Veronica Kornberg

Stress Test

Red is the crest of the purple
finch and raspberry red
my heart that flittering hankie
snagged on pine branches

and long the song of the purple
finch, laddered long
like the stuttered start of the heart
just prior to rising

there in the sky, five purple
clouds warble the darkening
inside me, an arpeggio
drawn from the cords

until silent, the long land and purple
trees all reaching, reaching
toward the beat to follow, the flutter
of 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, and Plume. Veronica is a habitat gardener on California’s Central Coast and a Peer Reviewer for Whale Road Review. Her debut collection will be published by Wandering Aengus Press in early 2026.

Thank you for reading Volume 3, Number 4