Here is the sign of the mockingbird—insight, a story of failed devotion. Here is the sign of the poorwill—midnight oratorio, a tale of emotion. Here you entwine her sorrow into your daily, your weekly routine. Here you consign tomorrow to correct failings, be the go-between. Here you resign to borrow, to go off the rails, do the unforeseen. Here is the sign the scales of this court leave justice preempted, torn apart, disjoint. Here the sign of failure and discord leaves just this: empty worn-out heart, disappointment.
Roy J. Beckemeyer’s latest book is Mouth Brimming Over (Blue Cedar). Stage Whispers (Meadowlark) won the 2019 Nelson Poetry Book Award. Amanuensis Angel (Spartan Press) contains ekphrastic poems inspired by artists’ depictions of angels. Music I Once Could Dance To (Coal City) was a 2015 Kansas Notable Book. Beckemeyer has designed and built airplanes, discovered and named fossils of Palaeozoic insect species and has once traveled the world. Beckemeyer lives with and for his wife of 60 years, Pat, in Wichita, Kansas.
Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10th Anniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize). Her poetry has appeared in such journals as TheNewVerse.News, Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, and Valparaiso Review. Harbor Review’s microchap prize is named in her honor.
The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative 