Salvage by Anne Graue

My knuckles are bloody
scraped from [harsh] [washing]
every twenty minutes
[for] [twenty] [seconds]. My
[toes] are numb and [stab] [me]
[with] [needles] and I think it’s
[a] [rash] on my skin
that [isn’t] [there]. My
[caged] [vertebrae] pull
and [push me] in and out of rooms
[where] [pain] [sits] [grinning]
with that know-it-all
 
look we all know when
we see it. It says, I’m going
nowhere, and I ruin all things,
and Watch me. My
head throbs [for] [lack] [of]
[caffeine] or is it stress? More
than likely, since [withdrawal] would’ve
[happened] [weeks] [ago]. My
breathing is regulated
for [sleep]. My
face [is] marred with [age]. My
face sees its own ruddiness
[and] seeks [relief]. My
[eyes] [stare] [into] distance. My
blood pulses with [each] [moon].

Anne Graue’s work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies both online and in print. The author of Full and Plum-Colored Velvet, (Woodley Press, 2020) and Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), she lives in the lower Hudson Valley of New York with her husband and two daughters.

Editor-in-Chief Laura Lee Washburn is a University Professor, the Director of Creative Writing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, and the author of This Good Warm Place: 10^thAnniversary Expanded Edition (March Street) and Watching the Contortionists (Palanquin Chapbook Prize).  Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Carolina Quarterly, Ninth Letter, The Sun, Red Rock Review, and Valparaiso Review.  Harbor Review‘s micro-chap prize is named in her honor.

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Spinal Fusion by Anne Graue

The entire earth is covered with uneven surfaces
and puddles. Pain travels an endless loop from toes
to calf to ankle in spherical tantrums. Anti-inflammatories
give the impression of gentle floating above
blooming hibiscus, and Zoysia grass carpets
a circular patch of yard, ghosting the flowers,
wanting nothing more to do with them. Armadillo
blood changed the soil’s composition to gray dust,
their armor disintegrated in spite of evolution. The fifth
lumbar disc governs all of the anxious neurons
in the legs, and the second toe of the left foot moves
independently without a sound. Many years have passed
since wild giraffes were commonplace—I remember
them to forget who I am now. The earth’s crust rises
up, meets the horizon’s window, ignores the pane
of glass at the edge, turning all things magic.

Anne Graue’s work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies both online and in print. The author of Full and Plum-Colored Velvet, (Woodley Press, 2020) and Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), she lives in the lower Hudson Valley of New York with her husband and two daughters.

Guest Editor Katelyn Roth graduated from Pittsburg State University with her Master’s in poetry. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives, works, and writes in Kansas City.

Night Swimming at Tuttle Creek by Anne Graue

I remember that night. I couldn’t grasp my thoughts quickly enough to stop things from happening. You acted as if being with me were a sideline to the real work of blues guitar licks and buddies you were focused on like someone with a work ethic that wouldn’t let you stop, be with me only, see yourself from inside, not through the eyes of other guys. Giving in to me was giving up. In the water, the brother of your friend, kisses in water, the flash of a foot on a thigh, an arm brushing an arm in weightless water so it didn’t feel like touching—in water nothing matters. Later on the warm car’s hood—no touching, only talk—I didn’t know where you were, where you’d gone, or where you’d been.  
 

Anne Graue’s work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies both online and in print. The author of Full and Plum-Colored Velvet, (Woodley Press, 2020) and Fig Tree in Winter (Dancing Girl Press, 2017), she lives in the lower Hudson Valley of New York with her husband and two daughters.

Guest Editor Lori Martin is associate 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), Room Magazine, Grass Limb, The Knicknackery, The Maine Review and upcoming in The Tampa Review.  Martin is poetry editor for The Midwest Quarterly.