My Grandfather’s Hands As a child I was told the cruel history: how he poured hot soup over my grandmother’s head, chained his sons in the garage to a coal stove, made them go without food, would not allow children to speak at the table, slapped them across the head if they did. The day his youngest son was born…

Leaky Hearts Julia Kristeva says the female body is leaky and uncontainedmy doctor says my heart is leaky tooregurgitating to be exact Invoking exactly what Kristeva points tosomething disgusting about the female body leakyregurgitatinguncontainedbloodlove The latter I would argue is a giftlove should at least leak outif you are not willing or able to let it pour…

APOLOGY TRIPTYCH I'm sorry you thought I was flirtingwith that girl on the dance floorand leaving you outdemoting you from number oneof course you’re my number oneand isn't that what dance is all about—the cock and hen shuffle game—the trouble is normally girls leave me well alonebut they see you've tested and kept me…

Zeus Came Down He took me while hunting a strange turn of events a shadow, I thought, a branch broken off a tree falling at me only to be lifted up body and all in a tender touching of talons— my own cornered game frozen below arrows released un-aimed twisting around, the air disturbed by wings’ gorgeous displays putting the sun to shame, quivering…

Kyiv Summer July 2022 The guy with donations for Irpin is late.We wait in the shade by the roasting carand observe the sun-cracked playground. A dusty slide and swings, a rocket-shapedclimbing frame glints and flakes. The scrapof no-entry tape left behind from Covid. No kids. Occasional women hail friendsfor a slow recalibration. The whydid you stay here in March?

BLUE SWEATER I make the mistake of asking my motherwhere she got that pretty blue sweater. I don’t remember, she says and shrugs in apology.I try to follow the rules for talking to people with Alzheimer’s—to avoid asking the kindsof questions that depend on memory, to resist the urge to correct her when she believes,for instance, that we are in a restaurant…

Trickster Gods Play Games with a Fourteen-Year-Old Girl The school trip form saysfifty-five dollars. Yesterdayit didn’t mention money.She cannot grab the paperfrom her father without riskingthe backhand she will getanyway because of the cost. She skips breakfast daily,her stomach a bull-necked bouncerrefusing entry to anythingbefore eleven, on pain of acid vomit.

January Inside the diner, fluorescent lightsglare down on us,their faulty buzzing audiblesince the jukeboxes are fake.The patched up vinyl boothaches under every movement. Before I can wonderwhy it looks so familiar, you askif I’m going to get the pancakes againbecause that’s what I did when we were nineteen. Finger traces lines through spilled table salt…

SAD Like wet fog creeping in, like a foghorn’sexpiring wail, repeating repeating, like skydeprived of a single chink of light, wide sweepof solitary grey. Sad like furniture left out foranyone to take away, an old sofa covered instretchy tan crepe soaked to its spongey insides.Sad like late Sundays, dark-morning Mondayswhen you heave aside the dead weight of Not…

Missing Father This morning being too wintryfor a walk, I think of my father,trudging to the bus stop at dawn in allweathers, to juggle numbers on paperacross the George Washington Bridge. My twin sister and Iwould toddle to the front door,our pajamas hanging on uslike wilted petunias, snortingback our tears, wailing,Where’s Daddy?

Elsa Peretti Cuff This isn’t a gift but a bribe, An inducement to—please— Keep out of my head (At least while I sleep) So instead of contriving to trick My hippocampus Into finding your lips In my slack cotton sheets I can just close my eyes, Impervious to Time’s dispassionate tick Till I next touch your cheek. Jason Schwartz is a crypto tax lawyer. His work has appeared in Toasted Cheese. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and daughter.

Be Done I have never learned to knit, so trying to get the stitches of my will and Thy will all lined up in neat rows to form my life jacket has been my greatest blundering making it apparent for anyone who looks at me to see I have no opening to let out the fullness of my second arm, so I just look idle…

stripped of our wholeness, we feel no grief You brought yourself in handfulsto me. Your pieces splayed across our bedlike scraps of cloth. I marveled at the aggregatescattered there, all of you offered upin soft, folded stars. I gathered you up; love, gathered with fistscallused and weary with wanting. I held you,all of you flat against me, stitched you there,

Wintergone Wind & spitting rain washed away the last of this week’s winter. I am twisted up into white sheets feeling emptied under drifts, homeless, discarded face down, curled up in an oak’s last snow. There’s shame having clean, full, warm, safe, but no voice speaking. Even an empty pitcher holds utility, a promise to carry & serve & give.

The Etymology of Loneliness Snow is falling sideways. Given the title, one might assume I’m in crisis, identifying with the weather as a cry for help. That I have a disorder of loneliness and I’m spiraling downward like the snow. But the snow is gorgeous, born of unhuman hands, its sudden arrival a white mirage. Now a single black fly on the liminal windowpane.

Christmas Tree Scarring the neighbors’ son wanted to hang himself but couldn’t no one taught him how so only a bulbless lamp swings every evening from the ceiling death’s afraid to enter the apartment christmas tree scars sprouting in shadow Mykyta Ryzhykh has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and published widely, including in journals such as The Tiger Moth Review, Monterey Poetry Review, and The Moth.

Dead Letter So, that’s done, dusted for another year. Another snowless, so-called holy day devoid of joy, festivity, or light, packed away, without ceremony. Like yours, my high-arched foot arthritic, cramps, and I resent the stamps I can’t afford, bemoan the hats I’ve lost, file photos old, fold messages in pie crusts, unforward. Address unknown. No suitcase filled with dead…

Our Christmas Turkey was a nine-pounderfrom Grandad Mick in Longford,whose right leg was severedin a motorcycle crash. Plucked from the backof the green post van,its box wrapped in a skinof brown paper tied with string—his yearly gift heralded Christmas. Propped up by prosthesis,he leaned on his cane and hobbledall the way to the post office…

This is the place We stopped, somewhere in time, looked around, the country bizarre, the landscape mutating, the muted people making signs in our direction. Night came and even the gestures receded, the voices hid behind doors; our senses, we saved for our own use, huddled together as often as we breathed. Life seemed fixed by then – it would…

Writers need journals to accept their work to generate momentum. Here are eight steps to take when submitting your writing for publication. 1: Research opportunities Start by researching which publ…

Nothing Compares to a Real Holiday (After TUI’s ‘Nothing compares to a real holiday,’ 2020) The snow has lain three days the street is frozen roofs luminous in a pre-dawn light sky already faded from deep, star-sprinkled black to this stern uncompromising blue I have a poem to write something about overheard conversations or advertising slogans But my imagination is no match…

Sonnet for Jack Spicer Your head looks like a half-eaten bowl Of chili, warm and soothing to eat. How it must feel to be picked apart By a life that left you for dead. Your nudity may be a hymn Should the rhinestones and geese Get their act together. Dead or not There’s little left. Our kitchen is a carnival…

The Moon Before Yule I rise, bringing the gift of natural light to the city. High above the chimney pots, department stores and roads, I turn my gaze upon them. I observe their preparations, despair that they name this ritual harm ‘festivities.’ My eyes smart from the twinkling of a billion light bulbs, big and small, that adorn buildings, facsimiles of trees, and something they call Christmas jumpers.

Silence Evening sun folds shadows into frozen ground. Expressionless crowds remind me of my father, his silvered hair always ending in silence. There are words I remember with blood and water inside. In the silence under clouds there is winter and promised winds blowing through forests. Evening answers with rain or darkness. His eye half-opened, a half-moon of lingering sounds that look away…

Relics Box The day after my Grandma Sandra died in December 1985, I saw INXS at the Agora Ballroom with a few friends. (I don’t remember their names.) Mom told me to go & enjoy myself. Thank God I already put the Christmas tree up—this is the last one I will ever trim. I ignored this declaration because this was always her favorite holiday.