July 2021 | poetry
In the interest of time mothers move
stepwise and as for her a lingering in Mexico City
we lost touch some time ago, my mother reflects moodily. it is a
Monday afternoon and my world’s gone positively Popsicular
the grass was this euphoric entanglement of judgment
as I a king sat in the soft grass
And someone brought me watermelon sliced into precise little cubes
and everything felt round.
well that’s one version of it she says evenly
In some panhandle cabin the moon but a rakish visitor
stopping by for cookies. Her mother commanded her at the sink,
stop howling but she hunting for interpretive freedom
Splintered the task. Brought old light to new deeds in calling
attention to the weariness of form, a realization
which frankly undid me. And her taking a ticket to
The reeds of some unknown city where love was.
Caroline Fernelius
Caroline Fernelius is a writer from Texas. Her work has appeared in Storyscape Journal, The Decadent Review, Faultline Journal of Arts and Letters, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets College Poetry Prize. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, where she is a doctoral candidate in English.
July 2021 | poetry
Abnormal, a condition; a way of life; an indicator of otherness; you.
Achievement, you are the aggregate sum of these.
Anorexic, the condition of your identical twin sister in the seventh grade. You are the “fat twin.”
Appearance, how others may tell you your story.
Boston Marathon, a highly competitive race for which you qualify. You are still fat, however.
Bulimic, your condition in high school/college; your condition now.
Clean, the toilet. Thoroughly.
Cross-country, an unhealthy obsession; you are the slow twin. See Running.
Cry, on the bathroom floor. Be ashamed.
Cuts, on the first and third knuckles; see Reye’s Syndrome.
Cyclical, your behavior; other people’s behaviors; human behavior.
Dental problems, increased cavities, extreme sensitivity to hot and cold, wearing away of enamel, chipping of teeth. You have lost one tooth, to date.
Disorder, eating, familiarity.
DSM-5, a formal system of naming otherness; a reference book that cements your identity.
Eating, sin.
Exercise, over–, something you do that you do not realize until others point it out to you. Your husband tells you that it is abnormal to be on the treadmill at midnight.
Fat, a sub-elite state of being; indisputable proof of people’s laziness/gluttony/inferiority; see Appearance.
Hidden, everything.
Hunger, known.
Insist, that you are telling the truth.
Intervals, on the track. High school. You push until you see spots. You collapse in the grass. Your heartbeat nails you to the ground.
Jokes, junior high, Is your sister anorexic? Are you the fat twin? Ha, ha.
Kneel, before the toilet, a ritual.
Label, a human tendency.
Love, self–, elusive.
Lying, an art. You are good at it.
Medicine, Abilify, Clonazopam, Klonopin, Lexapro, Lorazopam, Orlistat, Phentermine, Prozac, etc., etc.
Nancy, For the Love of, a TV movie you are made to watch in junior high. It depicts Tracy Gold’s struggle with anorexia. Everyone in the room stares at you and your sister.
Overeating, a coping mechanism. You try this after your sister’s suicide attempt.
Overweight, you become this post-Boston Marathon, shocking everyone.
Perfectionism, elusive.
Performance, everything.
Purge, a skill. You do it well, and quietly.
Quacks, all the doctors. The therapist, the psychiatrist, the eating disorder specialist, the dietician.
Questionnaire, for the doctor, fill out. Lie.
Quiet, keep.
Racing Weight, a book by Matt Fitzgerald on how to get lean for performance.
Recovery, a visade.
Reye’s Syndrome, a chronic truth-teller.
Running, a tool; a compulsion. Something the eating disorder specialist says you must give up.
Scale, a taskmaster.
Secrets, many. Your sister’s suicide attempt.
Spectrum, eating disorder, you’ve dappled in it all.
Therapy-resistant, an accusation.
Unicorn, the logo of the Boston Athletic Association; see Perfectionism.
Void, feeling, the result of all your achievements.
Vomit, disgusting; abhorrent; do not talk about this.
Weight, how people may be judged and ranked accordingly.
Xeno–, other; different in origin; you.
You, lent your identity to an illness.
Zenith, the highest or most acute point of a condition. You: 96 pounds. Your sister: 84 pounds. Remember, you were always the fat twin.
Natalie Coufal
Natalie Coufal is a nonfiction and fiction writer from rural Central Texas. She is pursuing her M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing at Sam Houston State University where she has received a fellowship. Her work has appeared in Glassworks, 100 Word Story, Passengers Journal, Touchstone Literary Magazine, Prometheus Dreaming, and others.
July 2021 | poetry
Up the bent walk to
the house door, stops
at the steps, smells
the dryness of fall in
the late October air.
Remembers something
as the breeze tousles
his hair and forgets
for a moment the key
in his hand.
Something a young girl
said, maybe, or a
woman standing, breaking
a sprig of lilac,
turning: eyes damp.
We cannot know what
stops him, what holds
the key suspended in
his hand, his head
turned as if to listen.
As he would not say,
locked on that moment,
his face expressionless
to tell joy or grief,
tempered, far away.
Trent Busch
Trent Busch, a native of rural West Virginia, now lives in Georgia where he writes and makes furniture. His recent books of poetry, “not one bit of this is your fault” (2019) and “Plumb Level and Square” (2020) were published by Cyberwit.net. His poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Poetry, The Nation, Threepenny Review, North American Review, Chicago Review, Southern Review, Georgia Review, New England Review, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Northwest Review, Kenyon Review, American Scholar, Shenandoah, Boston Review, and Hudson Review. His poem “Edges of Roads” was the 2016 First Place winner of the Margaret Reid Poetry Prize.
July 2021 | poetry
Heavy weighted blanket, legs half-out, rain against the window,
you whispered, “what if it gets old? what if you get bored
with me?”
“It won’t and I won’t,” I said.
“But if.”
“If?”
The smell of warm linen, chest swelling
like infatuation.
Oh honey, it would be a blessing
to grow old and bored with you
(just to be with you),
and should there be a loss of love
(I write love but mean passion, puppy-love)
in the years to come—
no wild nights into sleepless mornings, no constant hand-on-thigh,
no attentive eyes, no planned dates—
I would learn it again,
remind myself, reread my letters,
grow curious afresh,
in body, soul, and mind,
in duty and promise,
in decision and action,
even in dry periods with no joy,
Love you.
Alexandra T. O. Cooley
Alexandra T. O. Cooley is a poet and graduate student from Alabama. She is currently a pursuing an MA in English from Jacksonville State University and hopes to pursue an MFA in creative writing after graduating. She loves making lists, petting animals, and planning vacations with her husband, James.
July 2021 | poetry
Logistics, 2020
How many bodies can
be held in refrigerated
trailers, giving families
time to claim them?
The number of those,
anonymous, buried
at the public cemetery
in New York, increased
five-fold in April.
Outside a Brooklyn
funeral home, dozens
of decomposing bodies
were found in one
tractor-trailer
and one rented U-Haul.
Eighteen thousand dead
in eighteen thousand
body bags are moved
by forklift to one
hundred and fifty
refrigerated trailers,
fifteen rented vans.
Dedicated Carnivore At the TSA
I
watched you
watch her
grab the tape
you had firmly affixed
round the lid of the cooler.
Rip
she went.
You watched
her as she
dove into its white hold
and brought up the brown pork butt.
She
made sure
she knew
what it was,
carefully rotating
each piece before replacing
it,
extract-
ing that
ham then the
Fanestil baloney
and its smoked bacon, vacuum-
packed.
You were
the new
Miriam,
watching such a precious
cargo being lifted out.
E. Laura Golberg
Laura Golberg’s poem Erasure has been nominated for a Pushcart 2021 Prize. Her poetry has appeared in Rattle, Poet Lore, Laurel Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Spillway, RHINO, and the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics, among other places. She won first place in the Washington, DC Commission on the Arts Larry Neal Poetry Competition.
July 2021 | poetry
Restless in pleasure’s absence,
I watched when my mother woke,
startled by a rooster
that chimed and paced
on the barbed wire fence.
She pulled the sheet
over her shoulder, sank
into the cushion and lingered
a moment longer
while I pretended to be asleep.
Each morning for the past two years
she turned the crown well
of my father’s watch
how he used to do
before getting out of bed.
My father mostly spoke
the truth, but he lied
when he told me
he liked my jagged bangs
the last time we went to visit.
It took my mother one afternoon
to trim them herself
with a pair of shears
she borrowed from a shepherd
living down the hill.
We both squinted
when we heard a soldier’s whistle.
My father, thinner now, came toward us,
his lips pursed in a frown,
and his hands curled in fists.
Melissa Andres
Melissa Andrés is a poet. Originally from Cuba, she arrived in the United States at the age of six. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in The Laurel Review, Rattle Magazine, The San Antonio Review, Ligeia Magazine, and Inkwell Journal, among others. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
