Poetry Winter 2023 fiction all issues
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Cover
Susan Wilkinson
Selena Spier
Red From The West
& other poems
Pamela Wax
Talk Therapy
& other poems
Ana Reisens
Honey Water
& other poems
Mark Yakich
Necessary Hope
& other poems
Bridget Kriner
A Few Lies & a Truth
& other poems
Keegan Shepherd
Silver Queen
& other poems
Alaina Goodrich
Sacred Conflagration
& other poems
George Longenecker
Those Who Hunger
& other poems
Hailey Young
Ball Room
& other poems
Sébastien Luc Butler
Aubade
& other poems
Savannah Grant
Ever Since (v.2)
& other poems
grace (logan)
Dynamic
& other poems
Samantha Imperi
A Poem for the Ghosted
& other poems
Corinne Walsh
Limerence
& other poems
Kayla Heinze
Stop checking the score
& other poems
Richard Baldo
Chasing Through to Dawn
& other poems
Alex Eve
A moment
& other poems
Robert Michael Oliver
Prison Hounds
& other poems
Richard Baldo
Chasing Through to Dawn
These seeds of poems
demand my consideration
before they return to obscurity
in the chaos of the monkey mind.
My wife sleeps in the quiet—breathing,
her leg astride mine.
I weigh the chance
of waking my love
against the risk that these thoughts
will never come again.
Can I reach to pull the phone
under the sheets with us?
Her unwanted intruder.
I concentrate on the fading words.
Are they important enough tonight?
So many lines lost.
Even such moments of indecision
shift my emotions out of focus.
I become the drowning man
batting away a life ring
dropped by some god
into the ocean of lost thoughts.
I hide the dim light of my mistress phone.
Not seeing what my fingers do
as spell check makes gibberish,
slaying ideas, their graves
discovered the following day.
I compete to hold my thoughts above
the rising waves
of sleep . . .
Now, Ozymandias sits with me
in the Dresden Gallery,
a dreamscape of fields
fertile with such losses.
These shattered statues,
half-buried under the sand
remind us of our arrogant audacity.
We find again,
that we are only
two more futile stone breakers.
Just Write
Plunk down the flour and butter; Add as much salt and sugar as you dare.
You’re not going to make any real dough at this anyway.
Roll out this lump however you want. If it gets too sticky, add more flour.
If it gets too sweet, add some sour. Maybe spaetzle it across the cutting board.
Feed it through the pasta maker, or hunt up your favorite cookie cutters.
Make strips with the knife you love to feel in the grip of your hand.
You may need a spoonful of vinegar or a glass of fine wine.
It will knead you back if you give it the right kind of love.
Toss it against the wall of your heart to see if it sticks.
Feed a bit to your friends and watch their mouths to pucker.
Drop a surprise in the middle, something like one of Freud’s dreams,
Or the Far Side Cartoon about Cow Poetry.
Put yeast in and let it rise overnight in your lover’s bed.
Let a cup sour for a week so the starter blooms through your keyboard.
If you don’t like it, chuck it out with the other failures in your life.
Start fresh and just write until your muse saddles you and rides you home.
Fulfilling Requirements of Love
I gave her the kiss
because love required it.
My lips were not moved.
So,
I moved them.
One with the Gang
Orange soda in draft beer glasses,
Saturday morning, sunlight warms our backs.
while my brother and I play at a kind of manhood.
Grandpa and the guys of his age sit adjacent
along the long edge of the bar, reaching deep
into the darkness of the room.
Our legs don’t reach the stool’s rungs,
but we are included,
allowed on the edge of the gang.
Their rules include us even if the law
says otherwise. We are learning
the ways of men.
From the Widow Walk
The soon-to-be widow
of the young whaler prepares,
before she knows for sure,
to step up to the place named
for her walk of tears.
They will dry on her cheeks
and a bit of shirt she saved
with his already fading scent.
Impatient hunter, he killed a calf
with his harpoon hand when
she did not follow her mother deep.
They drowned
in the twists of lines
before that witness sunset.
Who says that the grief
of a mother humpback
is smaller than those
of weeping whaler women.
Richard Baldo
is a recently retired clinical psychologist. That experience informs much of his poetry. He has been writing poetry off and on since college and began a more serious study about twelve years ago. He won the UNR English Department’s Award for Best Poem in Spring 2020 and has poems published in The Meadow 2021, 2022, and Sixfold Poetry 2021, 2022, 2023. He is currently a second-year MFA student at the University of Nevada, Reno.