T-rex, Child’s Play
If a potential
suitor is not voted
best in class —— if they do not
excel in their field (our cows
are out standing in their fields)
can I still love them?
If they’ve already given me
reason for forgiveness
by naming my deepest
faults, deepest fissures, without
recrimination. If they have
seen me/named me/rec-
ognized me by my most condemning
diagnosis——Achilles’ heel——am I free
to love them? What
would Achilles do? ——dipped
in the river Styx, pinched
at the ankle. Run for his life? ——Seek
shelter? Wouldn’t we all? For that matter, what, the other day,
did the six-year-old sprawled
on my office floor, the one who named——recognized——
my Tyrannosaurus rex (NOT “T-REX”, THAT’S NOT
HIS FULL NAME) do when I caught his
theropod’s scaly tendon
in my Velociraptor’s claws and named it
Achilles? He morphed
into a serpent——quick
as a heartbeat——and slithered
away. My own heart
broke, wondering what
did he know of vul-
nerability——what of
ability? What had he
scrappled together
from the landscape of his upbringing——up-
rising——to comprehend
of ability? thievery? sleight
of hand? ——where
would he go now, what
would he do——tucked
inside himself——to secure
a tapestry
of connection——of compan-
ionability——in this,
his modest
kingdom?
Katie Johntz
The Sandbox
You spoon 42g of ground Columbian coffee into the French press. You then pour boiled
water to the base of the brand name; La Cafetière.
You bring the French press into the sitting room and set it on the coffee table between
the two armchairs. You return to the kitchen for the two cups containing a small fill of milk
and scoop a half spoon of sugar into one. In the sitting room, you pour the pressed coffee to
one centimetre below the rim of each cup. This is the process your father used, and it’s still
how he enjoys his evening coffee.
“Did you remember the sugar, Cait?” he asks from his fireside chair.
“Yes,” you answer with a smile, happy he has remembered such a minute detail.
“Good, and you made a cup of tea for your mother?”
“Yes,” you say, sad that his episodes of paradoxical lucidity are so brief.
You pick up your cup and walk to the bay window, coffee steam rising like ghosts of
shipwreck. You see your childhood sandbox in the garden, its weather-eaten wooden frame
against the ever-green lawn, sand writhing in lonesome Atlantic squalls. On a window seat
cushion, your mother’s knitted blanket rests folded. You remember the winter she spent
engrossed in its tedious creation. You see it sprawled for garden picnics and laid across her
legs on nights she fell asleep on the sofa. You feel it comforting your shoulders as you sat by
the fire the day she passed. It is her eternal embrace.
You run the blanket over your shoulders, squeezing a fistful to your nose. Her
bergamot scent survives in its fibres, the nostalgia and warmth of youth and vitality. You
breathe her in. You remember her standing at the window watching you play in the sandbox,
the blanket draped across her shoulders. You would dig and build to impress her, each
creation bolder than the previous. She would come to inspect your designs and carry you
inside as evening began to lay its heavy hand onto the land. After a bath, she would wrap the
blanket so tightly around you that to take it off was to ballet. You think of the day the
sandbox fun died.
“Mary? Where’s Cait?” your father asks, returning you to the room.
“Sorry?” you say, searching his perplexed face.
“Where’s Cait? It’ll be dark out there in a minute.”
You process his confusion and look towards the sandbox. Beneath the grey sky, you
see yourself constructing the imaginations of childhood with plastic buckets and shovels. You
are digging and building for your watching mother’s approval and affection. You smile at
her, and she smiles at you.
“Mary? Where’s Cait?” your father asks again, “Isn’t it time she came in?”
You nod and caress the blanket as you watch the sandbox.
“I’ll give her another minute, John,” you say, “She looks so happy.”
Gene Murphy
The palmetto bug, my ginger wife and the giant crow
My friend, the silver-haired Palmetto bug, blocked the entrance to the tiny cell I had built
for my frightened beautiful ginger wife so to avoid black-maned Giant Crow, an irreputable
figment of a fervid imagination. He haunted our tiny suburban home, and crushed our Honda
civic, and pulped our fruit trees, and converted our rooftop into his crow-pad commune. I fed her
my magic shrinking potion, and transformed her into a tiny figurine who would fit the ¼ inch
square cell, and escape that fearsome bird.
But Palmetto had other plans and blocked the entrance to the cell.
I tried to intervene, and talk him out of it, but he would not listen to reason.
So my red-blooded auburn-haired ferocious wife raised her hammer and attempted to
take him out, but failed miserably, as her aim was not true.
“Nothing good comes from violence,” Giant Crow cooed, as he came upon them in their
argument, and thereupon ate them both.
Ihor Pidhainy
Secondhand Grief
I cannot bear the turning of the news,
that endless reel of ruin, flood, and flame;
the thumb keeps scrolling, though the spirit knows
each fresh catastrophe appears the same.
A child pulled from the rubble. Forest smoke.
A graph ascending where it should decline.
Advertisements appear between the broke-
nness of the world and ask me if I’d like
new trainers. Moisturiser. Half-price flights.
The mind receives far more than it can hold.
Lives flattened into headlines, clips, and counts;
the dead translated quickly into rolls
of numbers scrolling past the news accounts.
And still the washing waits. The saucepan boils.
The dog needs walking. Someone needs a meal.
The strange offence of ordinary chores
whilst knowing all that suffering is real.
I turn away, yet carry what I’ve seen.
It settles somewhere underneath the skin:
a residue of smoke, though none has been
anywhere near the house I’m sitting in.
No distance holds. No border stays intact.
The world consists of fibre, wire, and screen.
A thousand griefs accumulate and stack
inside a nervous system never meant
to witness everything.
So some days I refuse
the practiced urgency, the breaking tone;
not out of peace, nor ignorance. I choose
the limits of a heart already prone.
Natalie Harveld
Portrait of the author as a middle-aged woman
after Donna Vorreyer
Thirty-nine & feeling leopardine.
Feeling ochre. Gilded. Honeyed
& scaled. Summer sieves
through the windows & I am current.
Electric & river both. Feeling
ripped tide, coppercough, trans-
atlantic. I swallow each shore,
everything on them: me
& all my selves. My throat
an infinite mirror. Look! There is nothing
left behind; I carry all of it
a pearl under my tongue.
Kristina Percy
NARTHEX
The bridesmaids gather around the bride
in the dim mouth of the church
their dresses the hue of a setting sunset
debating if they should wear the straps
or tuck them in. Before the bride can open
her mouth to answer, an older woman —
someone’s aunt, someone’s authority
steps in before the sentence could form.
Straps, she says, will ensure modesty.
Outside, the bells are warming up.
Inside, every woman is adjusting
a piece of fabric, a new warning
their bare shoulders a new danger
a weapon against themselves.
Kassandra Vilchis
Mountain Air Magic Spell
beneath the towering evergreens
and juniper mountain breeze
big sister’s hands push me
into the freeze pop lake
little brother’s revenge ——
algae to her face
splash battle ensues
shrieks of laughter
echoing through the foothills
mom taught me not to fear
black bears crossing our campsite
my full moon eyes unblinking
into the mama’s beseeching tree sap gaze
round babies waddling in tow
my toddler body softened
into a kool-aid smile
I looked up at my own mother’s
sunbeam face —— and I understood.
dandelion butter sunset melts onto still water
the milky way unfurls her gossamer tapestry
as dad convinces us shooting stars are alien visitors
we chase the ember tails of fireflies
and fall asleep to bullfrog lullabies
I think that was the last time my family was whole
the last happy memories I have of my father
before he became someone I don’t recognize
I only hear my mother’s voice
through long distance phone calls
and my sister leaves texts unread
I imagine we can fly back to our campsite
on a loon’s peppered wings
we’ll look up at the moon together
count the stars in the milky way ——
let’s pretend
the mountain air
can make us whole again
Mother’s Words
Her words are boulders that break
the stillness of my inner ocean
rippling outward, endlessly outward.
Twelve years on this earth,
and already, “slut” clings to me
a weight I never chose,
a garment stitched from shame,
a second skin I cannot peel away.
The fever comes
as relentlessly as a wildfire,
devouring the fragile pine forest of my childhood.
The thermometer climbs,
each degree a rung
on the ladder of my panic.
But her eyes don’t meet mine.
Her voice cuts sharper than
the sickness in my veins:
“Get out of my sight.”
Her words, more toxic than the fever,
seep into the cracks of me,
poisoning what’s left.
Ten years old,
and already, “lazy pig”
is the name of my reflection.
Not a daughter, not a child.
Not someone deserving of tenderness.
Just something discarded,
something stained,
something unworthy of love.
Mother-in-Law
for Marlene, 1936-2009
How she enjoyed putting me in my place.
When I complained of bugs in Tennessee,
when I bragged there were none in L.A.:
that’s because you’re surrounded by concrete.
I walk Lincoln Blvd. where nothing blooms,
a world of asphalt and glass. Her diagnosis rose
like mosquito nights on Chickamauga Lake.
I miss pickerelweed, the sudden breeze,
metallic sip of Tennessee water from the sink.
No humidity here. She had six months to live.
A Japanese holly pine reaches over the driveway
like the hand of God, dense as a cityscape
and evergreen. She was everything to me,
both dock line and boat. I float this January,
her long gone. My marriage, too—such slow
collapse under the weight of what could
not root. The holly splits our old concrete,
a persistence I’ve never known. Mosquito eggs
on urban heat, small lives trying to endure.
What places do we put each other in?
Candice M. Kelsey
MINNEAPOLIS BEFORE SUMMER ENDED
We’d walk from my grandparents,
in matching pink dresses,
and skip to the city bus stop.
We sang Petula’s song
as we watched summer run
through the maples
and oaks that lined
the streets planted in the
1950s. Birches
(or were they aspens?)
sprouted near doorsteps
of cookie cutter ramblers
on wide roads that shared
space with bicycles, cars,
and no fear.
We thought her song was
about our city. We left
the lyrics on the curb
as we made our way
to the bench seat
at the back of the bus.
Humming quietly for
our adventure downtown.
We’d weave through big
buildings and skyways.
Throwing pennies
in fountains and dining
on top floors of skyscrapers.
Window shopping through
stores and selecting one
prized possession for
the new school year.
Umbrella or backpack.
We’d watch the city lights
as we were serenaded
by the city noise.
Even with the angst
of school encroaching
on summer, when we went
downtown we forgot all
our troubles and we forgot
all our cares, just like
Petula piped.
Nicole Zwolinski
Lost in Translation
I am home
Or as close to something
That the word stands for;
After all, I’m just weaving tapestries of metaphors,
These intricate strands,
each carefully chosen and with great precision,
weaved
So the world might commune with me
For I am a lone, forlorn being
Cast out from my home, my planet
Forcing me to leave behind
That which makes sense;
Where the tongue I speak
They understand it,
Or so I tell myself —
To placate my weary heart that tediously seeks
A soul in solitary to accompany me.
I write for it is the language I know
Intrinsically that flows
Each word, a brushstroke for you to see
The painting I paint with blood for thee
Scraps of paper burn
As smoke fills the room, the lungs
Choking, even as I use it to signal
Burning embers are all you see
But ‘tis not your fault —
When I show you a painting of my heart
All you see is abstract art,
Like a scientist gazing at the work of a French impressionist
Pondering upon its intimacies,
Oh—
I mean intricacies
Or maybe I didn’t
I stay lost in the mix of this translation.
My essence wandering a desolate nation
Bordering the realms of understanding and familiarity
So I flee to thee, my solemn mother
Take me as part of your trees
Let rain mingle with the tears I weep
Lying in your roots
Oh, mother, turn me
Into those lemon green softlings you sprout each spring
The ones that wither away in autumn
In fiery auburn, the life of these embers
Living in this moment, the next forgotten
Yet they are luckier, they live here
Where they can see,
Behold you in your true beauty
Without needing to utter but a single plea
So solitary walking your valleys and trees
I am home
Or as close to something that home can be
Amity Batra
Laundromat Rant
Dryer was broken, just like my chances
Of finding something that wasn’t broken
So I dragged my pedestrian clothes
Down to the nearest far laundromat.
Welcomed in and then spat out —
An all-too-familiar occurrence —
Upon learning I couldn’t walk out clean
If I didn’t walk in dirty.
Kill ‘em with kindness, polite explanations
The credo of oppressors
Who think a smile excuses them
From all forms of manipulation.
Well, I wasn’t gonna waste breakfast money on a load
When I’d wasted dinner money the night before
Which left me two undesirable options:
Put up a fight or phone a friend.
Not being confrontational by nature
I swallowed my pride and sought assistance
Knowing it would be given
But still wishing I could do it on my own.
Even after the dryer got fixed
I’d remain floating from malfunction to malfunction
Because in this world, luck is for the lucky,
Convenience serves those who are already convenienced.
Sam Hendrian
kaleidoscope
looking into your eyes
is like seeing through
the lens of a kaleidoscope —
a multitude of color fragments
you say your eyes are
“just brown,”
but when I gaze upon them,
I see brilliant hues of
chestnut, caramel, and amber
a unique set of irises
that only you possess
Hannah Mosing
It’s okay to not be okay!
This poem is another different subject
It’s about how people perceive feelings as an object
I’m writing this to try and leave a small effect
To change the way people think and the things that they expect
I know we all talk about the good old days, yeah it used to be different
Was it good though? All people were was ignorant
Not that anything’s changed except for losing our innocence at a young age
If you’re feeling depressed, “it’s just a phase” is what they say
I think we got disengaged, and forgot to reconnect
Remember good times like family dinners and parties
When we connected with our soul and not just our bodies
Now all we do is hug a pillow and try to sleep while you cry
Thinking we can get nirvana by getting high
Because we were never taught to open up and express what you go through
And we never learnt about ourself, never allowed to know how to be “you”
What I’m trying to say is, don’t push away your feelings,
It’s okay to not be okay
There is a light at the end of this tunnel
And yes, to get there might be a struggle
Ask for help, don’t be afraid of hurting your pride
When we all know that we’re damaged inside
And for countless nights that you’ve cried
Thinking no one’s on your side
Talking to random strangers on the internet
Wanting to get away from this, wanting to just forget
I’ll leave with this note
And though there are so many lines that I could quote
But it’s not me that I’m trying to promote
I’m trying to let you know that your feelings are important just as you are
Keep that in mind, and it’ll take you far 😊
Jessica Benita Immanuel
I’m still spitting out the sand
The sun spun three times around my heart before you betrayed my trust. My eyes became a precipice of tears, mountain ranges thrusting up between us. There was no sense finding footing so I allowed myself the fall. Caught in the undertow of memory and fantasy. Your kisses so deep they dug an oasis from my mouth.
I think of your sharp cheekbones, diving between undulating thighs like shark fins. Your hands clamping onto breasts as she drowns you beneath her shores.
San Pedro River Review 18.2
Carella Keil
HAWAIIAN SHAVED ICE
The multicolored
azure, and crimson,
amber, and emerald
scoop of shaved
Hawaiian ice
greets the warm embrace
of her summer sun.
The rays of his white light
recognizes every colored hue
in his own refraction.
Her ice melts.
Drops glisten like
watercolored tears
down a white canvas cone.
Erick Phillips Garske
Grief as a Companion
We lay on the warm grass
idly watching the clouds pass by,
Grief and I.
We’ve been friends forever.
I gathered up some courage.
I’m scared of you, I said,
staring at the sky.
I still can’t look her in the eye.
Why? she questioned,
gently holding my hand.
You are a harsh teacher, I replied.
But you’ve learnt so much from me, she sighed.
I nodded. I agree.
I hated you so much at first.
Your face felt scary and old,
so many scars, such piercing eyes.
I’m mesmerized by your beauty now though,
and I think of you as my own.
But..I paused.
What is it? she prodded.
Every time you teach me something,
the lesson starts with a gut punch.
I know there are more lessons to come
and I don’t know if I have it in me
to get up anymore.
And that thought terrifies me.
She just smiled.
And I did too,
mine was shaky though.
And we just went back to watching the clouds,
two old friends,
a teacher and a student.
Poetry by Michelle
