Tag: Poetry
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Protected: Whine & Die by Lasha D. Goodwin
Categories
Protected: From His Rib by Kaycee Painter
Abecedarian Becomes Cancer Diagnosis | Anna Lisa Stork
Another hospital trip. You are
bleeding again. It’s almost
cold enough to see my
death. I press my cheek to the window.
Every day is a test, and I am always
failing to make amends.
God means prayer,
half-assed prayer.
I learn the lines,
jester the psalms to
keep you alive,
living for the time being.
Mom means daughter.
No. I don’t want to meet the
oncologist who tells me it’s
pancreatic cancer. I ask
questions that have no answer – all
rust and ache.
Sorry, so many apologies and yet
the truth is still
unbearable. Sorry pokes into another
vein. Sorry don’t know
where you bleed from.
Xerox of a xerox. A final
yuletide in the hospital. We plant
zinnias after the last frost.
About the Author:
Anna Lisa is currently pursuing a BFA in creative writing at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Sink Hollow Literary Magazine, Prairie Margins, and Glass Mountain Magazine. Her writing explores grief through the lens of the Midwestern landscape.
First Date at a Greenhouse | Costantino Toth
‘The way that we handle [geolocation] uncertainty
is by taking a star sighting during missile fight,
to then effectively correct for the initial position error.’
—pp. 206–7 from “Nuclear War: A Scenario”
Romance is nature under our mouths
and our hands— flowers
to gardens, sea foam
to vineyards, smatter
of stars to a city plan,
hills to hips.
If nature, however,
begets only nature, such
that our tending and lining
and sucking are natural, as are
the noisy babies and tools,
then so are
the four hundred and fifty–five
kilotons wearing exhaust
like a wedding band,
poking out of the sea—
love’s ground zero
—and tracing a nail along
the Great Bear’s grooves
‘til it snags
a tuft of Beijing, woos in the new world
with Titan
Arum
ikebana.
About the Author:
Costantino Toth is a researcher, warehouse worker, and writer. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Epiphany, The Rumpus, and Two Thirds North. She is currently pursuing her M.A. in Cultural Astronomy and Astrology at the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, while residing in Florida with Romoletto, her little cat. Her writing and research trace the tanglings of art, ancient history, and divination.
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No Certificate by Todd Epp
No Certificate | Todd Epp
She carried the child
after it was gone.
Nebraska law said so.
No one asked her
what she wanted.
The doctor said
no certificate
and walked out.
She went home
with what remained.
My grandfather and his brother
found a place east of Henderson.
Black soil.
Corn rows.
No marker.
No paper.
Only what got told
in the family
and kept getting told.
Now the farm is gone.
Corn grows there.
Bonus audio of Todd reading his poem…
About the author:
Todd Epp is a retired and recovering attorney and journalist living in South Dakota. Most of his fiction and poetry is about the Plains experience.
This is his first published poem.
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The Sun and the Prison by John Dennis
The Sun and the Prison
| John Dennis
It comes in before the bolts are drawn,
not through the gates but through the glass,
a slow, deliberate spill of gold
across the floor of every cell.
It rests a while on the metal bed,
warms the thin blanket folded twice,
lays a quiet hand on a shoulder turned
too long toward the wall.
The sun
moves tier by tier, uncounted, unseen,
softening the corners of concrete thought,
touching the scar no one asks about,
the knuckles, the jaw, the held-in breath.
It polishes the dull of a steel sink,
coaxes a flicker from tired eyes,
lingers in the hollow of a name
spoken only in memory.
On it goes, patient warden of light,
through corridors humming with yesterday,
slipping past locks, past numbers, past files,
mending what it can without witness
a warmth in the chest that loosens the fist,
a brightness that edges regret into shape,
a steady insistence that time can move forward, even here.
It finds the ones who do not sleep,
sits with them through the longest hour,
leans through the bars like a listening friend,
says nothing, but does not leave.
In the yard it opens its wide, clear palm,
lets faces lift, lets shadows fall behind,
lays out a sky no wall can hold,
a brief and boundless reprieve.
And when the day has done its work,
when names are called and doors release,
when footsteps cross from counted ground
into the unmeasured air
the sun does not follow.
It pauses on the threshold,
sets its warmth in the hands that wait,
in the streets, the homes, the turning world,
and gives them back
not as they were,
but as they might yet be
to us.
About the author:
John Dennis was born in New York and moved to Sweden after being stationed in Italy while serving in the US Navy. He holds a Master’s degree in Pedagogy from Malmö University where he also studied Creative Writing. A stroke ended his teaching career giving him more time to write. He is married to Anna, father to Julia and grandfather to Noah.