July 2022 | poetry
If I tell my mother she is the sky,
what I really mean is that I’m the pond
my father built her. What I mean is
I watch the way she rises and sets
in herself. I mirror every cloud
that mars her features. I darken
to match her windy movements.
What I’m saying is my surface
catches her light, but when she
grows overcast with gray,
my entire face disappears.
I’m saying the two of us
are always facing each other
and wincing away at the same
time. I’ve absorbed into myself
every color she’s taught me
When I try to reveal my
drowned leaves to her,
she can’t see through
her own reflection.
What I’m trying to say is
I can’t stop taking
her shape.
Racine Watson
Racine Watson is a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she studied Creative Writing within the UNO’s Writer’s Workshop. Her work includes fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry. Her creative-nonfiction essay, “The Five Ways I Left” is forthcoming in the 13th Floor literary journal, 2022 edition.
July 2022 | poetry
I walk over train ties
searching for drops of water,
like the rains I’ve loved, negotiating
tumbleweeds where the train runs
regardless of how many rocks lie on the ties.
Farms, silos, industry with steam rising
from the table of land, I watch passively
as workers drain a swamp, plant rice,
and fill it again.
Scale of the wounds
call it forgiveness
call it dread
this pilgrimage.
Call it jasmine.
Call it an address.
Open space, even dry trees
at the mountain’s base–
they too suffer their own mirror.
Call it eyelashes, moist
with their own nick names.
Plumes of smoke make their own
weather in the shape of
a cross or is it a figure
with head and arms
or a rocket
raising itself above the cloud shelf.
Laurel Benjamin
Laurel Benjamin is a San Francisco Bay Area native, where she invented a secret language with her brother. She has work forthcoming or published in Lily Poetry Review, Turning a Train of Thought Upside Down: An Anthology of Women’s Poetry, South Florida Poetry Journal, Trouvaille Review, One Art, Ekphrastic Review, Wordpeace, The Thieving Magpie, Black Fox, Hare’s Paw, California Quarterly, Mac Queens Quinterly, among others. Affiliated with the Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and the Port Townsend Writers, she holds an MFA from Mills College. She is a reader for Common Ground Review. Find her blog at https://thebadgerpress.blogspot.com. Find her at Twitter at @lbencleo. Find her on Instragram at cleobenjami.
July 2022 | poetry
submerged and unseen
in an archaic well –
women thought dirty
by men of G-d
in an archaic well,
with bodies purified
by men of G-d,
ensnaring the fecund
with bodies purified,
my sisters were bait
ensnaring the fecund
in their water ringed curls
my sisters were bait,
fertile and sullen –
in their water ringed curls
hid the birth of the world
fertile and sullen,
women thought dirty
hid the birth of the world –
submerged and unseen
Lisa Delan
Lisa Delan is classical soprano specializing in American Art Song; performing, recording, and commissioning musical settings of an expansive range of poetry. She has recorded extensively for the Pentatone label and can be heard on Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube, and other streaming platforms. Her own poetry appears in American Writers Review (San Fedele Press 2022), Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Cathexis Northwest Press, Drunk Monkeys, Lone Mountain Literary Society, Mill Valley Literary Review, Poets Choice, The Pointed Circle, Tangled Locks, Viewless Wings, and Wingless Dreamer.
April 2022 | poetry
After Theories of Time and Space by Natasha Trethewey
The home we knew is only memory. It repeats
without variation. We are forever young—
forever children playing in the yard: giggling, kicking stones,
chasing guineafowl, taking too long to answer mother’s call.
Mother is so much older now or in her grave, though
in the home inside you, she is always young and lovely—
dark skin glistening in the midday sun as she simmers
peanut stew and the spice-heavy aroma is carried
on the wind even across the ocean. If you take a deep breath,
Angela, you can taste the meal she prepared the last day you saw her.
Ellen June Wright
Ellen June Wright was born in England of West Indian parents and immigrated to the United States as a child. She taught high-school language arts in New Jersey for three decades before retiring. She has consulted on guides for three PBS poetry series. She was a finalist in the Gulf Stream 2020 summer poetry contest. Her work was selected as The Missouri Review’s Poem of the Week in June 2021, and she received five 2021 Pushcart Prize nominations.
April 2022 | poetry
Leave behind
fugitive clothing, rags that stink of evasion,
irreconcilable anguish,
unacknowledged fissures,
time sliced by nostalgia into frames.
Be close to the edge to know your wound your love,
your end to abide, but not in complaisance.
Do not forget to leave your handprint on a wall.
These are the conditions of possibility.
Lynn Staley
Lynn Staley is a Professor of English at Colgate University, where she teaches and writes about medieval and early modern literature and culture. However, she is also a poet and has been for many years. Her poems are representative of her awareness of place (a remnant of a Kentucky upbringing), of the intersections of the ordinary and extraordinary, and of her interest in the submerged narrative. Several years ago a poetry manuscript was short-listed for the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize given by Kent State University Press. She has published in the Seneca Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and Psaltery and Lyre.
April 2022 | poetry
I have rubber-band hands and
Where I come from everything is
Fingerfood. we break the shape
of rice on our plates and smoke
escapes from the side of our palms.
and strip down fishbones naked
when in rain, we churn aubergine
In winters we wed coco-
nuts to jaggery. Later
we stir heartburn – strikes as stiff
as cheese fried with tume-
ric. but to chilli we are
subjective. pork is eaten
but outside the home at road
side stalls with sizzling woks to
warm your pockets deep and leave
you smiling in a damp all-
ey, in our evening-old city
Sristi Sengupta
Sristi is currently studying toward her Bachelor’s qualification in English Literature and creative writing. She’s had a knack in writing fiction and poetry for years now, her debut novel, The Little Mountain (published with Olympia Publishers, UK) vouches on her interest in Tibetology and secrets of the oriental culture. Sristi works as a Marketing Author to earn a living and aspires to build a career in screenwriting as well. Her style in poetry is very personal and often has references to authors who helped her love for writing survive. Her poems are generally about the pace of life, her childhood, her experiences and emotions and her beloved home city, Kolkata.
