Poetry – Page 2 – Novus Literary and Arts Journal

The Sensibilities of the Smallest Nesting Doll

Written by Brianna Bruce. Posted in Poetry.

I was a child

of cool-patterned skin

Nesting doll in winter attic

Layers of paper-mache

In a frosted cocoon.

I gazed at lightning windows

While the others wept at darkness

My mouth was kissed by thunder rumbles

As my unshaken palms soothed trembling walls.

I knew the transience of playgrounds, fast friendships

That only spanned sandboxes, ending with setting sun.

I saw fate as fact in action: three dogs, then eldest left.

Mortal math, quick tears melted into matter-of-fact.

Dense glue decayed under hurried paint when

Spring discovered gold in the sun. Paper

Cracked hairline fractures until I

Burst out and began to bloom.

County 19

Written by Anders Carlson-Wee. Posted in Poetry.

I twist in my seat beside the woman who picked me up

on County 19, reaching back to help her son

eat his Happy Meal. I fly a french fry through the air,

thinking how weird it is to hitch a ride on the road

I’ve driven so many times with my dad––

the route between our house and the old folks home

where Grandma lasted alone for fourteen years.

Each time we visited: the veins wider, bluer,

the ankles thinner, the distances between bedsores

diminished, the cheer my dad convinced himself to feel

as he repeated the litany: I am your son.

This is your grandson. We’re so happy to see you.

The woman asks me where I’m going

and I say as far as you can take me,

but as we pass the old folks home I tell her to pull over.

The boy is finished with his Happy Meal and now

he points at the bruise on his elbow and says Ouch.

His mom nods at him in the rearview as I get out.

That’s right, she says. Ouch. There is the low roofline,

the sign with a bible quote in changeable letters,

my grandma’s old window as blank as it was

when she lived here, some earth dug up

in the bordering cornfield for construction

of a new wing. I think about barging through the doors

and demanding to see Elizabeth Wee, making

some kind of scene. I think about setting up camp

in the hole in the cornfield and refusing to leave.

But instead I wander the grounds for awhile.

I lie in the parking lot’s grass island and watch

the cornstalks feather the road with lank shadows,

the sunlight dipping down into the tassels.

I want speed. I want new people. To ditch

this slow sanitary drain of golden light,

my pastor parents and their immovable faith,

this town’s brown river exhausting its banks.

Elizabeth is underground. So is my cousin.

Stones like polished teeth in the family plot.

In the twilight I walk back to the shoulder

and catch a ride from a farmer hauling a trailer

stacked with hay bales three-high. When he asks me

where I’m going I say as far as you can take me.

Still Life

Written by Christ Keivom. Posted in Poetry.

But what night isn’t like this?

I’ve always been since earliest version of life

Silent

Like the dinner table

Carrying tedious things

On my head—

When there are people talking over

And when the voices vanish,

Life comes out of my mouth

Holding a spatula

… it looks just like me

If only I knew how to cook.

I’ve experienced imaginations of the

End of the world.

So I’ve never been happy.

But I’ve been content in small spaces-

Queues, linen back seat of a Hyundai

That tiny store. North face.

A girl’s heart.

Each day I enter life at the same moment:

You alone in your room at midnight

Are in your nighties beautiful

As how people stop to watch the moon together

The night is…what again?

Listen: the slow parade of wind, the fan

And the refrigerator, humming.

The mouse in your cupboard

I have always sounded like this.

Emergence

Written by Christian Umbach. Posted in Poetry.

In the days when Pittsburgh was covered

by clouds of smog, cold-faced walkers

navigated city blocks only by

the neon lights of storefronts.

MAX’S, JAMES ST, WHOLLY’S.

A time when the city was known

only by shoe to sidewalk,

for the upper floors of buildings

were lost to the heavens.

Like ants crossing a large field,

the only way home, to recount

each and every step.

I wonder what it was like

when the smog finally cleared?

I think about families who lived

in cramped row homes, tacted to

steep-sloped hillsides, like patches of glitter

barely hanging on to a 3rd grader’s school collage.

I imagine that first spring morning

and the mother climbing up to the 3rd floor

to clean the modest back windows.

A common task that would leave her white cloth

black with soot, from distant smokestacks

settling over months of invisible rain.

Yet, on this day, as she finishes,

she would for the first time gaze out

to see the entire city, presenting itself

like the blooming of white trilliums.

Steel and glass skyscrapers glistening gold

from sunlight streams, standing tall and silent,

garnering reverence simply by their size and stillness.

And the blue river waters exhaling

a long-held sigh.

Gathering Firewood on Tinpan

Written by Anders Carlson-Wee. Posted in Poetry.

I bundle them against my chest, not sure

if they’re dry enough. Gauging how long

they’ll keep me warm by the thickness.

I step around carefully, looking for

the deadest, searching the low places

for something small and old that will catch.

I pick up the dander loosened

as my father folds his hands, lowers his head.

The rolling thunder on the surface of a nail.

I pick up the cross that seesaws his chest

with each step. The day I lost my faith.

The night my dog ran away and came back sick.

The battery-pump of her final breath.

Still wondering if she left alone,

or if my father walked her out of this world.

Still wondering what he used for a leash.

I go further into the trees and find

more fuel. My friends faded on oxy

and percocet. My cousin Josh

buried young in the floodplain.

My brother and the ways I burden him.

Living it over and over each night.

My father walking into every dream.

My fire not bright enough to reveal anything.

Not even his face. Not even the leash.

Sputnik V

Written by J. C. Cordova. Posted in Poetry.

V is for vaccine:

the primal adversary against

a viral pathogen, ubiquitous and yet sparingly lethal,

heretofore unseen and yet hauntingly familiar.

Or is V for vector?

A vehicle, designed specifically to thrust

viral mRNA upon the human genome;

a vicarious introduction intended to blunt infectivity.

Or is V for victory, as Sputnik is for victory?

A vanquishing, simultaneously thwarting coronal encroachment

and the superiority complex of the West;

a political venture, a recasting of races for armament and space.

Or is V for vainglorious?

A virginal attempt, devoid of proper data?

An avaricious impropriety, shipping uncertainty across

taciturn borders into countries and continents of desperation.

V can be used to victimize or verify.

It can validate unsafe medical practices, encouraging replication,

or can be seen as a nadir of villainy, a confirmation of fraud and ineptitude.

Only time and the virus have the voices to tell.