Poetry
At the Foot of the Unmade Bed
Our Hearts Knitting Together, Unholy
Sinaia, Romania
Twin Moons
The Green Well
At the Foot of the Unmade Bed
Originally Published in Bodega Magazine
Lisa Mecham
I wait for night to take blue in its black sack.
I think of crows in dark barked trees,
of pie, of Poe,
of all the rhymes I will not make
to this baby inside me.
This she. This he.
No bigger than the ladybug
on the sill of the window nailed shut.
Her children on fire at home.
And in that brief pause
between now and then,
I cradle the newborn
for those first few seconds in the world
or never at all.
Lisa Mecham’s work has appeared in Word Riot, Juked, and Barrelhouse
Online, among other publications. She is an associate editor for Unboxed
Books and a regular contributor to The Rumpus. A Midwesterner at
heart, Lisa lives in Los Angeles where she is revising her first novel.
Originally Published in Bodega Magazine
Lisa Mecham
I wait for night to take blue in its black sack.
I think of crows in dark barked trees,
of pie, of Poe,
of all the rhymes I will not make
to this baby inside me.
This she. This he.
No bigger than the ladybug
on the sill of the window nailed shut.
Her children on fire at home.
And in that brief pause
between now and then,
I cradle the newborn
for those first few seconds in the world
or never at all.
Lisa Mecham’s work has appeared in Word Riot, Juked, and Barrelhouse
Online, among other publications. She is an associate editor for Unboxed
Books and a regular contributor to The Rumpus. A Midwesterner at
heart, Lisa lives in Los Angeles where she is revising her first novel.
Our Hearts Knitting Together, Unholy
Originally published From Kenyon Review Spring 2014
Melissa Barrett
what everyone promised us, forget it all of them liars
how a girl wakes up without voice forget posture
how to hold a fork what’s encrypted here
on the panes of leaves, in lullabies untangle it
Eve’s lesson, the only lesson Desire, barreling
now banished, take it away O God, take it
old as prayer old as prostitution, comb
the dirt of the earth, forget
your name, the taste
of your teeth, that same ivory fleet of beliefs and a so-called genesis
Melissa Barrett is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award and a Tin House writer’s scholarship. Her poems can be found in Narrative, Beloit Poetry Journal, Sonora Review, ACM, and Web Conjunctions.
Originally published From Kenyon Review Spring 2014
Melissa Barrett
what everyone promised us, forget it all of them liars
how a girl wakes up without voice forget posture
how to hold a fork what’s encrypted here
on the panes of leaves, in lullabies untangle it
Eve’s lesson, the only lesson Desire, barreling
now banished, take it away O God, take it
old as prayer old as prostitution, comb
the dirt of the earth, forget
your name, the taste
of your teeth, that same ivory fleet of beliefs and a so-called genesis
Melissa Barrett is the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award and a Tin House writer’s scholarship. Her poems can be found in Narrative, Beloit Poetry Journal, Sonora Review, ACM, and Web Conjunctions.
Sinaia, Romania
Originally published in the Kenyon Review Spring 2014
Maya Catherine Popa
Corridors of calves cataract of mountains
lands pulled up by the navel then abandoned
they say by a dry god on the occasion of a drink.
These, the Carpatians my father saw each morning
not seeing the film of forest from the sky.
He played the same trick for six years,
dressed the classroom skeleton in old clothes
so the teacher would tousle his hair.
Some things you never punish.
Some superstitions turn their backs to god:
keep a pelt on the roof to thwart
the falling stars,
your mother’s hair under floors
so she won’t bury you first.
In Sinaia, my grandfather kept wild dogs
in case a man tried to steal one of his daughters.
Watered by barks, the wrong crops grew.
The hen’s eggs turned a vicious red.
Some things a god will punish twice.
Now, not a single steward stays,
not even for American dollars.
That there are things we will not let money buy us
is a trick the stomach plays
staying full on water.
A god folding his couch the night he made
the Atlantic a glass tossed
between rough stones.
Maya Catherine Popa's poems and criticism appear or are forthcoming from FIELD, Poetry London, PN Review, Colorado Review, Oxford Poetry, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is the Editorial Fellow at Poets & Writers in New York City and the Literary Editor of All Hollow Magazine. She recently completed an MSt from Oxford University under a Clarendon Scholarship, and will soon complete her MFA from NYU. Visit her on the Web at www.mayacpopa.com
Originally published in the Kenyon Review Spring 2014
Maya Catherine Popa
Corridors of calves cataract of mountains
lands pulled up by the navel then abandoned
they say by a dry god on the occasion of a drink.
These, the Carpatians my father saw each morning
not seeing the film of forest from the sky.
He played the same trick for six years,
dressed the classroom skeleton in old clothes
so the teacher would tousle his hair.
Some things you never punish.
Some superstitions turn their backs to god:
keep a pelt on the roof to thwart
the falling stars,
your mother’s hair under floors
so she won’t bury you first.
In Sinaia, my grandfather kept wild dogs
in case a man tried to steal one of his daughters.
Watered by barks, the wrong crops grew.
The hen’s eggs turned a vicious red.
Some things a god will punish twice.
Now, not a single steward stays,
not even for American dollars.
That there are things we will not let money buy us
is a trick the stomach plays
staying full on water.
A god folding his couch the night he made
the Atlantic a glass tossed
between rough stones.
Maya Catherine Popa's poems and criticism appear or are forthcoming from FIELD, Poetry London, PN Review, Colorado Review, Oxford Poetry, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She is the Editorial Fellow at Poets & Writers in New York City and the Literary Editor of All Hollow Magazine. She recently completed an MSt from Oxford University under a Clarendon Scholarship, and will soon complete her MFA from NYU. Visit her on the Web at www.mayacpopa.com
Twin Moons
Originally Published in Bodega Magazine
Sarah Sala
There are no stores
on the moon. Only the dark
centers of the lunar maria.
Missing you isn’t so bad.
Thinking about you makes me happy,
the astronaut read from
a crumpled postcard tucked
into his suit.
Early scientists bet their wives
these craters held seas.
An impossible woman
stood on her porch
in Texas.
A dark speck
absorbed the pour
of refrigerator light
from the moon.
Like a fly heavy
with cold, battening
down the latches
on the sheep pens.
Sarah Sala earned her MFA in Poetry from New York University and currently teaches College Writing in New Jersey. Yusef Komunyakaa once told her she should write a poem about ice fishing, which she still ponders from time to time. Her honors and awards include: an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Marjorie Rapport Award for poetry, an Avery Hopwood Award for nonfiction, and a Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship. A short selection of her poetry was chosen for publication in the Small Anchor Press’s Dory Reader Chapbook Series in 2011.
Originally Published in Bodega Magazine
Sarah Sala
There are no stores
on the moon. Only the dark
centers of the lunar maria.
Missing you isn’t so bad.
Thinking about you makes me happy,
the astronaut read from
a crumpled postcard tucked
into his suit.
Early scientists bet their wives
these craters held seas.
An impossible woman
stood on her porch
in Texas.
A dark speck
absorbed the pour
of refrigerator light
from the moon.
Like a fly heavy
with cold, battening
down the latches
on the sheep pens.
Sarah Sala earned her MFA in Poetry from New York University and currently teaches College Writing in New Jersey. Yusef Komunyakaa once told her she should write a poem about ice fishing, which she still ponders from time to time. Her honors and awards include: an Academy of American Poets Prize, the Marjorie Rapport Award for poetry, an Avery Hopwood Award for nonfiction, and a Roy W. Cowden Memorial Fellowship. A short selection of her poetry was chosen for publication in the Small Anchor Press’s Dory Reader Chapbook Series in 2011.
The Green Well
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Winter 1990, Vol. XXII, No. 1
Maxine Kumin
June. 5 a.m. Before the sun retakes
its dips and humps, light rims the field
with an aura. Gnats form an ectoplasmic cloud
over the bruised bathtub, over the salt lick
hollowed out by tongues, like medieval stairs
petitioners’ feet have worn, looking for truth.
I hold truth in a Nine Lives can twice
weekly for the cats, whose paws explore
the lips and sills of stalls so deftly that
they never need encounter the grounded dogs.
Today a newly dead red squirrel hugs
the top of the feed bin, recompense exact.
Thanks, Abra. Thank you, Cadabra, for
doing God’s work–fledglings, field mice, shrews,
moles, baby rabbits–else why would He
have made so many? I bury what I deplore
in the manure pile, deep in that warm brown
digester to be flung next fall on the meadow,
then let myself down rung by rung into
the green well of losses, a kitchen midden
where the newly dead layer by layer
overtake the long and longer vanished. Gone
now to tankage my first saved starveling mare
and the filly we tore from her in the rain.
After the lethal phenobarb, the vet
exchanged my check for his handkerchief.
Nine live foals since and I’m still pocked with grief,
with how they lay on their sides, half dry, half wet . . .
Grief, Sir, is a species of idleness,
a line we treasured out of Bellow, my
suicided long-term friend and I.
All these years I’ve fought somehow to bless
her drinking in of the killer car exhaust
but a coal of anger sat and winked its live
orange eye undimmed in my chest
while the world buzzed gossiping in the hive.
That mare a dangerous runaway, her tongue
thickly scarred by wire. My friend too
fleeing her wolves, her voices those voodoo
doctors could not still nor save her from . . .
It does not end with us, though end it will.
A hapless swallow lays another clutch
of eggs in the accessible nest. The cats
elaborately clean themselves after the kill.
Maxine Kumin was the recipient of a number of prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award. She published numerous books of poetry, most recently, Where I Live: New and Selected Poems (2011)
From The Kenyon Review, New Series, Winter 1990, Vol. XXII, No. 1
Maxine Kumin
June. 5 a.m. Before the sun retakes
its dips and humps, light rims the field
with an aura. Gnats form an ectoplasmic cloud
over the bruised bathtub, over the salt lick
hollowed out by tongues, like medieval stairs
petitioners’ feet have worn, looking for truth.
I hold truth in a Nine Lives can twice
weekly for the cats, whose paws explore
the lips and sills of stalls so deftly that
they never need encounter the grounded dogs.
Today a newly dead red squirrel hugs
the top of the feed bin, recompense exact.
Thanks, Abra. Thank you, Cadabra, for
doing God’s work–fledglings, field mice, shrews,
moles, baby rabbits–else why would He
have made so many? I bury what I deplore
in the manure pile, deep in that warm brown
digester to be flung next fall on the meadow,
then let myself down rung by rung into
the green well of losses, a kitchen midden
where the newly dead layer by layer
overtake the long and longer vanished. Gone
now to tankage my first saved starveling mare
and the filly we tore from her in the rain.
After the lethal phenobarb, the vet
exchanged my check for his handkerchief.
Nine live foals since and I’m still pocked with grief,
with how they lay on their sides, half dry, half wet . . .
Grief, Sir, is a species of idleness,
a line we treasured out of Bellow, my
suicided long-term friend and I.
All these years I’ve fought somehow to bless
her drinking in of the killer car exhaust
but a coal of anger sat and winked its live
orange eye undimmed in my chest
while the world buzzed gossiping in the hive.
That mare a dangerous runaway, her tongue
thickly scarred by wire. My friend too
fleeing her wolves, her voices those voodoo
doctors could not still nor save her from . . .
It does not end with us, though end it will.
A hapless swallow lays another clutch
of eggs in the accessible nest. The cats
elaborately clean themselves after the kill.
Maxine Kumin was the recipient of a number of prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award. She published numerous books of poetry, most recently, Where I Live: New and Selected Poems (2011)