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Why can't the body heal itself?
True, Steve Jobs, who chose juice fasts
over conventional treatment, decays
on my doctor’s side, but Patrick Swayze
took chemo and is just as dead.
What about Suzanne Somers,
who cured her breast cancer with herbs
and now has lots of sex?
Or maybe that was a different blonde, the one
whose lover pretended to drown.
The cancer part, I mean – the sex
is definitely Somers. I read about her libido
and bioidentical hormones this morning
while avoiding making an appointment
for a blood test and sonogram.
Why do you fill your head
with crap? my husband asks,
missing the point. I want fashion
and mansions to crowd out
important things. Want to convince myself
the body’s so forgiving, a woman
can be flab-free two months after
giving birth to twins. To lose myself in liposuction,
low-cut gowns, and hot affairs. The actors’ plumped,
tucked, frozen faces almost making me believe
that they and I might never die.
Alison Stone
Alison Stone has published seven full-length collections, Zombies at the Disco (Jacar Press, 2020), Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2019), Dazzle (Jacar Press, 2017), Masterplan, a book of poems with Eric Greinke (Presa Press, 2018), Ordinary Magic, (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award, as well as three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award. She was Writer in Residence at LitSpace St. Pete. She is also a painter and the creator of The Stone Tarot. A licensed psychotherapist, she has private practices in NYC and Nyack. www.stonepoetry.org - www.stonetarot.com. YouTube – Alison Stone Poetry.
after hope
inspired by paris: a poem
there is no lily of the valley
there is only one trash bag
lifting its wings
aimlessly down the canal
adrift in air seethed in midday smog;
the boats, the cyclists, and here
the eternal man sleeping while the rain
comes expectedly down --
ptkoheia smiling her stoop upon his
moon-sunk eyes, his demurring hood
in the moments before we step above
the broken bridge to retrieve the
vapes, the banter, the yearning of children
to shriek as they cross the street under the
(poor collapse of the sky. your face is waste. our goddess is a mountain and)
each night we run our hands over what is
it exactly we are searchsearchsearching for and
I am beside. myself an engineer in this
lurid design, footprint fossils spitting
carbon the way the thin man in a jogging
suit hacks his cud onto the pavement, stains
like a ghost.
Riley Mayes
Riley Mayes is a full-time student and writer from Portland, Maine. Mayes is interested in explorations of nature and hyperlocal geography in their studies and writing. Mayes' work has been featured in several publications, including Prose Online, BUST Magazine, Garfield Lake Review, Havik Las Bryant Literary Review, Levitate Magazine, and Sudden Denouement Collective. You may read more of Riley Mayes' work on their website, https://rileyrm11.wixsite.com/
—after Antonio Machado
We never know how the ocean
will finally take us under—
We wait in our dark boats
under the burning moon,
thunderclouds gathering.
One by one, everyone we love
slips quietly under the glassy
and black waters, their story
over—But it doesn’t mean
our prayers are ignored.
We take our faith out
to the center of the sea,
our hearts full, our minds
listening, only listening
to storm-echos and the first
raindrops on water. At last,
we close our eyes to see further,
sinking into such light and quiet.
Alexander Etheridge
Alexander Etheridge has been developing his poems and translations since 1998. His poems have been featured in The Potomac Review, Scissors and Spackle, Ink Sac, Cerasus Journal, The Cafe Review, The Madrigal, Abridged Magazine, Susurrus Magazine, The Journal, Roi Faineant Press, and many others. He was the winner of the Struck Match Poetry Prize in 1999, and a finalist for the Kingdoms in the Wild Poetry Prize in 2022. He is the author of, God Said Fire, and the forthcoming, Snowfire and Home.
