do is eat.
Butterflying
I didn’t know she still lived
here, the Azure, but there she goes,
as if the sky peeled away a piece of itself
just to know what it felt like to flit among the dog
-woods, to gorge on ripe blueberries, to remember the taste
of youth, the days when she had kaleidoscope eyes, played piano
in staccato. Her wings sing a melody, a morning song; no longer
a mourning song. She floats on the wind of her own sound,
planting the tune in unsuspecting ears. There she is
again, perched between my ribs, forming a tornado
in Virginia from a sigh she heard echoing
through the Teton Mountains.
Anne Marie Wells
(She | They) is an award-winning queer poet, playwright, memoirist, and storyteller navigating the world with a chronic illness. Her full-length collection of poetry, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems, debuted with Curious Corvid Publishing. She won the inaugural Wanderlust Travel Book award through Wild Dog Press for her memoir, Happy Iceland. She is a faculty member for the Community Literature Initiative and Strategic Partnership Fellow for The Poetry Lab.