All posts tagged: Issue 19 Poetry

Crater Lake

By marcus scott williams

 

there’s like 30 miles of Volcanic Legacy Scenic Byway then another lil highway
til the lake. the pines fall off occasionally & the pre-dusklight accentuates the
gold in the dust & dirt. dead trees chalk line ones still standing. it’s so quiet iont
have words to describe it properly. Myrrh calls me out for projecting onto this lil
kid i said looked gay & i am proud of them for holding me accountable; they’re
right. we talk on the hike down about the violence that manifests w projecting,

Crater Lake
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Modern Gods

By JOHN FREEMAN

 

Backlit by the glow
from a small passageway,
he kneels into the fog
of yellow light,
head kissing the carpet.
I step around him,
respecting his privacy, when 
the mat becomes not prayer 
rug but builder’s tool,
a black piece of tarmac, laid down
before the bank so he could
peer close, fix the dead 
motion sensor so that people 
with money could 
be seen, all doors opening
for them.

Modern Gods
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Silence of The Lambs: A Starling Is Born

By REILLY D. COX

CLARICE
All his victims are women…
His obsession is women, he lives to hunt women.
But not one woman is hunting him—except me.
I can walk into a woman’s room
and know three times as much about her as a man would.

 

A starling catches me in a dress
and pierces my chest two times,
deeply, and I cannot blame her.

Silence of The Lambs: A Starling Is Born
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Waiting on Forty-Five (A Ghazal)

By MIRA ROSENTHAL

 

and then I remember the faint aching hiss of nitrous leaking from the tip of the siphon into the open mouth of me

a hit off the pressurized cream of me

in the darkened storage room round back of the restaurant of me

at twenty-one, the different sounds that rustled in me

freezer hum and thudding voices, conversation concentrate inside of me

who I used to be, was then and then and then: still me

Waiting on Forty-Five (A Ghazal)
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I Remember Stopping on a Little Bridge in 1972

By JAMES RICHARDSON

 

                                   It is so late 
it is early, and there, once again, 
is that thrilling and disturbing bird 
of dawn, its four notes,  
one two THREE, four climbing 
a little way up into the future 
and back down, and once again 
everything thats mine is in a rental truck 
or in the future.  

I Remember Stopping on a Little Bridge in 1972
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