Bitters

April 2021 | poetry

Take your sorrow soup,

sour mash of sand

that slipped through

your mother’s hands on

days spent resenting a husband’s

regretful weakness.

Trickle in the salt from old

wounds, sprinkle an ounce

of onion tears over whatever meat

you can trim from the fat

on her old chopping block.

Stir in the shadow of the owl

that passes overhead

whispering that necessary question

who cooks for you?

Kelley Jean White

Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in inner-city Philadelphia and rural New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and JAMA. Her recent books are Toxic Environment (Boston Poet Press) and Two Birds in Flame (Beech River Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant.

Bad Memories of the Good Old Days

April 2021 | poetry

The darkest hour is just before

the middle of the night.

Mishka Shubaly, “Destructible”

I climbed the infinite staircase

that leads nowhere;

it took me almost a decade,

a fractured ankle,

a fractured rib,

a broken tooth,

my peace of mind,

and half of my soul.

I played the eleven games,

those were happier days.

But I remember the rejection,

the taste of blood in my mouth,

the humiliation,

a pitch-black bottomless pit

of youth and sadness.

I know how it feels to be depressed

at your aunt’s birthday party,

to think about death at the dive bar,

I know the strange looks you get

when you make jokes about misery,

I know how it feels

to spend the entire weekend

under a fortress of shadows and blankets.

Endless Sundays,

unnerving Mondays,

Advil and beer for breakfast.

I know.

I know.

There, there.

Black and white movies,

empty bottles of cheap white wine,

broken glass on the carpet,

suicidal fantasies at the supermarket,

tears at the airport,

cold sweat at the parking lot,

hot coffee and antidepressants,

shattered dreams and broken hearts.

That’s all that’s left:

Bad memories of the good old days.

Juan David Cruz-Duarte

Juan David Cruz-Duarte was born in Bogotá, Colombia. He lived in South Carolina for 10 years. In 2018 he earned a doctorate degree in Comparative Literature from the University of South Carolina. His work has been published in Five:2:One, Fall Lines, the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, Jasper Magazine, Blue Collar Review, Burningword, Escarabeo, Máquina Combinatoria, and elsewhere. He is the author of Dream a little dream of me: Cuentos siniestros (2011), La noche del fin del mundo (2012), and Léase después de mi muerte (Poemas 2005-2017) (2018). He lives in Bogotá.