Selected Poems from Issue 3

KENDRA LEONARD
 
My Antlers
 
My antlers
are the most beautiful
of the tribe’s,
coated in skin
softer than
snow on moss.
I give them
so much blood
that my face
is as colorless
as a summer moon.
 
CINDY HUNTER MORGAN

Replica in Helium & Ether
 
Late September in a fire tower  
above bugling elk, and I’m drinking tea –
steam rising from the cup 
 
as though I’ve brought my own 
smoke for the red-tipped maples, 
my own liquid for the river. 
 
Some days my body floats free 
of itself. It’s not just the soul, but 
all of myself detached from itself –
 
one self hovering like a balloon, 
and one reckoning the angle 
of the sun. Here above autumn, 
 
the trick is not how to keep 
one aloft, but how to coax 
a shadow back into the body. 
 
 
ACE BOGGESS

Because You Went to Med School Doesn’t
Qualify You to Remove Your Kidney


Such a painful exploration
of the cavity you’d carve.
 
You’re too close to the action.
You know what you intended;
 
is what was delivered true
to vision—concept or conception?
 
You went to law school &
end up in jail: how do you deny
 
the guilt you feel for something
unsettled? You joined the state police,
 
but will you turn yourself in
for blowing past a stop sign
 
while your mind went elsewhere?
Read the Detachment Clause
 
of the contract you signed
with yourself at birth:
 
you’re the worst judge
of anything concerning you.
 
You write your histories,
share them with others.
 
Who recalls dates of every skirmish
in which you lost a part of you?
 
What do you say
about what you’ve said?
 
It’s how my mind works; all
remaining notions are your own.