Safety

You must build doors

to invite people in

 

is what they’ve told me

since the funeral,

 

but these are coddled,

runny-hearted

 

idiots, the open

floor plans of people.

 

They lust after beige:

plush-carpet beige,

 

nice and wanting

nothing. What I want

 

is to pause

for caterpillars

 

and talk to them

like we talked

 

to her in hospice.

You look for twigs

 

to coax them

to grass, deliver them

 

from the threat

of neighborhood kids

 

who love nothing

inside their rooms

 

and would murder

for candy, or pets

 

they would let die.

They are too young

 

to love a better way.

To close these doors

 

built to nowhere,

doors flung open

 

just for them

to hurtle through.

 

Emily Kingery

Emily Kingery is an Associate Professor of English at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa, where she teaches courses in literature, writing, and linguistics. Her work appears or is forthcoming in multiple literary journals, including Eastern Iowa Review, Gingerbread House, High Shelf Press, New South, PROEM, Prometheus Dreaming, Quercus, and Telepoem Booth, and she has been a Pushcart Prize nominee. She serves on the Board of Directors at the Midwest Writing Center, a non-profit organization that supports writers in the Quad Cities community.

Quotidian

For fifty years, we lived

at the bend in Spring Creek

where the stream turns

back on itself,

in a shingled Cape Cod

too small for the family

and dreadfully cold.

 

The creek’s ceaseless song

captained our seasons—

the slow murmur

of half-frozen water

holding tenuously to life

or the great green rush

of an early thaw.

 

Each spring we bailed

the basement

trying to keep our poor boat afloat—

fearing any minute

we might have to swim for it.

How our children learned

to hate that sodden season.

 

They are grown now

and scattered here and there

like the spray of water on rock.

It seems forever since a visit.

The oldest, Jillie, tells me

it took years to get the creek

out of her head.

 

I drove past the old place today—

much of the roof is collapsed and jagged.

I like to watch the fly fisherman

pluck rainbows from their hidden holes,

with a grace beyond my understanding.

And then, at sunset,

the creek and I head home.

 

Steven Deutsch

Steve Deutsch lives in State College, PA. His recent publications have or will appear in 8 Poems, Louisiana Lit, Burningword Literary Journal, The Write Launch, Biscuit Root Drive, Evening Street, Better Than Starbucks, Flashes of Brilliance, San Antonio Review, Softblow, Mojave River Review, The Broadkill Review, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Panoply, Algebra of Owls, The Blue Nib, Thimble Magazine, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Ghost City Review, Borfski Press, Streetlight Press, Gravel, Literary Heist, Nixes Mate Review, Third Wednesday, Misfit Magazine, Word Fountain, Eclectica Magazine, The Drabble, New Verse News and The Ekphrastic Review. He was nominated for Pushcart Prizes in 2017 and 2018. His Chapbook, “Perhaps You Can,” was published in 2019 by Kelsay Press. His full length book, Persistence of Memory will be published by Kelsay in September 2020.

Paul Rabinowitz

Limited Light

Limited Light

Limited Light

Limited Light

Limited Light

Limited Light

 

Paul Rabinowitz

 

Paul Rabinowitz is an author, photographer, and founder of ARTS By The People, a non-profit arts organization, based in New Jersey. Through all mediums of art, Paul aims to capture real people, flaws, and all. He focuses on details that reveal the true essence of a subject, whether they be an artist he’s photographing or a fictional character he’s bringing to life on the page. Paul’s photography, short fiction, and poetry have appeared in many magazines and journals, including Long Exposure, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Pif, Burningword, The Metalworker, and others. Paul is the author of Limited Light, a book of prose and portrait photography, and a novella, The Clay Urn, (Main Street Rag, 2020). Paul is currently at work on his first novel, Confluence, and Grand Street, Revisited, a collection of prose poems. www.paulrabinowitz.com

 

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