January 2023 | poetry
I wasn’t prepared for the body
the stillness of it, a life muted,
how the gray sets in
how small a man can be.
The stillness of him, a life muted
in a hospital room, thin blankets
against his rails of bone
how the gray sets in,
the breath still in him,
I learned
how small a father can be
when I’m too afraid
to touch him.
to touch him
when I’m too afraid,
how hollow a father can be
I learned
to still breathe,
as the gray sets in
rails of bone, against
thin blankets, and his hospital room
in stillness, a life muted,
how gone a father can be
when the gray begins
stillness, our lives muted.
I wasn’t prepared for my father’s body.
Lisa Rua-Ware
Lisa Rua-Ware is a poet in central Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in San Pedro River Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, and Lily Poetry Review. When she’s not chasing her two rambunctious kids, she works as a technical writer, loves drawing, journaling, list making, and all things paper crafts.
January 2023 | poetry
She handed me her heart —
a red ceramic music box
she painted for me, kiln fired for me
in the heat of summer, in the dark
of basement, with tiny brushes,
shimmer chalk & glaze. Mamma
with her hair ragged back by gingham. Hands
knotted, tucking curls under cotton. Hands hinging
the lid & notes hammering. Mamma —
held out a heart that was hollow
as an empty cup, frigid as porcelain
beneath my palms those nights I stayed up
gripping the rim & waiting for the moon
to pass right through. My mamma
was girl, is a sunset at dawn, will be
an artist waking to breath’s echo in the sink.
This heart is a dam. The melody is a dam.
Her daughter is a damn opening
of the lid. She tells me the notes will play
a thousand times before the battery dies & she will live
for as long as I can make it last. Mamma —
molds mortality out of clay, leaves me
with a heart that defines the future
in terms of ration, in terms of choosing which days
are worthy of a play. Tomorrow is now
lifting the lid & listening for the time
when silence answers back.
Her heart is a fragile thief
I immediately break.
Lorrie Ness
Lorrie Ness is a poet writing in a rural corner of Virginia. When she’s not writing, she can be found stomping through the woods, watching birds and playing in the dirt. Her work can be found in numerous journals, including THRUSH, Palette Poetry and Sky Island Journal. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021 and her chapbook, “Anatomy of a Wound” was published by Flowstone Press in July of 2021.
January 2023 | poetry
Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middleclass! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion!
— Allen Ginsberg, “Footnote to ‘Howl’ ”
Answers are demanded of too many questions.
Write the vision, plain as a tabletop,
carved into barroom wood.
Vision has a time appointed,
presses on, will not lie. Wait for it.
Let go, ungrasp.
Let go, free.
Promissory note, hope.
The structure of bread.
A new moon over Highway 77.
Reptile, ogre, jackal, mud
— pure as any other thing.
Singer-king leapt and whirled
and claimed his loot, sinner
that he knew himself to be and prophet.
Wisdom is queen.
Patrick T. Reardon
Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, has authored twelve books, including the poetry collections Requiem for David (Silver Birch), Darkness on the Face of the Deep (Kelsay) and The Lost Tribes (Grey Book). His memoir in prose poems Puddin’: The Autobiography of a Baby was published in November, 2022, by Third World Press with an introduction by Haki Madhubuti. His website is patricktreardon.com. His poetry has appeared in Rhino, Main Street Rag, America, Autumn Sky, Burningword Literary Journal and many others. His poem “The archangel Michael” was a finalist for the 2022 Mary Blinn Poetry Prize.
January 2023 | poetry
The usual builders’ rubble, buckled screws,
snapped trowel-heads, small chunks of plank,
the strips of broken two by two, the bottle-caps.
(Images of blokes in spring and summer sun
drilling, fixing, tamping, swigging.)
A foot or two, a generation lower,
the first sheep’s bones. My farming cousin
confirmed their species, and this had been
the slaughterhouse field, where sheep, pigs, cows,
would wait their entry to the abattoir.
(My father’s gang, living a street away as boys,
would listen to the squeals and bleating,
before the thud. The sudden laden silence.)
I wondered about those bones. So how
did they escape the slaughter? And for what?
Then suddenly a skull, a flat crushed skull
(my cousin said a lamb of two years old).
So what obscure extinction?
My daughter, nine years old, dealt with it
earnestly, calling the remnant “Larry”.
We buried him between the compost and the beans
and raised a simple cross.
Robert Nisbet
Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet whose work has appeared widely in Britain and the USA. He won the Prole Pamphlet Competition in 2017 with Robeson, Fitzgerald and Other Heroes. In the USA he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize four times in the last three years.
January 2023 | poetry
Life is and is not like a poem.
The poem enters a room with variable dimensions
And all at once I feel it sway.
My feet enter a room and its colors are always the same.
A line comes dressed with the surprise of sudden stops
And redresses itself with every turn it makes into the next;
There is no dirty laundry hanging on the line.
A day without lines is a day filled with boredom.
An average line escapes like a melodic flute or trombone
Towards the back of an orchestra;
In my everyday world it’s the only instrument I play.
I pay out the line as the poem comes near to its dock.
A poem has a theory of movement and each movement a sign;
A life has more movements and hopes for more time.
Michael Salcman
MICHAEL SALCMAN: poet, physician and art historian, was chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland and president of the Contemporary Museum. Poems appear in Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, The Café Review, Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, New Letters, and Poet Lore. Books include The Clock Made of Confetti, The Enemy of Good is Better, Poetry in Medicine, his popular anthology of classic and contemporary poems on doctors, patients, illness & healing, A Prague Spring, Before & After, winner of the 2015 Sinclair Poetry Prize, and Shades & Graces, inaugural winner of The Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize (Spuyten Duyvil, 2020). Necessary Speech: New & Selected Poems was published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2022.
January 2023 | poetry
Things I Missed
I was never alone with an abalone;
I never swallowed a spoon whole.
My parents never made love in front of me-
I’m not sure if they ever made love at all.
I was a fruit not ripe yet,
but born anyway.
The allure of dogs was lost on me;
I never understood the beauty of lamps.
They took up so much space,
and I wanted to push them off tables.
I never had a brother who went to war.
There was a casualty from Viet Nam
whose shaving lotion nipped at my senses;
we ate white rice flavored with oregano
and listened to Janis Joplin a lot.
The night we saw a Genet play
was the only time I heard him cry.
My friend Sue was sleeping on a cot next to us at the time.
She rested lightly, curious and unruffled;
I didn’t say goodbye to him properly.
I demanded instead that he return my albums, which he did.
I don’t remember where he went after the hospital.
Letter To the Twenty-first Century
I’m yours, I guess.
You’re not polite.
You want me online all day,
thin and lonely.
You say, hush, pretend you’re not in chains.
You say, look up at the stars,
never look down.
The old me’s going to start running,
the old me is bending and breaking,
shaking and making a stand.
I tell my beloved
don’t be reborn yet-
you wouldn’t be happy here.
The snow starts melting
as soon as it falls.
Mary McGinnis
Mary McGinnis, blind since birth, has been writing and living in New Mexico since 1972 where life has inspired her with emptiness, desert, and mountains. Published in over 80 magazines and anthologies including Lummox IX, BombFireLit, and Fixed and Free Anthology, she has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and included in the Telepoetry series recordings. She has published three full length collections: Listening for Cactus (1996), October Again (2008), See with Your Whole Body (2016), and a chapbook, “Breath of Willow.”
