Poetry Winter 2023 fiction all issues
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Cover
Susan Wilkinson
Selena Spier
Red From The West
& other poems
Pamela Wax
Talk Therapy
& other poems
Ana Reisens
Honey Water
& other poems
Mark Yakich
Necessary Hope
& other poems
Bridget Kriner
A Few Lies & a Truth
& other poems
Keegan Shepherd
Silver Queen
& other poems
Alaina Goodrich
Sacred Conflagration
& other poems
George Longenecker
Those Who Hunger
& other poems
Hailey Young
Ball Room
& other poems
Sébastien Luc Butler
Aubade
& other poems
Savannah Grant
Ever Since (v.2)
& other poems
grace (logan)
Dynamic
& other poems
Samantha Imperi
A Poem for the Ghosted
& other poems
Corinne Walsh
Limerence
& other poems
Kayla Heinze
Stop checking the score
& other poems
Richard Baldo
Chasing Through to Dawn
& other poems
Alex Eve
A moment
& other poems
Robert Michael Oliver
Prison Hounds
& other poems
Pamela Wax
Talk Therapy
“Oysshprekhn—”
my husband said
once, when I recited
my poems aloud
again and again
for breath
and sound
and meter,
to trim the fat
and carve them
lean—
“after the camps—
the ones who talked
to themselves.”
He was not impugning
my mental health,
nor theirs. It’s how
they healed
themselves, he said.
“You remind me of them.”
Lightning Rod
for Jill
1.
My friend gets her hands dirty
in the public square, in tweets
and frays to the editor, stands
her sacred ground against liars
in wait, who phony up science
and rule of law. She absorbs bolts
of mobbed dissent, megaphones
our moby whales of grief,
echolocating, so we can hear
each other’s dirges
through acoustic fields of vision.
2.
In her private square, she plunges
to her elbows in honest dirt,
an asylum as cool as caverns
where stalactites drip; the moist
that earthworms inhale through skin,
so they can justice the plants
she’s mercied into pockets
of paradise. Outside the eye
of the storm, her field of vision
eclipses dirge. She can hear
a breezy hint of hum. It sounds
like whale. It sounds like bee.
Pamela Wax
is the author of Walking the Labyrinth (Main Street Rag, 2022) and Starter Mothers (Finishing Line Press, 2023). Her poems have received several awards, as well as a Best of the Net nomination. An ordained rabbi, Pam offers online spirituality and poetry workshops from her home in the northern Berkshires of Massachusetts.