Nancy Jean Hill

The Hawk

One morning, after eating bacon and eggs,

I saw a red-tailed hawk

swipe—such a blur—

a mourning dove

from underneath our feeder.

Carried it in her talons

to the highest branch

of the tallest tree

in our backyard.

I stood at the kitchen window,

my horrified, innocent self,

and called for my husband,

who is more intimate

with such scenes,

to stand beside me.

Holding hands, we watched

the blood and guts,

the dove’s distressingly slow demise,

the hawk’s meticulous satisfaction.

Geographic Atrophy

My husband and I fought

when he pointed out a spot

I missed while washing our new skillet.

I know this is hard for you to see, he said

and then suggested I let him

wash all things with black interiors.

My beautiful blue eyes have betrayed me.

I fear, when I go out in public,

 that I have hair on my face I can’t see.

Stains on the front of all my shirts.

Friends on the street are strangers.

Expressions on loved ones’ faces erased.

My retina specialist tells me

small atrophic lesions

in the macula of both eyes

want to spread, get bigger,

at a speed no one can predict,

the way separate clouds

 join to make bigger clouds

leaving only small cracks of blue.

Winter Solstice

Bundled up, I watch the man 

I am beginning to love

 celebrate with fire.

A woman sitting near me

in a low lawn chair rambles

about the rubble in her life,

her powerlessness to heed

the Lord’s Prayer,

to stay away from temptation,

the Adonis who beats peace out of her

not with his fist but with his way

of showing up in the middle of the night

with an insatiable desire to suck.

After I have listened to her

for a long while, I move

away, closer to the man

who continues to feed the fire.

The Champion’s Daughter

Father taught me to bump and run.

Pressed my wrists forward on the club,

told me to close the face, keep an open stance.

Ten or twenty yards from the pin,

this is your best shot, he said.

I felt awkward in an open stance—

off-balance—afraid if I moved

I would lose everything.

But Father was two-time club champ,

and I was his daughter.

The idea is to keep the ball low,

stay in control.

I felt out of control,

pubescent sweat

pooling in my arm pits.

But Father was two-time club champ,

and I was his daughter.

Swing it like a pendulum —

take it back and follow through.

I took the club back too far

came down too hard

left a flapping divot.

Don’t cock your wrists, honey.

Keep them good and stiff.

I mustered up guts,

topped the ball this time,

rolled it way past the pin.

You forgot the bump part.

Try it again.

Head down

and a bucket of balls,

I practiced.

Today I am the champion’s daughter.

Ask anyone.

Bumping and running

is the best part of my game.

How to Shed the Armor

after Jennifer Sweeney

Get rid of the Spanx.

Wear a frilly dress with confidence.

Stop fretting about the bulge.

Strip.

Lie naked in the dandelions,

pained with sensation.

Go back to being a virgin.

Feel the sorrow of losing.

Trudge through the forest

of uprooted trees.

Roll in poison ivy. 

Stop scratching.

Sink your teeth

into a moss-covered rock.

Let your jaw relax.

Taste the green.

Nancy Jean Hill is the author of two collections of poetry, Beryllium Diary (Pudding House, 2007, and rereleased by Igneus Press, 2015) and Unholy Ghost (Kelsay Books, 2016). Her poems have also appeared in several literary journals and anthologies.    She lives and writes in Exeter, NH and Readfield, ME.

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Susan Michele Coronel

A Long Needle Was Inserted into My Belly to Extract the Truth

Dear Son,

It took a week to know your gender & a week more

to find out if you were affected by the genetic mutation

that took my brother at nineteen

A bouquet of flowers was delivered

to my fourth grade classroom, with a card announcing

It’s a Boy! & I was horrified

It’ll be a healthy boy, your dad announced,

My genes so strong, they’ll overpower yours

Anything else is a figment of your fears

What did he know about my fears:

Fear of you collapsing like a tin can

fear of your calves becoming as fat as drumsticks

fear of you crossing a balance beam with braces

My fate—& yours—lay in the undeniable accuracy

of a Punnett square:

25% affected boy 25% non-affected boy

25% carrier girl 25% non-carrier girl

I hoped for the improbability of probability,

thought of my mother’s cousin Robert, melting

velvet puddle in a wheelchair He lived until thirty-three

the longest of any family member with the disease

Waiting for the doctor’s call, I watched my brother

spin through time like a cocoon’s threads unraveling,

our parents constantly yelling at each other

when he became too heavy to carry

The dizzying freight of inheritance loosed

missing letters & links upon the world,

but Son, you & I luted together for a new sound

of affirmation, a drop of autumn plum,

& the extraction of liquid notes

formed a music that recalibrated ,

affirmed you were safe,

the unafflicted one

Daughter As Guardian of the Tomb, Age 50

Mother tells Daughter she misses her husband

but can’t make herself cry, no matter how hard

she tries, her throat tight & coiled.

Sometimes she speaks about Dad on his birthday

or when she’s trying to recall the name

of his ophthalmologist. She’s thinking

of the time he pressed the gas instead of the brake,

smashing the Mercedes into a brick wall

that turned to ghost smoke.

Mother will not describe her husband as a humorous

guy who imitated Dr. Frankenstein’s monster —

hands outstretched, tongue askew—or taught Daughter

how to play chess. Mother remarks that the suit

Dad was buried in was a good suit. Someone else

could have worn it. Clothes make the man,

even when dead. Mother forgets how Dad wanted

to go camping when Daughter was a child,

crickets & clover by a crackling fire,

but they never went because Mother wouldn’t sleep

on the ground. Daughter reminds Mother

that Dad sleeps in the ground now,

in a cage absent of breath. Indifference

cannot shred the past. Daughter is the guardian,

brushes the tomb. She glimpses a reflection

of herself & Mother in a mirror, illuminated by

a swollen, half-eaten sun. She wishes she could

hold the light as it bleeds through glass.

Cooking Was a Form of Saying Stay

Grandma Betty stuffed cabbage & layered noodles

as a form of art, to connect hands & heart

to sweeten our burdens, comfort bellies

longing for connection. Bits of food often caught

in her gums & on the trim of her button-down housecoat

as she slid spoons & garlic cloves into pockets,

crumbled sweaty tissues in cap sleeves.

For her there was no point in living

without communing with her blood relations.

For entertainment she read comic strips, collected

knock-knock jokes, & frequented Key Food supermarket

but it was nothing compared to concocting kugel

& chocolate pudding, its skin hardening in the fridge

to a glistening brown. At ninety-two, she’d bring comestibles

to the table with trembling elbows & knees, refuse

assistance during the presentation of her masterwork.

Sitting on her worn, yellow-bellied couch, my father

wanted to wrap up, return home. But I anticipated

mounds of vanilla ice cream in scalloped dishes,

clinking as they arrived on a corkboard tray.

Is your father here because he’s doing his duty,

or because he wants to spend time with me?

He did not link to her as I did, sprawled

on her green & purple quilt waiting for stories.

As she lathered plates & pots with a surfeit of suds,

I helped her dry & stack them on the shelves

she could not reach. To catch her breath, she lay

on her bedspread, size five slippers dangling

over the edge. My father was the first to the elevator

but I lingered with her in the hallway.

Her presence mingled with my breath, raw eggs

on my chin, her spittle moist on my cheek.

Susan Michele Coronel is from New York City. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in journals including MOM Egg Review, Redivider, One Art, North Dakota Quarterly, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Plainsongs, among others. In the spring of 2023, she won the Massachusetts Poetry Festival’s First Poem Award, and in 2021 and 2022 she received two Pushcart nominations. In 2021 one of her poems was runner-up for the Beacon Street Poetry Prize, and another was a finalist in the Millennium Writing Awards. In 2021 and 2023, she was longlisted for the Sappho Prize, and was a finalist for Harbor Editions’ 2021 Laureate Prize.

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Jill Barrie

Gephyrophobia

In Memory of Patricia A. Casson

On the approach I’d note the slim

strands of steel that kept them afloat,

remember the Bay Bridge snapped

in half like a toy. Cars teetered

on the edge or dove onto the deck below.

One day, you’re driving to work,

sipping coffee, tapping the wheel,

the earth shifts and you’re left

dangling over an ocean.

Most people don’t think about this.

They have their own bridges to cross.

I remember, as a child,

our car broken down, we waited

in a lakeside tavern for two locals

with a pickup to put down their drinks.

My parents fought on about everything,

nothing. Afternoon… flickered into

evening. Then we were roaring

across the Batchellerville Bridge,

Father cursing our fate as we swung

like a pendulum at the end of a tow rope.

Mother never liked bridges.

Crossing the Thousand Islands Bridge

into Ontario, she fell like a ragdoll

to the floor of the car and stayed there.

I know bridges bring death.

The ghosts of suicides pace walkways

rethinking their last actions.

New York was where it started.

Piloting my father’s Legacy

across the Tappan Zee, poised

above the Hudson like an entrance to Oz,

I felt my apprehension grow, car

slow, till I was doing fifteen

in the middle lane. I couldn’t move

over, couldn’t speed up, trapped

in my head, in the car—like the woman

yesterday who left a pharmacy

after picking up a prescription.

She lost control, rolled her minivan

down an embankment into

a retention pond. She drowned.

Middle of the day, many people

around. I’ve been afraid of bridges.

Now I fear driving in town.

Birds ‘R Us

A raven wings by complaining

as if it had a belly ache,

a ‘pepla poses on a creosote bush,

what-sup, what-sup? what-sup?

It’s been months now since you died,

and I’ve come back to find

myself on a lone post in the desert.

On the ride from the airport,

I wrote you a poem,

now dissolved into vowels.

Gambel’s quail scurry up the wash,

forefeathers bobbing like divining rods.

A Gila woodpecker seeks cover

in an ocotillo. In the flats below, 

the gas-powered heart of the city thrums.

I’ve so far to go to get there.

The Saint

The saint that hangs from your neck—

mere brass. Better kiss the lips of a penny

than the face of an ass. Listen,

outside the giant pine squeals.

A stop sign has fallen to its knees

in laughter. Ashbirds scatter like a fire

you can’t put out, only delay.

Your saint is complacent.

He’ll do nothing

to save you. I have invited

black geese to settle

in the black lace trees

outside your window.

They will serve you

as I do, your devil                              

in paradise.

Baby

Her husband growls at Baby

who wants what he wants

just like Dad. The only thing

Baby doesn't want is purple

beets or to hear the awful NO! 

Her husband wants a baby

who doesn't want or else

who smashes desire like a bug,

if her husband wants a baby

at all. Before Baby,

he could pacify himself,

grilled steak, widescreen TV,            

getting laid in the morning.

Baby's mucked that all up.

He whines through dinner,

loses the remote control,

crows for Mom at dawn.

Her husband pines

for the day before Baby,

stomps about the house,

threatens to kick Baby

when Baby disobeys,

takes his hatred of life

to his baby-making wife.

After earning an MFA from Vermont College, Jill Barrie won first place in The Louisville Review Annual Poetry Contest. She has been a finalist in the Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award and Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in New Virginia Review, Bellingham Review, Cimarron Review, The North American Review and other publications. More recently, you can find her poems in Tar River Poetry, Italian Americana, and Flint Hills Review.

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