~ highlights and recommendations from recent issues of literary journals ~
by Mark Danowsky, Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal
*
Orion Magazine
Jenny George – Mushroom Season
https://orionmagazine.org/poetry/mushroom-season/
[excerpt]
Everything has a voice,
even if low, diffuse —or outside
of human hearing.
*
Agni
Lisa Fay Coutley – Shelter: Michigan
https://agnionline.bu.edu/poetry/shelter-michigan
[excerpt]
Ben tells me it’s like any other house
except twelve men share two rooms
in simple bunks not unlike barracks
*
West Branch
Jane Huffman – Chasteness, a Gesture
http://westbranch.blogs.bucknell.edu/jane-huffman/03/2019/
[excerpt]
Love – too Vaudeville,
and lust, too literal –
Like “Starry Night”
is to “Self-Portrait
with Bandaged Ear.”
*
Guesthouse
Aaron Smith – Blind Date
https://www.guesthouselit.com/i3-smith-poetry-a
[excerpt]
We know what we know when we know it,
I said to a guy on a blind date
Aaron Smith – Her Blue Body Everything We Knew
[excerpt]
I wasn’t the same as these women
who pushed their way onto the page.
Harjo: She had some horses she hated.
Plath: If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two—
Clifton: what did i see to be except myself?
Men. Men had not written for me.
Imagine me, then, in West Virginia
needing someone to talk to.
*
Maryland Literary Review
Ace Boggess – Assigning a Value
https://www.marylandliteraryreview.com/poetry/assigning-a-value/
[excerpt]
Fear equals fear plus
the square root of consequences
divided by time alone.
*
The Offing
Sahar Romani – Burden of Proof
https://theoffingmag.com/poetry/burden-of-proof/
[excerpt]
After the towers, I never left
an empty grocery cart astray
*
The Rappahannock Review
Tanner Barnes – Hateful When You’re Sober
http://rappahannockreview.com/issue-6-1/contents/poetry/tanner-barnes/
[excerpt]
Hate, the alcoholic’s remedy to sobriety. I drink hate coffee
in the morning and a hate soda
when I need the fizz of a noon beer. No one ever tells you the truth.
*
Sixth Finch
Christopher Citro – Craters The Naturally Forming Basins
http://sixthfinch.com/citro2.html
[excerpt]
Mom said you’re on
your own. Not really, but she
hugged me less and less.
Jeremy Allan Hawkins – Florida
http://sixthfinch.com/hawkins1.html
[excerpt]
if you locate a sinkhole
in the house
soon the house
is in a sinkhole
*
The Adroit Journal
Donika Kelly – Sighting: Almost
https://theadroitjournal.org/issue-twenty-seven/issue-twenty-seven-donika-kelly/
[excerpt]
Never mind the 600 stairs carved in granite
or my guide, a man with a mustache
and no concept of “almost,”
Rachel Mennies – July 16, 2016
https://theadroitjournal.org/issue-twenty-seven/issue-twenty-seven-rachel-mennies/
[excerpt]
If nobody has died, why do I grieve?
*
Bracken Magazine
Robert W. Hecht – Villanelle
https://www.brackenmagazine.com/issue-vi-index#/issue-vi/hecht-villanelle
[excerpt]
deep in the trees, young
coyotes hunker till their midnight song
sets aflame the skin of Jenning’s Pond
& tears my ears toward that direction
our cat unwittingly wandered
into teeth & terror and the great beyond
*
Waxwing
Rushi Vyas – Reincarnation
http://waxwingmag.org/items/issue17/18_Vyas-Reincarnation.php
[excerpt]
Fruit falls because of our gaze.
Gravity is an angry, unseen thing.
J. Estanislao Lopez – False Cognates
http://waxwingmag.org/items/issue17/26_Lopez-False-Cognates.php
[excerpt]
When I learned there was more
than one language, I raised a finger to my tongue
in wonder of what it lacked.
*
Foundry
Rachel Zucker – Confessional
https://www.foundryjournal.com/zucker.html
[excerpt]
I mean really, what is it I don’t have that I want? I ask myself.
That’s the wrong question says ______.
If this is not a poem can I read it tomorrow at the reading?
If this is not a poem what is it?
A way to spend time with me?
A way for me to waste your time?
We voyeur each other & I perversify my proclivity to unprevaricate.
*
Hunger Mountain
Tara Westmor – Burial
https://hungermtn.org/burial-2/
[excerpt]
My hands still sting from the cuts and the dirt drying in them. How can I know
when to stop and when will I know the planting is fruitful, how can I understand
what it is that we planted and what survives?
*
Front Porch Review
Brett Dixon – Mass Ave
http://frontporchrvw.com/issue/april-2019/article/mass-ave
[excerpt]
Tonight ̶
while others wait
in long shelter lines
he’ll have everything he needs
to keep warm.
*