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  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
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    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
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      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
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  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
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    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
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      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
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  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
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    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
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    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022

Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow
​

POEM FOR THAT CRAZY BASEMENT

Eerie, the host’s hushed third-floor mirrored hall. Room after room,
wall-lined Brazilian Rosewood-windowed cabinetry, lit within: ornate
candelabra, outsized inlaid service trays, chubby cherubs circling silver
ice pails. I roamed rooms for a grand tureen the host’s wife insisted as
centerpiece, that my mother’s lobster bisque, prepared for one hundred
twenty, would fill. The first course.

Out of our basement came Angie’s catering business. Word of mouth
lured the northwest suburban mansions to her calendar, double-booking
every weekend, day events, evening affairs, three seasons until unfailing
arctic cold felled the city again. Still she booked favorites.

Often we returned the following day, the retrieval of banquet prep tables,
commercial-sized coffee makers, specialty knives, tools her alternating
staff exhaustedly left behind. And always, down a manicured hill’s lawn
edge lay a mammoth haphazard garbage heap. Heavy-duty garbage bags
pecked and plucked wide open. Unrecognizable foodstuffs tumbled out
atop the green expanse. Incorruptible handsome ravens. 
Partaking of easy bounty.

The party event menus themselves took on rousing personalities.
Clientele envisioned Angie a nourishing servant. Zeal glistened like hot
pig fat on their faces. Paraded through homes, she was shown luxurious
crooks and expanses. If some exotic object were cracked, broken, quite
valuable otherwise, often it would be offered, and she took. Random
rooms frequently kept exactly square, alabaster, utterly empty. Angie
adored this.

No reason why, only she felt calm.
I may be wrong. I find I’m wrong more and more often.
Nothing to covet. No wish too heady. But Angie.
In a boxy vacant room by herself with nothing--
burlesque-worthy, I have to figure. What of it.
Never was one day with my mother
in good conversation.
I was assured those rooms had no windows.
Barely doors.
I listen to fable.

                        Once there was a jet-winged bird
                      
who gained a window where there
     was not one. It could tilt a polished eye with
     unfettered regard through ivy-framed glass.
                Like a most beneficent guided missile
unsubtle and accurate, its beak so much more
                                                            than capable.
​

I bank on that raven
in its hurtling descent, wings tucked tightly in, then
the instinct instantly to outstretch utterly
and break.

--
Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow has published two full length collections of poetry, Horn Section All Day Every Day, and The Day Judge Spencer Learned the Power of Metaphor (Salmon, 2018 and 2012). Horn Section All Day Every Day was a 2020 Phillip H. McMath Post Publication Book Award Finalist. Other honors include the Red Hen Press Poetry Award, Tusculum Review Poetry Prize, Willow Review Prize for Poetry, a Beullah Rose/Smartish Pace Poetry Prize, and three Pushcart Prize nominations. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Plume Poetry Anthologies-Volumes 5, 7, and 11, Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books, American Journal of Poetry, Barrow Street, Gargoyle, Gulf Coast, Hotel Amerika, Ilanot Review, Los Angeles Review, Plume, Salamander, Smartish Pace, Texas Review, and Verse Daily, among other venues.

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  • Home
  • About
    • Our Story
    • Masthead
  • Submit
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Submit Here
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Book Reviews
  • Previous Issues
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • Issue 22 Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Art Fall 2021 >
      • Bonnie Severien Fall 2021
      • Camilla Taylor Fall 2021
      • Guilherme Bergamini Fall 2021
      • Emanuela Iorga Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Poetry Fall 2021 >
      • Maureen Alsop Fall 2021
      • Annah Browning Fall 2021
      • Romana Iorga Fall 2021
      • Natalie Hampton Fall 2021
      • Sherine Gilmour Fall 2021
      • Adam Day Fall 2021
      • Amanda Auchter Fall 2021
      • Adam Tavel Fall 2021
      • Sara Moore Fall 2021
      • Karen Rigby Fall 2021
      • Daniel Zhang Fall 2021
      • Erika Lutzner Fall 2021
      • Kindall Fredricks Fall 2021
      • Cin Salach Fall 2021
      • Andrew Zawacki Fall 2021
      • Micah Ruelle Fall 2021
      • Rachel Stempel Fall 2021
      • Haley Wooning Fall 2021
      • Rikki Santer Fall 2021
      • Evy Shen Fall 2021
      • Suzanne Frischkorn Fall 2021
      • Danielle Rose Fall 2021
      • Eric Burgoyne Fall 2021
      • John Cullen Fall 2021
      • Maureen Seaton Fall 2021
      • Hannah Stephens Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Nonfiction Fall 2021 >
      • Kevin Grauke Fall 2021
      • Courtney Justus Fall 2021
      • Amy Nicholson Fall 2021
    • Issue #22 Fiction Fall 2021 >
      • Tina Jenkins Bell Fall 2021
      • David Obuchowski Fall 2021
      • Thomas Misuraca Fall 2021
      • Aiden Baker Fall 2021
      • Jenny Magnus Fall 2021
  • Issue 23 Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Art Spring 2022 >
      • Jonathan Kvassay Spring 2022
      • Karyna McGlynn Spring 2022
      • Andrea Kowch Spring 2022
      • Layla Garcia-Torres Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Poetry Spring 2022 >
      • Robin Gow Spring 2022
      • T.D. Walker Spring 2022
      • Jen Schalliol Huang Spring 2022
      • Yvonne Zipter Spring 2022
      • Carrie McGath Spring 2022
      • Lupita Eyde-Tucker Spring 2022
      • Susan L. Leary Spring 2022
      • Kate Sweeney Spring 2022
      • Rita Mookerjee Spring 2022
      • Erin Carlyle Spring 2022
      • Cori Bratty-Rudd Spring 2022
      • Jen Karetnick Spring 2022
      • Meghan Sterling Spring 2022
      • Lorelei Bacht Spring 2022
      • Michael Passafiume Spring 2022
      • Jeannine Hall Gailey Spring 2022
      • Phil Goldstein Spring 2022
      • Michael Mingo Spring 2022
      • Angie Macri Spring 2022
      • Martha Silano Spring 2022
      • Vismai Rao Spring 2022
      • Anna Laura Reeve Spring 2022
      • Jenny Irish Spring 2022
      • Marek Kulig Spring 2022
      • Jami Macarty Spring 2022
      • Sarah A. Rae Spring 2022
      • Brittney Corrigan Spring 2022
      • Callista Buchen Spring 2022
      • Issam Zineh Spring 2022
      • MICHAEL CHANG Spring 2022
      • henry 7. reneau, jr. Spring 2022
      • Leah Umansky Spring 2022
      • Cody Beck Spring 2022
      • Danyal Kim Spring 2022
      • Rachel DeWoskin Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Fiction Spring 2022 >
      • Melissa Boberg Spring 2022
    • Issue #23 Nonfiction Spring 2022 >
      • Srinaath Perangur Spring 2022
      • Audrey T. Carroll Spring 2022
  • Issue #24 Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Art Fall 2022 >
      • Marsha Solomon Fall 2022
      • Edward Lee Fall 2022
      • Harryette Mullen Fall 2022
      • Jezzelle Kellam Fall 2022
      • Irina Greciuhina Fall 2022
      • Natalie Christensen Fall 2022
      • Mark Yale Harris Fall 2022
      • Amy Nelder Fall 2022
      • Bette Ridgeway Fall 2022
      • Ursula Sokolowska Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Poetry Fall 2022 >
      • William Stobb Fall 2022
      • e Fall 2022
      • Stefanie Kirby Fall 2022
      • Lisa Ampleman Fall 2022
      • Will Cordeiro Fall 2022
      • Jesica Davis Fall 2022
      • Peter O'Donovan Fall 2022
      • Mackenzie Carignan Fall 2022
      • Jason Fraley Fall 2022
      • Barbara Saunier Fall 2022
      • Chad Weeden Fall 2022
      • Nick Rattner Fall 2022
      • Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow Fall 2022
      • Summer J. Hart Fall 2022
      • Daniel Suá​rez Fall 2022
      • Sara Kearns Fall 2022
      • Millicent Borges Accardi Fall 2022
      • Liz Robbins Fall 2022
      • john compton Fall 2022
      • Esther Sadoff Fall 2022
      • Whitney Koo Fall 2022
      • W. J. Lofton Fall 2022
      • Rachel Reynolds Fall 2022
      • Kimberly Ann Priest Fall 2022
      • Annie Przypyszny Fall 2022
      • Konstantin Kulakov Fall 2022
      • Nellie Cox Fall 2022
      • Jennifer Martelli Fall 2022
      • SM Stubbs Fall 2022
      • Joshua Bird Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Fiction Fall 2022 >
      • Otis Fuqua Fall 2022
      • Hannah Harlow Fall 2022
      • Natalia Nebel Fall 2022
      • Kate Maxwell Fall 2022
      • Helena Pantsis Fall 2022
    • Issue #24 Nonfiction Fall 2022 >
      • Courtney Ludwick Fall 2022
      • Anna Oberg Fall 2022
      • Acadia Currah Fall 2022