Reflection The flicker in the red maple—speckled breast, black mark on the head—at first I thought, meadowlark!That would have been more inspiring.There were things about youI wanted to change,the only music you were moved by,Ravel’s Bolero.Now the poem wants to knowif I failed you at all.I look out my sad windowat the jays in the linden.The window is kinderthan the mirror in the hall. Steve Nickman‘s poetry collection, To Sleep with Bears is now available from Wordtech (2022). He is a psychiatrist who works mainly with kids, teenagers and young adults. He has a strong interest in the experiences and dilemmas of adoptees and their families. Steve’s poetry has recently…

Scar Tissue We cut the top off the mountain to betterreach its entrails. This is how we show love—through destruction. A cool glass of iced teasweats beautiful beads, but I can’t bringmyself to lift it to my lips. How can a lifewoven warp to woof ever learn to wag?There are pills for that! says the phone.I stir in some honey, make a storm witha swirling spoon, then peel back the gauzeto sterilize the lesion with saline, seawater’sbriny twin. It takes weeks, but the woundeventually closes like an eye slowly drifting off,dreaming it was once clean, innocent,and so full of hope it couldn’t stop weeping. Ode to the Cicada Like Persephone…

Without the Needle of Pain There Is No Healing The day’s shining mitten picks me uplike a doll, and I feel my stitching;what I thought was muscle,is only soft, aching stuffing.My fingers convulsed for a second in another’s.I am nowhere near the gradual silk of love.Death is when the envelope is opened,the letter unfolded, the reading shinesthrough translucent wordsto explain what is fragile, tattered.Sometimes a dark bearded face turns, hearing,no matter to whom the prayer is addressed,eyes shadowed with an old passion.Deep is the wound that speaks to wound. Mary Elizabeth Birnbaum was born, raised, and educated in New York City. Mary’s translation of the Haitian poet Felix Morisseau-Leroy has…

The Speed of Light “and the air we could not hold had come to be there all the time for us”—W.S. Merwin Half dream-boy, half downy frigate—I loosed him to solar wind. From the cliffsI watched his wings make fistsagainst my wanting. At first his figure pitched through clouds and balanced there—his indecision beautiful on air,Then the flare— his body sparkedand lurched— his fingers jellyfishing air— his bluish knees, his heels like gannetsdiving for sardines or forgiveness.Where did he go, that final noto all we should have been— broken body—I will never recover. Jane Ann Fuller’s Half-Life (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions) was a finalist for the National Indie Excellence Awards. A Best…

A Letter to My Amygdala Baby, tonight I’m facing this world.At moonrise I’m romping naked in the backyardwoods—but don’t tell anyone. I’ll be deep in its mawsby the time you see this, stomping barefoot on poisonousmushrooms and wrapping my hands around thickcopperheads just to say I did so. I’ll come back,don’t worry, but not until my feet are split to ribbonsand at risk of honey-combed infection. Not untilI find larvae digging deep between my toes, suckling my blood.And don’t you worry, I did the shopping—there’s fresh peacheson the counter. I ate one before leaving and didn’t clean my chin.Please do not follow my bloody tracks, I just need to seewhat…

Dermatology It doesn’t matter that you rode every subway lineor one Saturday you lost your last twenty dollarsto a carny at the Feast of San Gennaro and walkedhome over the Brooklyn Bridge in cheap espadrillesleaving you with blisters almost as bad as those aftera Hampton’s weekend trip where beer failed to provideimmunity to sunburn with even the soles of your feetthrobbing with pain equaling the dermatologist’s nitrousoxide spray that you will experience four decades laterwhen peeling skin may or may not be a sign of healingas you slowly realize most of your new acquaintancesare medical professionals and tradespeople whose feesgrow exponentially with each question and consultation. Ralph J. Long Jr.…

Revelry at Nineteen A year after the fire took most of me, after my back became blood soup, and it seemed my lost beauty— when beauty was everything— was a kind of sin, the dogs found me in the barn— three reddish ones, coyote-like with all-seeing eyes, a thick-coated Alpine type, and a big poodle, her bouffant grown out. They circled me and sat, turned their faces skyward like upward pointed arrows, and we howled all morning, all afternoon, until hunger, cold, or maybe some unheard whistle sent them home. Whatever I’d suffered, they came to partake, like sharing wine or meat. When the flames ate me, when I heard…

Why Does the First Man I Ever Kissed Keep Visiting My LinkedIn Profile after Elizabeth Bishop Perhaps he’s consideredadding a reference: Soft lips.Leans to the right.Tongue waslarger than expected.What a complimentto be remembered.I was eighteen. I wantedto learn the secretof men’s bodiesbut refused to give upmy own (body and secrets).I was a (Write it!) a disaster.Perhaps the bruise never healed.The sound of my namelike the crack of a gun.The past grips truth so tightit suffocates fasterthan my resumé loads. Charles Jensen (he/him) wrote Splice of Life: A Memoir in 13 Film Genres. His most recent collection of poetry is Instructions between Takeoff and Landing. His previous books include two collections…

Home Repair I just really love when the air conditioning stops working,or when a pipe has a visible leak somewhere magical and obviousthat doesn’t require holes in drywall or fumbling in attics.Give me a problem that’s fixable, but not by me. I know what to do: I will call a company who responds in their own time,who sends out a man more competent than the ones I know,who could also totally be scheming me, I know. He disappears for a few minutes or hours into parts of my housethat I never go to, emerges satisfied with himself, smart enough to tell meexactly what’s wrong while simultaneously making no sense whatsoever…

Blessing As I leave the supermarket, a womancarrying yellow chrysanthemumsputs her cart away and waves to me. I don’t know herbut I wave back and we both smile.She has mistaken me for someone else, turned us into old friends.October sunshine falls like a blessingon her baseball cap and my windbreaker. A & P Aubade I found my virginitythe other day, lostfor almost fifty years. It was tucked insidea yellowed newspaperfrom August 9, 1974. The front-page headline:NIXON RESIGNS!The night he gave up the presidency I gave up something I was gladto be rid of—that longing,that loneliness like dusk on the sluggish gray riverI could see from my third-floorone-bedroom apartment. Next morning,…