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  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025

Christine Pacyk & Virginia Smith Rice

IN YEARS FORWARD WE RECOGNIZE NO ONE, NOT EVEN OUR BODILESS SELVES


Blighted mind, the doctors said.
I gave them enough material to build a career
they could be proud of, without primer,
 
without polish, without
augmentation - lovely
and lovely without pretense. Tonight     
 
a wolf walks toward me and I let the car idle,
sheep gathering in the headlights,
gravel road beginning its washout.
 
My sweater unravels at the hem, where it began,
once a skein fastened to a lamb. I tug
at yarn so soft and warm I imagine it houses
 
your heartbeat, but one slipped knot
and the whole thing will come undone  
and unstitch all the places your hands once traveled.
 
How long can a body sit, contained
and flayed by no motion,
soft as moth wings unfolding,
 
still weary from their night-tongue
gorging on sweetmeats by porchlight?
Does it rust like a weather-worn hinge
 
attached to a barn door, bowed
and shut like an idled car, occupants
lingering and sweltering?
 
Wolf, I think you are speaking to me in waves.
Perhaps you are a forked tongue,
or maybe a cleft palate.
 
Difficult to say without teeth.
I sing off key to you,
you burble back, together we are a river.  
 
You are not concerned
when I take from you.
I crawl into your ossuary,
                                                                                                   
your foreign skyline, and through your stare
observe the persistence of progress,
the persistence of steel and blue, the spiral
 
that pierces clouds – so suddenly
the mind descends, slowed by canopy in unmapped
corners, to summon night from a molehill.
 
This winter I will huddle near the fire,
the TV anchor droning in the living room,
and I will watch him with my new wolf eyes
 
bared of expression. I will stir broth
while the hours stare back.
I will make soup and help you into bed.
 
When the shelves are empty, I will go out,
the pharmacist still waiting on a stalled shipment,
our number still on the list, she says.



A VIOLET THOUGHT ISOLATED IN THE ICU OF 2AM


​Caught in an autumn sky, florid, fluorescent,
I can’t stop seeing the blighted birch leaves against it,
leached yellow on spit-dark stems, blighted trunks
split wide like a lightning strike. I used to
 
wade into the green-slick pond alone, smooth
stones in my pockets, just to practice becoming a new
phase of moonlight. I measured years by the wood’s
veining branches and believed in how sacred
 
I was, like a secret, just by being kept.
But there is always an I and another I ready to offer
a widened stare, a close-mouthed portal, quirks
pearling her peeled-bark trunk.
 
At 2AM, there’s no triage for a rootless thought,
no sent home with a scrip, no shot of oxygen,
no elegant pill. It rocks on its threshold, curled
into the violet shadow of a solitary leaf.
 
I rehearse my ending, my lunar resurrection.
It’s calming to be unknown, and unknowing
enough to let minutes drip like an IV, ready to leave,
ready to stay, an iridescent chrysalis in the static gray.



FLAME AS A CURRENT WE GET SNARED IN


Tethered to the new-risen moon
of my sleepless mood, restive, difficult,
I go out of my way to press against each
one, then rinse my wrists under cool water
until they lose their rose, these
regrets and their sudden, shamed surface,
a surfeit of past – past help and good
only for searing the over-tangled dark
inside my pale-veined temples.
Memory, drifting in jetsam, caught
in fragmented nets. Memory, in locked
waterlogged chests, the detritus of seabeds.
 
I am laying it out before me again,
a garage sale puzzle of my worst selves
and their scald. My god, put it back
in the chest filled with ribbons,
stones, metal rings, the flat iron that was
a real antique, once used as a doorstop, now
just another object refusing to lose
its attachment. A person and the sea can find
communion by the mouth only. Shallow
breath, bury these castaways beneath the slip
of moonlight between linden and ash.



SOLITARY NEST


My eye is an omen. I keep it on planets pale as cumulous,
string-less balloons held fast by a rising tide.
 
Someday, you reckless travelers must be undone,
and then, I’m certain, will be free again.
 
Already this shore is breaking, shattered with glass
that refuses to return to sand. I stand on a jagged edge,
 
ready to be my own god, gray wrists branching
like spider webs spun in the corner of a child’s unused room.
 
I open my palm and whisper the boats in.
Watch how they splinter. (I need to feel this.)
 
And if I lock the dark behind me? Toss the key
beyond light’s grasp, beyond horizon, headstone, history?
 
Well, I too can choose to vanish, again and again. (My absence
outpaces you.) Had you allowed yourself to push back
 
against the wreckage, you might have drifted
safely away, your face a familiar reflection and an apparition.
 
I don’t stay to watch you slip under.






--
Christine Pacyk is a poet and educator living in the Chicago Suburbs. She holds an MFA in poetry from Northwestern University. Her work has been published in Jet Fuel Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crannóg Magazine, and Zone 3, among other journals. 

Virginia Smith Rice is the author of the poetry collection, When I Wake It Will Be Forever (Sundress Publications, 2014), and a poetry chapbook, Whose House, Whose Playroom (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). She is poetry editor at Kettle Blue Review. Poems co-written with Christine Pacyk appear in They Said (Black Lawrence Press, 2018) and are forthcoming as a chapbook, The Internet Confirms How They Broke Down The Door, published by Dancing Girl Press.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
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  • Features
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  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Issue #27 Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Art Spring 2024 >
      • Kristina Erny Spring 2024
      • Luiza Maia Spring 2024
      • Christy Lee Rogers Spring 2024
      • Erika Lynet Salvador Spring 2024
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2024
    • Issue #27 Poetry Spring 2024 >
      • Terry Belew Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Diamond Forde Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Dustin Brookshire​ & Caridad Moro-Gronlier Spring 2024 Spring 2024
      • Charlie Coleman Spring 2024
      • Isabelle Doyle Spring 2024
      • Reyzl Grace Spring 2024
      • Kelly Gray Spring 2024
      • Meredith Herndon Spring 2024
      • Mina Khan Spring 2024
      • Anoushka Kumar Spring 2024
      • Cate Latimer Spring 2024
      • BEE LB Spring 2024
      • Grace Marie Liu​ Spring 2024
      • Sarah Mills Spring 2024
      • Faisal Mohyuddin 2024
      • Marcus Myers Spring 2024
      • Mike Puican Spring 2024
      • Sarah Sorensen Spring 2024
      • Lynne Thompson Spring 2024
      • Natalie Tombasco Spring 2024
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2024
      • Donna Vorreyer Spring 2024
    • Fiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Bryan Betancur Spring 2024
      • Karen George Spring 2024
      • Raja'a Khalid Spring 2024
      • Riley Manning Spring 2024
      • Adina Polatsek Spring 2024
      • Beth Sherman Spring 2024
    • Nonfiction #27 Spring 2024 >
      • Liza Olson Spring 2024
  • Issue #28 Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Art Fall 2024 >
      • Eric Calloway Fall 2024
      • Matthew Fertel Fall 2024
      • JooLee Kang Fall 2024
      • Jian Kim Fall 2024
      • Robb Kunz Fall 2024
      • Sean Layh Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Poetry Fall 2024 >
      • Jodi Balas Fall 2024
      • Clayre Benzadón Fall 2024
      • Catherine Broadwall Fall 2024
      • Sara Burge Fall 2024
      • Judith Chalmer Fall 2024
      • Stephanie Choi Fall 2024
      • Sarah Jack Fall 2024
      • Jen Karetnick Fall 2024
      • Ae Hee Lee Fall 2024
      • Svetlana Litvinchuk Fall 2024
      • Mary Lou Buschi Fall 2024
      • Angie Macri Fall 2024
      • Gary McDowell Fall 2024
      • Sam Moe Fall 2024
      • Camille Newsom Fall 2024
      • Elizabeth O'Connell- Thompson Fall 2024
      • Olatunde Osinaike Fall 2024
      • Jessica Pierce Fall 2024
      • Diane Raptosh Fall 2024
      • Isaac Richards Fall 2024
      • Robyn Schelenz Fall 2024
      • Christopher Shipman Fall 2024
      • Alex Tretbar Fall 2024
      • Ruth Williams Fall 2024
      • Shannon K. Winston Fall 2024
      • Wendy Wisner Fall 2024
      • Anne Gerard Fall 2024
    • Issue #28 Fiction Fall 2024 >
      • J​oe Baumann Fall 2024
      • ​Morganne Howell Fall 2024
      • Matt Paczkowski Fall 2024
      • Ryan Peed Fall 2024
      • Gabriella Pitts Fall 2024
      • James Sullivan Fall 2024
  • Issue #29 Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Art Spring 2025 >
      • Irina Greciuhina Spring 2025
      • Jesse Howard Spring 2025
      • Paul Simmons Spring 2025
      • Marsha Solomon Spring 2025
      • Elzbieta Zdunek Spring 2025
      • Na Yoon Amelia Cha-Ryu Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Poetry Spring 2025 >
      • Deborah Bacharach Spring 2025
      • Diego Báez Spring 2025
      • Jaswinder Bolina Spring 2025
      • ​Ash Bowen Spring 2025
      • Christian J. Collier Spring 2025
      • ​Shou Jie Eng Spring 2025
      • Sara Fitzpatrick Spring 2025
      • Matthew Gilbert Spring 2025
      • Tammy C. Greenwood Spring 2025
      • Alejandra Hernández ​Spring 2025
      • Ben Kline ​Spring 2025
      • ​David Moolten Spring 2025
      • ​Tamer Mostafa Spring 2025
      • ​Rongfei Mu Spring 2025
      • Cynthia Neely Spring 2025
      • Pablo Otavalo Spring 2025
      • ​Bleah Patterson Spring 2025
      • ​M.A. Scott Spring 2025
      • ​Liam Strong ​ Spring 2025
      • Alexandra van de Kamp Spring 2025
      • ​Cassandra Whitaker Spring 2025
      • Angelique Zobitz Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Fiction Spring 2025 >
      • Vanessa Blakeslee Spring 2025
      • K. J. Coyle Spring 2025
      • Meredith MacLeod Davidson Spring 2025
      • Jessica Mosher Spring 2025
    • Issue #29 Nonfiction Spring 2025 >
      • JM Huscher Spring 2025
      • Qurrat ul Ain Raza Abbas Spring 2025