Journal

To the Tenth Planet

What do you look like?
We may never know.
Now I understand the man
who walks into a bar
just after the most beautiful
woman walks out: she has
become invisible but he
can feel her absence tugging
at everyone who remains.
Their tiny perturbations
leave no doubt that
something wonderful has left us
and still has the power
to move us.
Your gravity does this,
causing the outer bodies
of our solar system
to shiver ever so slightly,
though no one has actually seen you.
I call you the tenth planet
because I’ve not quite
got over Pluto’s pitiful demotion.
For me there can never
be another ninth.
Apparently you live
in the Kuiper Belt,
otherwise known as the Siberia
of our corner of the galaxy.
I’d welcome you warmly
to our little family of sun circlers,
except that would be
presumptuous and ignorant.
You’ve been here all along,
patiently waiting for your
beauty (yes, I’m sure now
it’s beauty) to be discovered.

Kurt Luchs (kurtluchs.com) won the 2019 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest, and has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His first full-length poetry collection, Falling in the Direction of Up, is forthcoming from Sagging Meniscus Press. He lives and works in Red Wing, Minnesota.

Later, of course, catastrophe

but for now
there might as well be oceans,
floating outside this apartment.
summer has fallen
in a thick soup of rain,
and the green moves
as wind moves through it,
kicking up leaves
and looking underneath them.

this is paris – we are in an apartment
on a fifth-floor walk-up, trading sips
of the drinks we’re trying
and taking our turns to make dinner.

later, of course,
catastrophe. my sudden
collapse; my head
like a jigsaw
someone decided
not to do. all the pieces
laid on a table, but with a teapot on them,
and a mug, a hand
and one corner of a newspaper.

but now
we mutter about, something
like birds in a market
where there’s no bread to fight for. we bumble;
someone reads a book
and someone else looks out the window. below us
the green rumbles sealife. also full
of various birds.

 

DS Maolalai has been nominated eight times for Best of the Net and three times for the Pushcart Prize. His poetry has been released in two collections, “Love is Breaking Plates in the Garden” (Encircle Press, 2016) and “Sad Havoc Among the Birds” (Turas Press, 2019) 

On The Brink

Back end of a town on the sea-brink,
sentinel mountains the rock-gods marshalling age-old cold,
time elapsing, slowly-quickly-slowly,
a nation entire on the cusp of a grey-green woods,
a people en toto settled amongst forest-flinch,
the roiling waters a border not for crossing,
whale-song exchanging currency
with outboard motors and curious tourists.
Where oceanic fogbanks contemplate dramatic entrances.
Where seals bark, the pack dogs of the main,
stray reports of cougar attacks and ursine visitations
sprinkling the news and odd conversation.
No talk though of ecstasy or infinites or absolutes,
of the supernatural transposed over human nature,
the Earth-ancient text to human illustration,
the un-animal become more and more unnatural,
nature de-clawed, de-sexed, de-scented,
fetid and mossy rainforests contrasting
with aluminum siding, aerials, discarded cans,
a planet trembling under the planking.

Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple
Pushcart nominee with over 1,600 poems published internationally in magazines such as
Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are ‘The So-Called Sonnets’
(Silenced Press); ‘An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy’; (Cawing Crow Press);‘Like As If’ (Pski’s
Porch); ‘Hearsay’ (The Poet’s Haven).

Seven Apples

After, we ate a Gala I split
with a knife—his two quarters
with the heart sliced out,
mine just the same.

I have only this month in which to love you.
After that, it’s see you next year but of course
that isn’t true, the winter’s swipe, the beautiful
claws of August rending you pocked, soft,
never again the ripe muscle I saw discarded
in the box, your one worm ear open to the sky.

Perfect in the sense that—
no, many perfect, plus or minus
a few destructive drops.

You live in my mouth,
but the spark of your destruction
lights lines in orbit, your voice
dividing atoms in my ear—
o song, o atoms, o apples,
now we’re just confusing
the straight knife with who
drew the line: what was vs.
what scintillating soap opera
comes next.

Late fruit fallen well past the noon of our
existential autumn, but still I want it,
to halve and quarter, my mouth
mistaking every bite for ever.

We all came from somewhere, fell
off somebody’s truck or were twisted
by a sudden hand, implanted
with an unknown fire’s red spark.

Page one in the book of apple:
sharp skin, radiant vein
fed by a storm, face
shone to a high howl.
Now, once, in my lucky hand.

 

Painting the House

We switch to the smallest brushes
and the teacher says a few strokes
can intimate a building. I draw
the finest line—just eight or ten hairs,

the saddest fox tail—for a roof,
white with yellow and aquamarine—
the color of the mountain’s big shadow.
Bare wash of gray for windows, smudge

of a door and an accidental porch I build
with a single stroke. But stop—the rushes
are suddenly in danger, too gold, the broken
hedge too pretty with bloom. Already,

I’ve overimagined—the snow on the peaks,
the mess of clouds sifting rainmelt, hints
of mud and bracken and flies, and even
the house—you can’t just paint in roses

and call it summer. The picture is starting
to speak—something about a cord of wood
that never was delivered, and a ditch
last night that woke up singing with frogs.

 

Amy Miller’s poetry has appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Willow Springs, and ZYZZYVA. Her full-length poetry collection is The Trouble with New England Girls. She lives in Ashland, Oregon.

 

Animal Sound

Animal I have no name for
biting me below a canopy of blankets,
I am scared. No nightlight
can chase the darkness from the storm
drain, no iPhone. I don’t want to sleep
with the door closed. I can hear
Mother screaming in the bathroom
a sound disemboweled out of darkness,
an animal splitting open into the sound
of the darkness where I am scared.
I have no name for what is happening
on the other side of the door.

 

Cameron Morse lives with his wife Lili and two children in Independence, Missouri. His poems have been published in numerous magazines, including New Letters, Bridge Eight, Portland Review and South Dakota Review. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Baldy (Spartan Press, 2020). He serves as Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and Poetry editor at Harbor Editions. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.