POEM FOR A YEAR IN UKRAINE

by Shih-Min, Sun

 Ironing   stained glasses
   scruffy, growth of magnitude  soul   
         of every somber
     night  comes forth
     suspended on this land
                        flood of 
                                       living , gasping
                          corpses
 rise and walk : bend
            pick 
                                                                                                                              one shoe up
           fold : clothes / string / dirty nails   unbuckle
                    crusted toes with blood, frosted
                                                                                                                                            moon   black
                                                                                                                      eye of the city   inflamed
                     a year
                                                                                                                     with a year   icy mud   feathers plank
                                             perishable but closer   underneath
 
                                              *

                             When  
                                                                    forest call
                           on each step 
                                                              streaks
                                upon walls, walls 
              birds depart, river sink
                             to depth of the country, the land   all turn into: prayers and songs
 
                                                    the orchard 
                              of life
                      respirate   unceasing
                                                                                              glare   now: wide open

Shih-Min, Sun lives and writes in Taipei, Taiwan. Her work has appeared and will be presented in publications including, The Academy of the Heart and Mind, Dadakuku, Rural Fiction Magazine, Wordpeace and has been selected for Atlanta Review 2022 International Poetry Competition in Merit Award. She started writing while working abroad, inspired deeply by family, teachers, and friends. She loves writing as a way to interpret still life and scenes of bond through language. Visit her on Instagram: @aura_a_u_r_a

NO RESOLUTION

by j.lewis

Image from Breaking Burgh

again, the ball drops, but does not break
its descent carefully engineered to delight

again, the ball is fumbled, or intercepted
despite the carefully engineered play

again. the ball passes its mark in space
the carefully engineered orbit a quiet assurance

again, we wait, not for ball, but for hammer to drop
for the carefully engineered investigations to resolve

but the dropping ball,
wobbling pass,
eternal orbit,
special investigation
seem to have no end

again, an angry tweet that
"my button, my nuclear football
is bigger than yours"
pushes us closer to the dropping
of the other shoe
and no amount of careful engineering
will save us when it strikes the floor

j.lewis is an internationally published poet, musician, and nurse practitioner. His poetry and music reflect the complexity of human interactions, sometimes drawing inspiration from his experience in healthcare. When he is not otherwise occupied, he is often on a kayak, exploring and photographing the waterways near his home in California. A Clear Day in October, j.lewis’s first collection of poetry paired with his own photography, is available directly from E&GJ Press.

TELEGENIC

by Erica Goss

A family’s shoes arranged by size, smallest first. The bones of a child’s foot. I write a poem for a man named Mark. He sits on the street and weeps. He’s seen the shoes, seen them filling up with blood. This summer grinds on. We congratulate ourselves, as if we didn’t know one piece of land is worth more than another, one child’s life is worth more than another’s. Death is telegenic and dead children most of all. Explosions branch through the ear and jaw but quiet, please, this game requires the world’s silence. Mark rakes the little bones together, collects the shoes in heaps all over the city. At night when they burn the fires smoke and sputter and then go out, smallest first.

Erica Goss is the Poet Laureate of Los Gatos, CA. She is the author of Wild Place (Finishing Line Press 2012) and Vibrant Words: Ideas and Inspirations for Poets (PushPen Press 2014). She won the 2011 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Contest and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2010 and 2013. Recent work appears in Atticus Review, Lake Effect, The Red Wheelbarrow, Passager, Main Street Rag, Pearl, Rattle, Wild Violet, and Comstock Review.