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Winter 2013: Poetry


Placental Abruption

Every other midnight, he remembers my olive skin
paling with anemic potential. He says that death swept
over me in less than a heartbeat, that the sound
of my heart echoed through white-washed rooms
like the gallop of a hundred horses charging,
while blood gushed from a wound no one could see.

For days, they wouldn’t give me a mirror.
He says they didn’t want me to see how pigment
had left my face, how death looked less like porcelain
than raw marble, my features chiseled and unfinished
while my lips moved in stone-like scrapes to ask
again and again for the child then a hundred miles away.

We’ve mostly forgotten, except for every other midnight
when he trails his fingers along my blotched bikini line –
a smile-shaped scar to remind – and I turn
to the sound of the child down the hall, and back
to his eyes. The memory bleeds fear into the space
between what is and what might have been.



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Poetry Thumbnail Art   Prose Thumbnail Art   Artwork Thumbnail Art   Young Voices Thumbnail Art   Contributors Thumbnail Art
Poetry

Enjoy the richness: thirteen poets, nineteen poems, and a diversity of style and craft.

 
Prose

Three memoirists share their emotional truths in these slices-of-life.

 
Artwork

Our featured artist, as well as painters and photographers, provide colorful visions that will leave you seeing the world in new ways.

 
Young Voices

Three emerging writers share talent and creativity far beyond their years.

 
Contributors

Learn more about the contributors who make us proud of our Winter 2013 edition.

Table of Contents Button
LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

POETRY

        A Convention of Ordinary Astophysicists Attends by Jodie Marion

        A Father's Love by Darlene Pagán

        Before Going to Murder by the Book, We Stop at Zell's by Carol Frischmann

        Decomposition by Pat Phillips West

        Dream by Jodie Marion

        Fishtail by Margaret Chula

        From the 7th Floor of Doernbecher Children's Hospital by Larina Warnock

        Inside the Basilica del Voto Nacional, Quito, Ecuador by Stella Jeng Guillory

        Interview with My Mother by Cindy Williams Gutiérrez

        Mail Call by Darlene Pagán

        Midnight Choices by Kathryn Ridall

        My First Butcher by Barbara Drake

        On the Banks of the Indian River by Jodie Marion

        Placental Abruption by Larina Warnock

        Playboys by Andrea Hollander

        Saturday Visitation by Kelly Running

        The Blizzard of '78 by Darlene Pagán

        The Hundred Names of Love by Annie Lighthart

        The Old Life by Andrea Hollander

PROSE

        Bennett's Outing by Julia Clark Salmon

        Whale by Lyssa Tall Anolik

        Wisdom Tree by Julie Rogers

ART

        Man with Chicken by Anne John

        Ancient Abstract by Anne John

        Blowing Bubbles by Betty Joe Armstrong

        Stormscape by Jean Harkin

        Nick's Jays by Huon Quach

        Diptych by Huon Quach

YOUNG VOICES

        Different by Emily Boring

        Old Clock by Erin Blackburn

        Drink by Julien Signorini

CONTRIBUTORS