October 2021 | poetry
In the Aftermath
Each body broken, violet wounds, ash,
bullets like fireflies, dozens of caskets
weighted with clay unmade by misplaced rage.
Mourning continues as a vacant ache,
an absence heavier than upturned dirt
while the body’s a miracle of dust
and lightning. Yes, I would like to be scorched
under the umbrella of you tonight,
can’t wait to burn with the mercy of your
fevered kisses. Please reduce me to soot.
Please use me to mark the doltish faces
of those who would deny we are dying
or show me how I can twist grief’s thick neck
into a shield I carry through the world.
Downstream
Everything good happens in another town.
They’ve got better schools, better teams,
better-looking beauties at whom to stare.
What did those people do to earn
such bounty? At night tears swarm
your cheeks, escape shapes your dreams.
In a field between here & there kids get wasted
on cheap beer and whip-its while snow
complicates someone’s climb up the tower.
They fall & die. You cut off your hair, master
your misery and start to wonder
about other towns with fresher meadows,
how much money you have hidden in the drawer,
how long you can survive on air and straw.
SM Stubbs
SM Stubbs until very recently co-owned a bar in Brooklyn. Recipient of a scholarship to Bread Loaf, he has been nominated for the Pushcart and Best New Poets. Winner of the 2019 Rose Warner Poetry Prize from The Freshwater Review and runner-up in several others. His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, The Normal School, Puerto del Sol, Carolina Quarterly, New Ohio Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Crab Creek Review, December, The Rumpus, among others.
October 2021 | poetry
Tiffany & Annie & me are playing on the swings.
they’re singing a Taylor Swift song I don’t know yet,
and so I wait two verses before joining in,
think I can try the chorus the second time around,
but then, it’s just me, voice quavering, me and
all these words I don’t know,
two girls silently staring at me:
stop acting like you know the notes.
Tiffany comes back from vacation
with one lollipop for Annie.
Tiffany plucks my hair at lunch
and asks why I got split ends.
Tiffany says I have to walk behind them
so we can be a triangle.
no one knows loneliness like a 7-year-old girl.
I saw her once, last year, draped on the arm of a friend
of a friend. drenched in holiday party sparkle,
a little red blister of a person.
she giggles as she tells her date:
oh, we used to kind of bully Juliana.
I don’t sing in public, but god, I wish I did then,
slung my fat tongue over her stupid little hoops
until it made a shiny pink welt on her eardrums.
yodeled until a chandelier fell on her head.
funny how new wounds sound like old wounds.
I wish I sang then,
but what I was scared of was this:
I open my mouth, and nothing comes out
but two giggles, two sets of rolling eyes,
one single searching note
wandering quietly into the rafters.
Juliana Chang
Juliana Chang is a Taiwanese American poet. She is the 2019 recipient of the Urmy/Hardy Poetry Prize, the 2017 recipient of the Wiley Birkhofer Poetry Prize, and a 2015 Scholastic Art & Writing Gold Medalist in Poetry. She received a BA in Linguistics and a MA in Sociology from Stanford University in 2019. Her debut chapbook INHERITANCE was the winner of the 2020 Vella Contest and published with Paper Nautilus Press in 2021.
October 2021 | poetry
Baby, baby, baby, light my way. In Anno Domini 1991, that lyric
was universally liked. Liked like butter is liked. And what’s the deal
with spider eyes anyway? And why is it considered weird to go to the zoo
by yourself? None of these things seem contradictory. Or an appropriation.
Or approximate. Or anti-anything. Sweet multiplicity. Sweet butter and honey.
Todd Copeland
Todd Copeland’s poems have appeared in The Journal, Southern Poetry Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, California Quarterly, The Dalhousie Review, Christianity & Literature, and Sugar House Review, and his essays have been published in Literary Imagination, JNT: Journal of Narrative Theory, and Media, War & Conflict, among other publications. A native of Ohio, he lives in Waco, Texas.
October 2021 | poetry
Smoke
“I do not see the need to burn the houses of those slaughtered;
everything has already been taken,” I say over strong tea and thick porridge.
My colleague says I will not make a good bandit, that I do not understand the effectiveness
of hideous acts to achieve future obedience. And I wish that were true.
In this dust and smoked-filled harmattan night, with a moon blood orange and near full,
my breath is shallow. I cannot avoid the greedy sucking of shisha by expats—
some false sophistication of those closer to death by lungs marked and rotting,
like my grandfather’s at the sallow, emaciated end, despite decades free from the habit.
Before me, one man swims laps methodically. Up and down the middle of the pool.
Hardly a ripple. His broad back barely rising to allow his mouth to draw in air.
His arms deep beneath him to glide scarcely seen. The thick water calls me, to dive, to crawl,
to sink into oxygen free of carbon, to savor moments free of fumes and dust and pain.
Wolves
In Guam, invasive tree snakes invent a new way to slither.
Good news for their survival;
bad for nesting starlings.
In Washington, men with furs and Molotovs storm the Capitol.
Coddlers and goaders slowly renounce them,
try to make themselves palatable in the new light.
In my garden, overrun with green,
a juvenile stag, nubs where horns will be,
curls himself to sleep. Back so thin I count each vertebrae.
They become a rosary. Hail Marys replaced with silent thanks
as I breathe with this deer, safe here and now from wildcats,
as the hummingbird circles for sage.
Heather Bourbeau
Heather Bourbeau’s work has appeared or will appear in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, The MacGuffin, Meridian, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and SWWIM. She is the winner of La Piccioletta Barca’s inaugural competition and the Chapman Magazine Flash Fiction winner and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia.
October 2021 | poetry
Love makes the wheels go round— as in, your heart is a vehicle
conveyed through small towns, worn-out suitcase you drag, only
stopping at the fair for pickled eggs, magenta jar of luck & hope.
Those tiny bobbing heads, kraken, sailors tell themselves at night.
Here, the Ferris wheel is broken down and all the lights look dim,
forsaken while you wander round the same dirt path. The clam
booth steams just like the sea— though you’re in Pennsylvania.
The pie ladies are smiling from their perch which smells like pine.
It’s been redone, still lemon, apple, rhubarb, they preach & hum.
Renounce, renounce & have a slice. Because the night, because
you’re home & you’re redeemed. Beside the swings, you halt.
See someone you used to know; he is old, does not see you.
That chartreuse light of August glowed just beyond the ballfield
when you first came. Now the hawkers at the candy apple stand
put on their lights & all the games draw in the younger crowd.
You pitch dimes in old thin jars, try to win back the family name.
Then the Ferris wheel begins to turn and soon the fireworks will
parachute chrysanthemums into the dark. One year when you
were young, you were stuck at the top with a boy you liked.
Kids waved thin sparklers on the hill like dots of fireflies.
Hello, hello, you want to shout. Remember me? But no one
yells. And no one comes to sit near you. The carnival man
jerks his finger. You are next. He clamps you down in metal.
You ride in huge moist circles, your heart lurching at the top.
Ellen Stone
Ellen Stone advises a poetry club at Community High School and co-hosts a monthly poetry series, Skazat! in Ann Arbor, Michigan where she raised three daughters with her husband. She is the author of What Is in the Blood (Mayapple Press, 2020) and The Solid Living World (Michigan Writers’ Cooperative Press, 2013). Ellen’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Reach Ellen at ellenstone.org.
October 2021 | poetry
Come in come in I’m so glad
you could come how good
to see you I’m fine thanks just fine
lunch is laid out in the dining room
let’s open the wine
so we can enjoy ourselves
take your plate into the garden
the lilies she planted last fall
have just come into bloom
yes lovely
do take a second helping
I gave the caterers her special recipe
have another glass of wine
the music was beautiful
wasn’t it
she helped plan everything
that was our niece who sang
marvellous voice I’m fine
really fine everything
just like she’d wanted
wonderful
to see you let’s have a hug
do stay a bit
we’ll all go out to dinner
there’s a great place
we used to
thanks so much
for coming, goodbye yes
it went well
so nice
you could come
get together soon
you’re the last
wish
you could stay
I’ll walk you to your car
fine
love you
fine
give us a kiss
until fine
later of course
I’m fine
thanks
just fine
Ruth Bavetta
Ruth Bavetta’s poems have appeared in Rattle, Nimrod, North American Review, Tar River Poetry, Slant, American Journal of Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies. Her fifth book will be published in 2022. She has been an Associate Editor for Good Works Review and has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize.
