Tag: Poetry

At the Printer’s During Election
Season | Cheryl Dyer

At the sound of the door buzzer, you emerge
from the backroom of this dusty building
that shakes with the rumbling and thudding
of printing machines. They sound like angry ogres
stomping about, grinding out the thousands
of shiny fliers that are daily boxed up,
and shipped out to every house in the city.

I imagine they’ve not stopped for weeks
and you reek of body odor and have dark rings
under your eyes like you’ve been the one
to stay awake and prod these monsters
to keep churning out papers plastered
with angry faces, big red ‘X’s and words
like evil, devastate, and surrender.

You made time, though, to hear me out
about printing something different.

When I mention artwork, I see you soften,
like, I really see your shoulders relax and you lean

forward as I pull out a piece from the portfolio
that shimmers with speckles of patent gold.

It is something that makes no claims. Or maybe
does make claims– wild claims.

But, it causes nothing to splinter apart,
no one cowers when it speaks.

About the Author:

Cheryl Dyer is a poet, visual artist, and calligrapher residing in Omaha, NE where she lives with her partner as a new empty-nester. She recently graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska in Omaha. She has received Honorable Mention for the Helen Kenefick Poetry Prize twice and has had work published in several literary journals, such as The Gilded Weathervane, Tethered Literary, and River and South Review.

Letter I Wish My Mother Wrote from Virginia | Daniel Lurie

Son, I watched dusk spring a leak into dawn. I only knew it was morning when the cats woke up your sisters. The chemo has been rough, but I thank Hashem they caught it before it was too late. You have to advocate for yourself at the hospitals. Especially with the doctors. You know the mold that you scraped out of the windowpanes with steel wool? It’s started to grow back like frost. I can’t lift my head to see, so Ivy painted birds onto the glass in acrylics. She made it look like the scene from our backyard in Montana, down to the green paint flaking from the old feeder. It has the bluebird duo, the towhee with its demon eyes, the rafter of turkeys, the tanager looking comically out of place… She must’ve used glow-in-the-dark, because I woke in the night and saw a million beating heartbeats. Unsettling, yet comforting, the way they’re there to hold me. The moving company broke all the dishes, so Dana replaced them with plastic ones from Dollar Tree. She gathered the shards and cemented a mosaic pathway leading to the garden, which I have to believe I’ll walk one day. The kitchen is full of such life when your sisters sing off-key and the walls sweat with whatever’s in the oven. They made friends with a kind gentlemen from next door who still has all his hair. I think he’s sweet on me. I never dreamed someone would be interested after your father died, but he rubs my feet while we watch American Pickers, and we don’t say a word, other than that one time he said he’d need to take me dancing.

About the Author: