Writing

April 2022 | poetry

Rub the callus

where the pencil rests

instead of the bare base

of your ring finger. 

When you aren’t feeling

so much like yourself, 

what is your relationship

to enough? The sea

that gives you sand, the foam

that gives you the spray

of algae floating toward river,

salt into a far off fresh?

            Will you let the conches rest

with their oracles gestating

or beg they scream

bloody murder? Evenings 

the pencil marks two 

dimensionality like a dog 

who sits and laps

at the edge of a mirage

called thirst. 

At night the foam builds

without shine. If you don’t 

bed a scientist, will you 

never hear that 

the existence of the surface is 

more important than what 

the surface contains

or your silence? 

If dreams weren’t fluid,

            they would answer 

to day. Instead 

they drown it.

Amy A. Whitcomb

Poetry and prose by Amy A. Whitcomb have recently appeared in Witness, Poet Lore, The Baltimore Review, Terrain.org, and other journals. She holds a Master of Science degree and a Master of Fine Arts degree, both from the University of Idaho. Her writing has been honored with a Pushcart Prize nomination and residencies with the Jentel Foundation, Playa, and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. You can meet Amy at www.amyawhitcomb.com/artist.

And the sweater you’ve been missing

April 2022 | poetry

appears among some clothes you are sorting

and the recipe you’d forgotten falls from

the pages of the cookbook you’re perusing

and the person who convinced herself

she must hate you for your differences

appears in a dream as a character to protect.

And the friendship once abandoned

is resumed, though only in spectral form,

in a familiar world you’ve never seen,

where garments are only imagined

to fit, and flavors are tasted

simply by reading ingredient lists,

but promises to cook it again

are never kept because it didn’t

taste that good in the first place.

Nancy Whitecar

Nancy Whitecar is a professional pianist and music teacher living in the Bay Area, California, who is making publication of her writing her third act. Her poetry has been published in “Stick Figure,” “Loud Coffee Press,” and “A&U Magazine,” which nominated her poem “Punch Line” for a Pushcart Prize. Her short stories have appeared in “The MacGuffin” and “Ember: A Journal of Luminous Things.” She’s listening to jazz or Beethoven at home when she’s not hiking and camping with her husband.