Grace Notes

October 2020 | poetry

It’s so much work to stay alive

but living has its payoffs

sunset so stunning it burns your eyes

mathematical precision in a seashell

an unexpected kind word

in a foreign city

not that any of these will fix

the human condition

after all there’s a graveyard

beneath everything

but such small grace notes

can lighten the load

Like when you teared up

kissing that girl good-bye

in the Yugoslav train station

all those years ago and the men

nearby wiped their eyes as well

and patted your shoulder

in solidarity—no matter

you shared no language

no lived experience, you

a U.S. vagabond surrounded

by Slovenian workers

The station was shabby, squalid

yet the memory of their kindness

lifts your spirits still

Sally Zakariya

Sally Zakariya’s poetry has appeared in some 75 print and online journals and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Her most recent publication is Muslim Wife (Blue Lyra Press, 2019). She is also the author of The Unknowable Mystery of Other People, Personal Astronomy, When You Escape, Insectomania, and Arithmetic and other verses, as well as the editor of a poetry anthology, Joys of the Table. Zakariya blogs at www.butdoesitrhyme.com.

Safety

July 2020 | poetry

You must build doors

to invite people in

is what they’ve told me

since the funeral,

but these are coddled,

runny-hearted

idiots, the open

floor plans of people.

They lust after beige:

plush-carpet beige,

nice and wanting

nothing. What I want

is to pause

for caterpillars

and talk to them

like we talked

to her in hospice.

You look for twigs

to coax them

to grass, deliver them

from the threat

of neighborhood kids

who love nothing

inside their rooms

and would murder

for candy, or pets

they would let die.

They are too young

to love a better way.

To close these doors

built to nowhere,

doors flung open

just for them

to hurtle through.

Emily Kingery

Emily Kingery is an Associate Professor of English at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, where she teaches courses in literature, writing, and linguistics. Her work appears or is forthcoming in multiple literary journals, including Eastern Iowa Review, Gingerbread House, High Shelf Press, New South, PROEM, Prometheus Dreaming, Quercus, and Telepoem Booth, and she has been a Pushcart Prize nominee. She serves on the Board of Directors at the Midwest Writing Center, a non-profit organization that supports writers in the Quad Cities community.

Quotidian

July 2020 | poetry

For fifty years, we lived

at the bend in Spring Creek

where the stream turns

back on itself,

in a shingled Cape Cod

too small for the family

and dreadfully cold.

The creek’s ceaseless song

captained our seasons—

the slow murmur

of half-frozen water

holding tenuously to life

or the great green rush

of an early thaw.

Each spring we bailed

the basement

trying to keep our poor boat afloat—

fearing any minute

we might have to swim for it.

How our children learned

to hate that sodden season.

They are grown now

and scattered here and there

like the spray of water on rock.

It seems forever since a visit.

The oldest, Jillie, tells me

it took years to get the creek

out of her head.

I drove past the old place today—

much of the roof is collapsed and jagged.

I like to watch the fly fisherman

pluck rainbows from their hidden holes,

with a grace beyond my understanding.

And then, at sunset,

the creek and I head home.

Steven Deutsch

Steve Deutsch lives in State College, PA. His recent publications have or will appear in 8 Poems, Louisiana Lit, Burningword Literary Journal, The Write Launch, Biscuit Root Drive, Evening Street, Better Than Starbucks, Flashes of Brilliance, San Antonio Review, Softblow, Mojave River Review, The Broadkill Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Panoply, Algebra of Owls, The Blue Nib, Thimble Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Ghost City Review, Borfski Press, Streetlight Press, Gravel, Literary Heist, Nixes Mate Review, Third Wednesday, Misfit Magazine, Word Fountain, Eclectica Magazine, The Drabble, New Verse News and The Ekphrastic Review. He was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2017 and 2018. His Chapbook, “Perhaps You Can,” was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length book, Persistence of Memory will be published by Kelsay in September 2020.