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Two Poems by Lindsay Young
Seven, Going on Nothing
It was my sister’s birthday eve,the anticipation as big an event as the real thing,even for me, who always got a sympathy giftto curb the Little Sister envy.I got to see the surprise cake my mom had chosen,fresh out of a glossy flip book at the store.A supermodel cake, impossibly symmetricaland airbrushed heavily with icing.I couldn’t help myself,I had to sneak down to the fridge that nightjust to get a second look. -
Negation # 19 by Alistair McCartney
Medium: aesthetic distancing, epidemiology
John Keats did not die from the Coronavirus.
Grammatically speaking, one does not
Die from the virus:
As a direct cause of death,
One dies of it.
One dies from an indirect agent, for example,
He died from falling down the Spanish Steps.
John Keats never entered the Prada store
Near the Spanish Steps.
Though epidemiologically speaking, in terms
Of viruses and the blurriness
Of direct/indirect causes,
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Global Voices Interviews *Croatia* Marko Pogačar & Andrea Jurjević
In conversation with JP Apruzzese
Reading Marko Pogačar’s poetry is like walking into an empty field only to realize that it is teeming with life. Things begin to crawl up through the surface and emerge from the sky and become more real, more important, more meaningful, more consequential the further we allow him to guide us through this uncertain world, which we soon learn is our own. Perhaps his shift in vision comes from being a child witness to the violent fracturing of his world – what was once Yugoslavia – where the promise of unity,
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Catch by Allison Cobb
What moment was
the moment
my mom died.
We weren’t sure
my dad and I—
we hold that
hard gift close
between—the
us that makes
us selves who
stood beside
her birdlike
curled in—
Oh. It is
a moment—breath
and then
it stops—that’s
real, declare
the time—we had
a clock there, red
with numbers—
Mom.
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Love Made Bruises by Alison Stine
On my hill I remember teeth.
The winter house cracked.Cockroaches came from dark rivers.
The town exhausted its salt.Love made bruises, drawing up
the blood like poison from bees.We are never going to make it
through this winter, this winter,everyone said. No one used glasses,
only jars. He bit, then apologized.Schools closed for days. Roads
closed for days. The fire truckblocked the mouth of my street.
I went to sleep with light spitting.I bought ice grips.
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I Promise Not to Behave by Sharon Mesmer
— after and for Lydia Tomkiw (US, 1959 — 2007)
You slip your purple glitter turban on,
Spread my tarot cards on the table and whisper:
“I see a fever has crawled into you.”
I roll my eyes:
“Scarlet? Or yellow?”
You squint through the velvety knots of your lashes:
“Too early to tell.”
“What kind of an answer is that?” I demand.
“I don’t know,” you sneer,
“How many kinds are there?”We’re in your parents’ kitchen on Oakley.
