Poetry - Year IV - Number 24 - May 2019

Walker Percy She was always fun. No one knew her otherwise. At least those of us ...

WHITE CAKEby Annie Schumacher   White Cake I don’t remember the taste of my wedding cake.Afterwards, we froze the top tier in mom’s garageto eat in one year, our stale sugary keepsake.It was white, of course,...

DOMINIONby John Casey deference for despair still sodden frigid mornmuddled ubiquitous shadowsscattered, brittle leaves at footfallraven sky black thoughts dark path restlessly listless lost soulin a funereal slate suittrudging towardthe same tired aimless trainpreordained purposeless routinesecond verse...

POSITIVEby Emily Brummett     A heavy waft of Sunday breakfastawakens meearlier than a routine Sunday hangoverEach smell circles my stomachand lumps slide up and down my throat,and a headache forms.Medical School.My reputation.Everything-Gone.After one drunken night.I...

COME TO ME AND LET ME HOLD YOUby Olivia Du Pont    Come to me and let me hold youIn the dead of night where voices are hushedBreathe life into the night,For you are alive, you...

NOT A PRAYERby Diana Anhalt  For Ethel Figueroa, the Librarian, My Heroine, who lets me hide in the library— closed for recess—when girls in patent leather, red ribbons tied to braids,scoff at my orthopedic shoes, my...

NIGHT HYMNby R. Nikolas Macioci   NIGHT HYMNA prostitute saunters back and forthunder a streetlight, takes permissionfrom the night to be there.  She poses,walks a few steps, poses again.  Sheis a beginner, barely able to smoothout...

FINGER BY FINGERby Ashley Green     Phantom I She knew something I didn’t,pale with untold prophecyand horror.You’ll stop loving me, she saidand her dilated gazeswam in grief. I laughed and touched her thigh, warmand bare, familiar and...

ASK A CHILD, ASK A BUTTERFLYby Megha Sood Like an open scarred river This cystic undulating pain speaks for itselfborn out of the muted death, it has its own semanticsa lexicon of angst and fear,it molds...

PICTURE NEGATIVEby Gabrielle Amarosa   Stars’ Crossed LoveI see her across an inky sky,Pure light,Brighter than any other.She is part of the great bear—Like a bear herself,The strongest and most fiercely beautiful.We all orient ourselves by...