Six White Feathers

January 2020 | poetry

Something happened here.

Beneath this tree, a pigeon’s worth

of feathers lies scattered among stones.

In the dazzling desert light, six white

strong-shafted quills designed for flight

catch my eye. I bend to pluck them,

take them home. Blocks away, near

her old apartment, hawks nest. Sometimes

I pass for a view of those high branches

that leaf and lose their leaves,

for a glimpse of hawks,

for a longer walk and the long run

of memories we made. But why save

these six feathers? A pigeon became

a raptor’s meal—that’s the story

I imagine—and why commemorate

a death I only guess has happened?

A souvenir is nothing but a wish

to preserve the evanescent,

a pretense of permanence.

Take, for instance, a seventh feather

I spotted as we stood sealed, embracing

beside a train. All the colors of ash,

it had come to rest between the rails.

I warned her not to reach

beneath the wheels to pick it up,

though she hadn’t moved to leave

my arms. Soon, the train would roll

away, but for now there was no

danger. So I let that feather go

and wisely made the most of one last

chance to hold her close. Now

six feathers lie scattered on my desk:

not the pure white I detected from afar,

not the white silence of a blank page

in the face of a myriad unasked questions

and too much left to say, but white

smudged pale gray at their tips and edges.

Still I keep them, to spite their lack

of meaning and the way they take me

back to a mid-October day, a train

on a westbound track, a woman I call

love, who promised nothing, and a lone

pigeon feather, gone. Lost forever.

Marisa P. Clark

Marisa P. Clark is a queer writer from the South whose work has appeared in Apalachee Review, Cream City Review, Foglifter, Potomac Review, Rust + Moth, Whale Road Review, and elsewhere, with work forthcoming in Shenandoah, Nimrod, Epiphany, and Evening Street Review, among others. She was twice the winner of the Agnes Scott College Writers’ Festival Prizes (in fiction, 1996; in nonfiction, 1997), and Best American Essays 2011 recognized her creative nonfiction among its Notable Essays. She reads fiction for New England Review and makes her home in New Mexico with three parrots and two dogs.

Damnatio Memoriae

January 2020 | poetry

To resist through nonviolence, yes—

I’ll do what the data says is wise.¹

But to love is another matter:

I may wave the flag, but I am no patriot;

Is it not better to burn what they betray?

If the house is rotten, I leave it to the carpenter

To destroy or Reconstruct. I am fine with either.

Yes, nothing grows without rot—

No rich soil, no history to study and to learn—

But the illiterate draw their own lessons, wield

Their own weapons.

I have run out of words of outrage.

One day there will be monuments

To tell of this dangerous time:

What structures will the architects design?

What wild rantings will the walls inscribe?

I am no thief. All that is mine is mine.

Shall I first confiscate this epoch,

Make it mine to censure or delete? ^{2 3}

What of the graffiti I may not find?

The encrypted hard drive I can’t erase?

The yard signs yet to decay…?

No, it would take millions to do the job.

We, redeemers of what—an idea?

Nearly half the population?

At Appomattox no treaty was signed,

For there was no truce to be had:

Democracy always teeters between deliverance

And decay…

My greatest pleasure in overcoming this trial

Would be to never have reason to relive it.

¹ Robson, David. The ‘3,5% rule’: How a small minority can change the world. May 14, 2019. BBC. <http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190513-it-only-takes-35-of-people-to-change-the-world>

² Robey, Tracy. The Long History of ‘Damnatio Memoriae’ and the Destruction of Monuments.  August 16, 2019. Jezebel. <https://pictorial.jezebel.com/the-long-history-of-damnatio-memoriae-and-the-destructi-1797860410>

³ [3] Bond, Sarah. Erasing the Face of History. May 14, 2011. The New York Times. <https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/opinion/15bond.html>

Andy Posner

Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. He has had his poetry published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.

My Sister’s Secrets

January 2020 | poetry

—musty smell

a ball of bloody underpants

under her bed

cigarette butts in a jam jar

a half empty bottle of gin

wrapped in an old wool sweater

two tins of spearmint Tic Tacs

the pearl earrings my mother

lost last week

a DO NOT READ UNDER PENALTY

OF DEATH diary

rows of Leslie Richards

followed by rows of Leslie Fisher

& rows of Leslie Pearson

in slanted pink script

a dog-eared copy of Peyton Place

untie the top of your bathing suit

a condom curled in her wallet

I tiptoe away from tomorrow—

Claire Scott

Claire Scott is an award winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has been accepted by the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.

No Waiting Room

January 2020 | poetry

The only way is through.

At the moment it seems impossible:

No thoroughfare.

I mean how do you trust yourself?

And your neurotransmitters?

And that’s just one of many

Things to worry about.

Why wake up in the morning?

There must be something that makes it worthwhile.

There must be something

To fix or shrink.

I’ve never seen one

That didn’t make me worse.

And there’s something to drink

On the top shelf.

“Not the cause, just the symptoms.”

You want to know about my mother?

I’ll tell you about my mother.

[Violence ensues,]

And watch out

For charged particles.

They can be very aggressive.

This page is intentionally left blank,

And the one behind it

Is unintelligible.

Ian Ganassi

Ian Ganassi’s work has appeared or will appear in numerous literary magazines, including, New American Writing; The American Journal of Poetry; First Literary Review-East; Clockwise Cat; and The Yale Review; among many others. His poetry collection Mean Numbers was published in 2016. His new collection, True for the Moment, is forthcoming from MadHat Press. Selections from an ongoing collaboration with a painter can be found at www.thecorpses.com.