The golden kings came for her money. She said, But I have none. She’d long spent her coins on the road
that wound west of the sea.
Somewhere she lost the old cloak the north wind wrapped around her,
so the kings tracked her trek through the foothills and over the cliffs.
For too long she’d paid for the kings’ gilded hallways and parlors.
For too long she’d honored their laws, laws that kept her from love.
So she fled to the south, to the Aunt whose nine women ruled with her,
where the bakers and seamstresses thrived, where she kissed whom she wished.
When the golden kings came for her money, she said, But it’s mine now.
Your year is ending, she told them. The ocean unfolded.
~ Joshua Davis
Joshua Davis holds MFAs from the University of Southern Maine and from the University of Mississippi. He earned an M.A. in English at Pittsburg State University. Recent poems have appeared in The Midwest Quarterly, Monster Verse, and Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters.
Guest Editor Lori Baker Martin is assistant professor of English at Pittsburg State University. She’s had both poetry and fiction published in magazines like Prick of the Spindle, The MacGuffin, (parenthetical), The Little Balkans Review, Maine Review, Room Magazine, Grass Limb, The Knicknackery, words (on pages), Midwest Quarterly, Kansas Time + Place, and in 150 Kansas Poets. Martin has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa, Independence Community College, and Pittsburg State University. She has worked as a reader for both The Iowa Review and NPR. She is a founding member of the Astra Arts Festival in Independence, KS and was director of the visiting writers’ series at ICC. Martin has been awarded for her work in The Cincinnati Review and Kansas Voices. She is a graduate of Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 