It Was the Millennium. It Was Aught-Aught. Once relevant, now quaint.The makeshift ways which some people fancied essential.If it didn’t come out of the refrigerator, it was a hot meal.We all knew that California was full of notions.Collage was what life was after college.Which was everyone making their own case.We felt like we had figured out the time thing.Even in California you saw the dawn two hours before everyone else.You wrote poems as if they were Vermeers. With a Vermeer veneer.To be so nice you’d step aside for a slug.You kept an ostrich egg in the refrigerator to remind you of the lifestyle you’d rejected.You liked to get yourself in…

Collecting Against Loss Conifer conesarranged from egg-sizedto almond. Two oval stonesmy mother paintedas iridescent insects. Quail feathershe found on the farmand mailed to me, enfolded in tissue. Seashells and polished rocksbought during childhoodbeach trips. Walnut shell half.Two tiny acorns:One wearing its hat,one bald. Piano music I never play:Chopin’s “Raindrop Prelude,”Grieg’s “Butterfly.” My late sister’s books:One more copy of Jane EyreI didn’t need, but the plane ticketshe used as bookmarkmade her real again. Keys to lost padlocks.Photos of peopleI never talk to. Vintage wool coatI’m scared to wear,its red satin lining already torn. The last item my mother sentbefore evening mantled her mind:Hospital bracelet from the day I was born. Janna…

Day Break …the acoustic nature of sheets―Brian Turner “Alexa, Awake” What whispers in the corners, whiskers feline in the dawn light? Sounds I assemble from the silent slip of feet on sheets, ears tuned for the softest shuffling, the lake-flat plain of my longing. A way to fathom open spaces, the echolocation of everyday wanderings when what presses in on every side is a tangible absence, a soft cheek brushing against mine, a waft of plum: that perfume I used to love. The shawl I wear, smoke- light yet warm. Today, it’s too warm, but I bunch the soft fabric at my throat loosely with one fist. A puddle of…

Ode to September If April is the cruelest month, Septemberis its still good enough looking brother,drunk and whittling a stick on a porch. Drunk on red wine, September. What are the little gold leaves fallingon the lawn? September couldn’t say. September wants not to think too much,to whittle until it’s afternoon again. There’s a voice on a speaker half a mile away,now trumpets, drums, a trombone,a game being played it hears little of. September is telling a story while it diminishesthe stick to a point, tosses it in a bush. September thinks it can hide from time,hanging out inside it. If September caresabout anything, it cares about September. Spilled into,…

Stress Test Red is the crest of the purplefinch and raspberry redmy heart that flittering hankiesnagged on pine branches and long the song of the purplefinch, laddered longlike the stuttered start of the heartjust prior to rising there in the sky, five purpleclouds warble the darkeninginside me, an arpeggiodrawn from the cords until silent, the long land and purpletrees all reaching, reachingtoward the beat to follow, the flutterof blood, the hollow bones Veronica Kornberg is a recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize and the Wandering Aengus Book Award in Poetry. Her work appears in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, Calyx, Beloit Poetry Journal,…

Crab Apple The crab apple treesieved the windaround the field’s edge, spikey-dense, fruit acidic and rarely picked,binocular-distant on the skyline. The quietthere. Only a ground-level scurry of something like brushes on a snare drum.Is that the place I found the larva,its raw thorax gleaming mid- moult, prolegs collapsed to a slatherof grey nubs?We’d unwound its twill of gauze and bandagesand exposed an Oz behindmoist curtains, termination shimmering in the ruined cocoon.We didn’t mean to hurt a thing, yetwrought our damage. We tossed it in the flattened grassnear burdock flowersand a twisted elbow of the creek.   The Perseids Best chance to view them is late,away from the city’s glow, in…

Good Intentions i promised myself a better self than i could make & i will not forgive                                    —“After Vallejo” by A.B. Spellman At 5:00 a.m. Arthur Sze must be rising, brewing green tea,                then beginning to type his dream of mule deer grazing the chaparral and also wind turbines                slicing songbirds into puffs of feathers. Farther west I page through Sight Lines,                grateful for insomnia and San Francisco’s light-polluted sky, how they…

December Evening at Big Y the axle-bentcart swerves,stubborn, aimingfor anywhereI don’t want to gobut I am more obstinateyanking the handleharsh as the harsh lightecstatic song echoesin the pet food aisleheaven and nature singperfect companionsin the cart is my prisonertree, wrapped tightin green meshoutside: the grey rain Written in Winter traversing his endless palace the first emperornever slept in the same room twice for lack of spaceI had to cry in the car Martha McCollough is the author of Wolf Hat Iron Shoes (Lily Poetry Review Books 2022) and the chapbook Grandmother Mountain (Blue Lyra 2019) . Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Pleiades, The Boiler, RadarPoetry, Bear Review,…

Religion Out walkingand I have the sudden desire to pass the churchat the bottom of the hill. I’m not religious—it reminds me of Europe, which has beauty.In Rome, the men lookingmade me want to pound my face on the pavement.I gave private tours to Americans. Once,I took a married couple through the Vatican museumsand at the end the man was surprised to be in the Sistine Chapel.I thought it was in Paris, he whispered.The church at the bottom of the hill has dozens of stepsup to heavy doors that are usually locked.For a year I went into every church I saw in Rome,sat in the quiet. I had time then.In…

Fugue of Vodka Light GS with lines & variation from Lorna De Cervantes’ “From the Bus to E.L. at Atascadero State Hospital” The woman screams I want Vodka now! InsteadI offer her more coffee, but tonight youKnow this won’t work. She is adamant—wereYou here you might be scared, hereWhere anger is a daily ruse. She balls her fists. WhereIs the Vodka? She’s in her fifties, delusional. TheWoman grew up in a closed factory town with its woundedMen. Bradford’s blue factory light. BlackbirdsOf men begging for bread. Coal trains warbleAlong the Allegheny River with their industrial jazzFed the furnaces of the Zippo plant. InA town where she was raised by her…