The Last Remaining Deity Speaks

April 2023 | poetry

Having ousted all rivals, I take possession

of suburban hostas and road-running squirrels,

and strike rare birds from recorded histories

of ponds. It is time to decommission causeways

now that the marshes have flaked. I design

the cities higher and higher on softening

foundations. I stack the insecurities of wealth,

and endorse both its guardians and armed

intruders. Whenever I like, I lift the streets

to patch the gas lines. I manage a land of millet

ground under a thumb into flour deflowered

by wind, and reroute buckets of effluvia

to a shrinking lake. I pilot the riverboats

that navigate waters between snipered cliffs,

and transport every iteration of spoiled fruit.

I standardize dejection marooned on a rugged

portage, and refit the ships that lost the Pacific

to microscopic plastic. I host a ceremonial dance

of cleats and hatchets that blends ecstatic worship

with the infant mortality rate. I beset the ancient

temples with mudslides. I put minor holidays

up for auction, and unclasp obligations so they fall

like fistfuls of worry beads. I am default, the very

last god who speaks the vernacular language.

Alan Elyshevitz

Alan Elyshevitz is the author of a collection of stories, The Widows and Orphans Fund (SFA Press), a full-length poetry collection, Generous Peril (Cyberwit), and four poetry chapbooks, most recently “Mortal Hours” (SurVision). Winner of the James Hearst Poetry Prize from North American Review, he is a two-time recipient of a fellowship in fiction writing from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

The Gristle of Love

April 2023 | poetry

Months after I had cleared her clothes from our apartment

and delivered them to a homeless shelter as was her wish,

I drove to our cabin in the mountains to gather her last shirts

and sweaters, socks and tights, sneakers and slippers. I was

weary of all the searching, finding, sorting, folding. Weary even

of the touching. I could not stomach one more trip for charity.

Death, you see, had made me a coward. I just jammed everything

in three thirty-gallon black plastic bags, which I tied off tightly,

left for next morning pick-up at the end of the driveway,

flanked by six-foot banks of ice-skinned snow. An hour’s nap later

I saw through the window that crows had come, torn open the bags,

dragged their contents all over, confused perhaps by wisps

of sweat and perfume, thinking who in his right mind would put

anything but chicken bones and pizza crust in such beguiling sacks.

One had her lace panties in its beak, shaking it like a battle flag.

Another was chewing the sleeve of her pineapple tee shirt.

A third was back at the bags, manically scrounging for more.

I walked out calmly with a shovel. The birds flew away.

I had visions of leaving it all for a next storm to bury,

re-collecting the debris after spring thaw and burning it into

a biblical pillar of smoke, soaking the ashes in the stream out back.

Instead, I climbed the crusted banks, roamed the neighbors’ yards

and snowbound streets, picked up the pieces, placed and cinched them

in new bags, left them as before. The birds came again and again.

Again and again I gathered, each time working more slowly, each time

the pieces smaller. Until the sun was gone and I stood by the last bags

I owned, slightly less full. I stood there all night, the crows laughing

and I laughing back, their amber eyes flashing in the new moon dark,

neither stupid nor cruel, though I had thought them both.

At first light, men with boots and gloves came in a green truck.

One said Good Morning. Another took the bags away.

Ken Haas

Ken Haas lives in San Francisco where he works in healthcare and sponsors a poetry writing program at the UCSF Children’s Hospital. His first book, Borrowed Light, won the 2020 Red Mountain Press Discovery Award, won a 2021 prize from the National Federation of Press Women and was shortlisted for the 2021 Rubery Book Award. Ken has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has won the Betsy Colquitt Poetry Award. His poems have appeared in over 50 journals and numerous anthologies. Please visit him online at http://kenhaas.org.

Max Capacity

January 2023 | poetry

My mind is

a cluttered cupboard

a hoarder’s den

skyscraper-stacked

bits and chits

shiny scraps strident notes

on skin when there is

no room at the inn

no vacancy

for one more guest

nor even space

for oxygen

thirst is the strongman of needs

with many ways to drink

morning news with morning joe

the Times they are a-changing

podcasts preachers PSAs

Sirius no longer lit

but air-waved and ever-on

any cracks in the stacks

I fill with pages beloved

books poems of my own

and others (who I’d like to be)

all this mess

magpie-made

I’ll use it someday

but the cows stray

I’m too busy to fence

my mind is at capacity

I fear the thoughts

will overflow like the gentle man

I saw yesterday

at 4th and Main

deep in conversation

with the gentle man

in the glass of the bookstore window

Ann Weil

Ann Weil writes at her home on the corner of Stratford and Avon in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and on a deck boat at Snipe’s Point Sandbar off Key West, Florida. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and appears in Crab Creek Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Whale Road Review, Shooter Literary Magazine, Eastern Iowa Review, DMQ Review, and elsewhere. Her first chapbook, Life Cycle of a Beautiful Woman, will be published in 2023 by Yellow Arrow Publishing. Read more of Ann’s poetry at www.annweilpoetry.com.