Sonnet at Zero

Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass…

–Edna St. Vincent Millay

Strange to say I feel no fear,

just calm readiness for what’s next,

and here we go under a gray cloud layer

earpopping into blue sky over Boston Harbor–

we skitter like a waterbug in the Cessna.

You know you can use a penny to replace a fuse,

said my brother last week, and I thought,

who has a penny? I don’t even have a quarter

in my bag anymore. No change

for the man on the sidewalk with the paper cup

reciting, Change  change change, as he shakes it,

and I say, I’m sorry I have none. I don’t even carry cash–

just loss and desire, rattling and crumpled,

and I’m taking them with me like a field guide.

Melissa McKinstry hosts quarterly poetry and jazz evenings and curates a community Poet Tree in San Diego. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in many journals including Beloit, Adroit, Narrative, and Best New Poets 2023 and 2025, and was selected for the 2025 New Ohio Review Literary Prize and a 2026 Pushcart Prize. An Adroit Djanikian Scholar and the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Millay House Rockland, she currently serves on the Alumni Council for Pacific University’s MFA program and the Board of the Millay House Rockland. MelissaMcKinstry.com.

Again, Dragging a Chair in Front of the Fireplace,

I begin bringing back the dead.

No loose ends. Not even a church,

or a steeple. Only the hairs

of my son’s blonde beard nubbly as en grisaille

graphite on newsprint coming further into focus

at four in the afternoon as the winter day fades

and his young beard invades.

My hands open, welcoming or deflecting–

open fans as kindling catches and crackles.

With the smoke perusing the flue

pale and gray, it is not impossible to remember.

Once, catch of dull blade

vibrated from his chin. I could feel

the drag. Each time after, chose a new razor sharp

along the guard, kept seeing Wyeth’s Barn Nap–

his friend supine in an old dory surrounded by hay,

blonde beard with gray, each hair stroked in watercolor,

never offered for sale, an honor to impending death,

a mythical Viking burial.

I start to feel I might touch him again,

forever, as all those mornings rise up before me:

of course, the whoosh and thump of the oxygen,

his clackety body stiffening in seizure, his rictus grin,

both of us so alive in the Ativan alarm,

then each gold hair on this chin quivering as the seizing quit,

so whatever was smooth and delicious as honey

seems possible again.

Tonight the rain, wood smoke. My hands

empty in firelight. Small urn with a stone on the mantel.

Melissa McKinstry hosts quarterly poetry and jazz evenings and curates a community Poet Tree in San Diego. Her poetry appears or is forthcoming in many journals including Beloit, Adroit, Narrative, and Best New Poets 2023 and 2025, and was selected for the 2025 New Ohio Review Literary Prize and a 2026 Pushcart Prize. An Adroit Djanikian Scholar and the inaugural writer-in-residence at the Millay House Rockland, she currently serves on the Alumni Council for Pacific University’s MFA program and the Board of the Millay House Rockland. MelissaMcKinstry.com.

Line of Men

The line of men who stand before you

link arms through time and ocean

over one Earth-sized planet away

Digging deep enough you’ll be back

in the country your parents escaped from

Opportunities split evenly like rations

in non-war time, peace sounding

more imaginary with each life crisis

Minutemen awake, too excited for

glory through death or freedom

No time to dream of the America

where sons don’t understand fathers

except through stories like how the

family Zhao ruled Song dynasty

Creating gunpowder and making paper

Money never growing on pig farms

Royal blood diluted until your father

pulls his family tree roots up by the straps

of his own making, powerful friends

placing jobs for cousins and daughters

The son twenty-eight and still dependent

Three generations supported by one man

and his transactional holding company

so what do we become besides the vision

our fathers have of us distorted through

petard smoke and hoisted to the sun

Daedalus playing airplane with baby Icarus

Atlas walking Calypso down the aisle

Might as well marry before the apocalypse

because falling skies doesn’t stop love

when love is all we have, we hang tight

and we try to keep what we can, the rest

we let go.

Matthew Zhao is a poet from Michigan, now a PhD student at Florida State University and an Assistant Editor of Poetry for Southeast Review. He was a finalist in the National Poetry Series and Mississippi Review Prize, and a semifinalist in the Longleaf Press Book Prize, Autumn House Press Poetry Prize, and others. His poems recently appear in swamp pink, Four Way Review, The Indianapolis Review, PRISM international, Pinch, The Louisville Review, The Offing, Reed Magazine, and elsewhere. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cashew_pow/