APOCALYPSE

by Katherine West

detail of the poster for the film Apocalypse Now

I stand with my back to winter 
as if I could hold off blizzards 
with force of will alone 

I am the last dam without a crack 
Water trickles over my shoulders 
Flood whispers in my ears 

I am rain following fire 
tracking its crackle and whoosh 
lowering like a raptor after prey 

I am the final embrace before death 
grabs you by the ankles 
leaving only your soul in my arms 

I am the last mother
carrying a million children on my back 
swimming for safety against the tide 

I am the last dancer, the last poet
the last artist using my own blood 
to paint the last sunset 

I am the last person on Earth 
I have broken all mirrors, all my brothers 
are only songs

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City. She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and  Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective, Southwest Word Fiesta, and The Silver City Anthology. The New Verse News nominated her poem “And Then the Sky” for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

WHEN GIRLS LEARN TO SWIM

by Marsha Owens

Fear of Drowning by Chelsea Emerson

                                 
                                    dedicated to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford


water so big

tucked half in
half out nothing
to stand on in-
hale if you dare
surrender

bare shoulders
taut lips blue
legs spread
into scissors
stiff and strong
turn limp

relax
they say



Marsha Owens writes to understand. Her poems and essays have appeared at TheNewVerse.News, thewildword, Rat’s Ass Review, Streetlight Magazine, the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, and in the anthology Life in 10 among others. She lives in Richmond,VA, not far from the peaceful Chesapeake Bay. 

THE BORDER FAR AWAY

by Jennifer Davis Michael





My son is white like me, the border far away.
According to his papers and my scar
where forceps dragged him earthward, he is mine.
We don’t discuss what’s happening down there
—I mean, down at the border. He’s just six.
He’s learning how to swim. A patient guard
shapes his flailing dog-paddle to a stroke
that might cross rivers. She lightly pins his feet
to bend his body to a diving arc.

“Far away from home, it looks like darkness”:
his random comment on the vegetation
we speed past on the way back from the pool.
He sleeps that night, surfacing only once
from nightmares of the house crumbling around us.
I guard the borders of his innocence,
my trigger-finger on the remote control.

Jennifer Davis Michael is Professor and Chair of English at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN. Her poems have appeared previously in TheNewVerse.News and also in Mezzo Cammin, Literary Mama, Cumberland River Review, and Southern Poetry Review, among others.