Poetry
The Anxiety of the Millipede by Barrie Cole
When I was a millipede
I loved all my legs and sometimes
I’d count my legs like many millipedes
when I needed to soothe myself
Quite a few millipedes have anxiety disorders.
It comes with the territory. This is in part
because our hearts are as long as our bodies.
So long, in fact, they run out of room.
And so, sometimes, as is the case with me
our aortas garden hose up into our heads
Would you want an aorta in your head?
Even thinking about it has me coil myself into
an ugly rug. Still, it’s the burden of my
legs along with my attachment to them
that gets me nuts- So much wiggling and
tickling. Imagine your own limbs
giving you the heebiejeebies. Ironic, I know.
Sometimes counting my legs didn’t
help much at all. In fact, I’d end up having a
full-blown panic attack because when,
at the end of my count, I landed at 997 or
998, I could not figure out if I missed a few of
my legs or, if I was missing a
few of my legs. My mother said,
Don’t worry, you have more than
enough legs. But, what is enough?
How can anyone know?
Ophelia N.W. Hicks
There is a turn in the stream
that comes down from the throat
of the hill through the cow pasture:
what if I rest
beneath the willow’s broken arm?
Could I learn the words the water whispers?
Will I become
the color of the stream splitting
the forget-me-nots and meadow rue?
I could let the current and slope carry me
through the thistle fields,
the sweeping mint hidden
in the sweet grass shying away from the wind.
I wish I could read what the goldfinch writes
in yellow brushstrokes
rushing across the fields chasing flies.
Maybe the minnows could carry me
over the shallow white rocks
blushing with rose quartz.
Do you think the horses will nibble at my toes
when they go to gum the brook
before I reach the river?
Will the dam hold me
when it remembers my name?
fuck the butterflies in your stomach by Jade Driscoll
i have a whole zoo trying to claw through my skin,
constrict my heart, play soccer inside my skull.
spiders dance in the taut webbing between my fingers.
i can’t breathe around the birds living in my lungs,
their feathers occasionally lodging in my throat.
my feet are home to twin crocodiles who crunch
through my toes and my soles with each step.
pufferfish swim in my belly, constantly bloated,
their spines cutting so sharply that their presence
can be seen and felt even from the outside,
in the rough skin stretching away from them.
monkeys swing between my radius and ulna.
tigers gnaw at my hips, popping the bones in and out
of place in their search for the next juicy bite.
a chameleon lives inside my mouth, sealing my lips
shut until it can decide how to handle my next words.
The Hill With A Pulse by Martin Fisher
Healing is a hill with a pulse,
guilt catching its foot on buried stone.
A flooded path drowns memory,
a sign saying this way—
you call it confusion.
Waiting is not idle.
You read the sign again
as if time were a tool
and not erosion.
Water recedes,
uncovering old mud.
Falstaffian skies weigh on bent sticks.
Forever can feel real.
There are no friends here.
You are lost
as much as the figure
waving from the far bank.
There is another path—
hidden behind collapsed rock,
untouched by signage.
One footprint.
Not a guide—
a dare.
The Rub by James Lilliefors
Left to hang, your pearl-blue bathing suit
dries stiff
on a summer porch,
the day still too hot to touch,
your skin too tender
to caress, the sun’s glare
a softening haze
through the shadowed
window screen.
I imagine us
slipping into evening,
scoured bright as a new penny,
the day behind, bistro lights
stinging the dark,
the ocean air a confection,
though every time you turn
to face me, to smile,
or just move
your arms in clinical cotton,
I feel my life catching,
rubbing raw skin,
the pain wanting
to feel its own heat,
to make blisters.
Osprey by Shaomei Yu
Standing on a piece of driftwood
By the bay
Mud covered your claws
I see your eyes
You see my gaze
But the crystal window
Keeps your world from mine
Osprey—
I too, miss the ocean breeze
Waves in the night making bubbles in moonlight
Going and going
Just to crash on the tall rock
And break
Into stars
Prose
The Widowed Cafetera by J. Michael Hays
The cafetera is as weathered as his nicotine-stained fingers and has become as much a part of me as he has. Its handle is broken, its aluminum body dented and stained. In Havana, it served his abuelo for decades before the revolution carried it and his family north.
In Atlanta, José disassembles it daily before dawn. Water in the bottom chamber. Coffee heaped into the filter basket. The halves screwed together and set over a blue flame. At the first eruption, he steps back, then pulls the cafetera from the flame and pours a few black drops over sugar, stirring until they become caramel-colored espumita.
In the dark we drink, sharp and sweet, neither dulling the other. He inhales, and the cigarette's cherry pulses amber across his face, the last warm thing of the night.
Afterward, I wash the cafetera with water only and, with a soft cloth, remove even my fingerprints, then return it exactly where José expects to find it.
The final cafecito: January 11, 2024. It brewed, bubbled, and gurgled the way it always had. The smell seeped into our bedroom. By noon it had cooled, and no nicotine-stained fingers reached for it, or me, again.
After the funeral, the family will gather in the kitchen and wonder, only, where José's cafetera has gone. It lies beside my shaving kit inside my gringo suitcase.