ISSUE #27
FEATURED POET
Dennis Hinrichsen
[dominion] [Dream in which My Father Comes Back as Dr. No]
for years when I dreamed of him we just pounded each other—you can do that in a dream—hard fists pummeling flesh—noting the haptics—me laying in the blows—relishing bruise…
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Debmalya Bandyopadhyay
Fisherboy
A boy is fishing on a lake. His eyes
are cast wide over the water
like a fishing net. The water is punctuated…
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Elinor Cramer
Washing the Dead
I wouldn’t have asked, he said.
Sisters in shawls come from the next farm,
the younger, dear to his Molly.
He says, She’ll be comforted, both of us are…
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Fay Dillof
Where?
…earth––
a body, divided, North
to South– as my mother’s has been
since the stroke––revolving in half-darkness…
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Karen Hildebrand
I’m a Skinny Black Cat in Pearls
…Remember high school make-out parties?
Geeky sophomores, reeking of Ban roll-on,
locking braces in the dim faux wood basement
of a girl whose parents had to be insane…
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Emily Light
Echo the Monologue
The pocket bible was no bigger than a grown man’s hand. It often slipped from mine as I read it in bed. Onion skin pages tented above my head, flanked by faux leather covers the color of a twilit sky turning worse…
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Hannah Silverstein
My Father Polishes His Silence
He leaves it to my imagination what the farmhouse looks like now, what the peeling paint looks like, what my stepmother has planted in the garden this year, how bald the top of his head is, how thin he’s grown after all this time, how he splits wood with one crack of the axe…
Kimberly Wolf
Photo by v2osk on Unsplash
Homecoming
At a red light, a roadside cross half submerged in flood water
speaks to me, says
We live in the swamp, and we die in the swamp
and if you try to leave, it’ll follow you…
Isaiah Yonah Back-Gaal
Incomplete List of Daily Becomings
When the particulate brilliance through the slatted southern window hits,
I am a morning person. In an hour or two, I am a late morning person.
I, dermatologist, wellness technician, gloopy in witch hazel and snail mucus.
I, skilled bistro chef of two cracked eggs…
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Lucie Brooks
The Globe Collection Speaks
…I used to have a lot to say. I’m quiet now, sitting still. But I remember fingers coaxing me to turn upon my axis. I speak the language of memory. I speak the language of forgetting…
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Eartha Davis
màthair beinne
It is said,
gently,
that body
tucks herself
under spirit’s
awning / thrums like
heart water, clayed
knowing / an ontology…
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Simon French
The Outside Boys
Billy has a dead falcon
in a box under his bed & each night
feels its wings ghost into his heart.
He tells Elias who says cool cool
& knows everything…
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Suzanne Langlois
Alternate Ending
Put down the putty knife, Juliet. It’s not
the right tool for what you’re trying to do,
which appears to be prying the stopper
from the mouth of a bottle of poison.
You’re only going to snap off the corner…
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Naomi Madlock
If This Is What It Takes
…There’s a hole in the back of my skull
where all the words seep out at night.
The sheets stare whitely for hours like a mother
waiting for a newborn’s crying to cease…
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Jan Wiezorek
Copyright, Marjorie Moorhead
Prairie Mode
Waiting for good is the moon at 3 A.M., thru
this window; a light to milk the magnolia,
w/ a circle inside me that wonders when light
will shape good in a shiver of razor-grasses,
righting my monster’s moon-spirit…
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Joseph Omoh Ndukwu
John Erickson Dulay, Copyright 2024
Because Nothing Is Complete, I Work With What Is Close at Hand
I walk about my house as in a public park,
as if by walking I drive in order like stakes
around something falling apart…
I walk as I write, against solitude itself
—something must keep us company—
against silence, against darkness, against the hours…