A Poem by Laura Washburn

Self-Portrait in First Grade

Lucky child, we have been dreams together
with eyes bright as birthstone sapphires.
When we clasped hands in the white
muff, the rabbit’s fur sold us on its pleasure.

I was like nothing then I would ever be again.
The caterpillar I portrayed in kindergarten
in dyed green Keds was going to transform
into a bookish woman, at least that segment
connected to my feet. I know some
legs and arms went military or complacent,
took drugs, cancer-died, built machines.

We were the child the neighbors came
to take pictures of at the bus stop, blond-eyed
and blue or however that goes, perfected 
in purple gingham like any mother’s favorite doll.
Did I mention patent leather?

This isn’t a brag, the hair and eyes,
the dress, the absolute black shoes
are symbols. Was I even there to wear them?

Imagine being welcomed like that child,
imagine her fear of entering the yellow bus alone,
imagine the flash of the portrait,
the not-yellow of her teeth, the blue bus number
pinned to the frilled pinafore. 

I would like human frailty to amuse me;
I would like to stop her constant
disappointment. I am like the dog
who can’t stop biting at the flea, the one
whose skin welts up, the one who bleeds
from the actions of his own nails and teeth.

The child is going into the halls where one boy
always gets in trouble, where the teachers
rip off his cap to find his father 
shaved him bald, where skin colors
don’t match and all hair doesn’t hang straight,
where she finds meanesses are cultivated,
where she learns to read the first word,
where in small chairs they strain to say it:
I, I, I.

This poem will appear in our Editor-in-Chief’s new collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark Books, 2023).

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 chapbook prize is named in her honor. The Book of Stolen Images is in the publisher’s hands today and can be purchased from Meadowlark Books.

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One Poem by Robert Manaster

Cream-n-Green
 
Whereas, in front of the flowering dogwood entrance of that mobile homes park, the city owns an acre to sell; and
 
whereas, the planning commission has passed on its case to the city council; and
 
whereas, the requested rezoning reaffirms the city's into-the-city corridor plan, as amended; and
 
whereas, this landscape at the outskirts is neither prairie, farming, home, nor business; rather, it's like soda spilt on the dashboard, the can long since gone; and
 
whereas, the city and W__ Family Trust jointly marketed a 3-acre buffer along Lincoln Avenue to embed business, which would have tucked the park safely away; and
 
whereas, the city requested proposals in regional papers (without council approval) to redevelop the Lincoln Mobile Homes Park; and
 
whereas, this project is as senselessly sensible as an auto accident driven in the mind over and over: waves of AM Limbaugh drifting into and out of the swerves and over-corrections on the black-ice course of a curve; and
 
whereas, the Owner can close said park without city approval; and
 
whereas, in Ordinance 9697-22, the city ordained Caprock Corp. as developer, dependent upon resolving relocation for residents; and
 
whereas, the parties agree Caprock has agreed to pay off $500 to occupants of each trailer towed off; and
 
whereas, Caprock will build and maintain The Caprock Commons, a luxury student housing site, with their "cream-n-green" signature design; and
 
whereas, private deals take on the interior odor of a new car; and behind closed doors, there's a wish to move on and over like the drive in these interruptions, like the census taken when no one answers the hard knocks, and so on; and
 
whereas, the city has agreed to spend $150,000 to build a bike path to relieve traffic along Lincoln; and
 
whereas, access from Goodwin Street (the other side) will now be closed-off and an emergency access crash gate will be put up so privacy will be assured and so surrounding African-American neighborhoods will not be disrupted; and
 
whereas, Caprock has cited in their site plan that they save lots and lots of trees; and
 
whereas, the City Arborist recommends decorative fencing along the Goodwin side; and
 
whereas, the Federal Fair Housing Act directly conflicts with Caprock's "most important and strictly enforced rule:" One student per bedroom — which is now viewed strictly as a guideline for marketing purposes; and
 
whereas, more student housing is unneeded for the University except for the more luxurious kind, as stated in Caprock's marketing study and implied in their status elsewhere;
 
now therefore, be it ordained by the city council of the City of U__, Illinois, as follows:
 
        	that we shall collect a great amount of tax
        	dollars from The Caprock Commons;
        	that we shall transfer certain citizens
(and non-citizens), reconstituting
their home, and for now, only
for now, put off permanent
                housing needs — all for the greater good.

Robert Manaster’s poetry has appeared in numerous journals including Birmingham Poetry Review, Image, Maine Review, Into the Void, and Spillway. His co-translation of Ronny Someck’s The Milk Underground was awarded the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation.

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 chapbook prize is named in her honor. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.

One Poem by Dan Lau

Stupid Fucking Beauty

Add a few lines

against the shawl’s knitting.

Safer to attend to details.

Safer to comprehend loss.

Analyze your risks

when you open

your mouth. See

that deviled line flair

when the tongue does

what it does. Even in the night

your shadow finds the luxury

of a caesura – the weight

of attending to yet absent from

The experience. So, I kiss you

and tell you all the things that

assault me when

I want,             when

I consult possibility.

That fucking blender,

your fucking hand,

electric cars, permaculture,

each green fig

plumping on the branch

owning the potential

of sweetness,

daring the proliferation

of an idea. Fucking fruit.

Shitty little promises

concentric in their red bed.

Stupid books that tell me about

the many ways sadness

can permeate a core.

Even in the metaphor

when I imagine those

precious little radicles

struggle from casing

to root,            I hate it

because of the margins

where I see them fail.

Stupid little life.

Stupid fucking beauty.

Now, what can I imagine

for tomorrow, but you.

Dan Lau is a Chinese American poet. A Kundiman fellow, he is the recipient of scholarships and grants from The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Queer Cultural Center, and San Francisco Arts Commission. His poems have been published in Colorado Review, Bellingham Review, The Margins, Poem-a-Day, The Baffler and others. He resides on the unceded territory of the Ramaytush Ohlone, also known as San Francisco. (Photo by Bethanie Hines)

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 chapbook prize is named in her honor. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.

Three Poems by Katherine D. Perry

Upon Watching Notre Dame Burn
 
I stood where Quasimodo rang his bells,
looked through painted glass like everyone else
for hundreds of years. We rode dinner boats
 
on the Seine to see the buttresses fly,
to wonder at Parisian medieval
Gothic architecture, ribbed vaulting, stone.
 
In the revolution, much was destroyed,
and now, as careless democracies fall,
again, a spark lights; the whole tinderbox
 
explodes, and structures collapse into ash.
It’s time for another change, but it is
devastating to watch history burn.

Astrophysical Singularity
“…the block of stone can't be is because it never can 
become was because it can't ever die or perish…”
                          –William Faulkner,  Absalom! Absalom!
 
I am.
What           	was
before          	what            	is?
 
Ocean: heart beats a rising tide, awareness perceives liquid glass surface, reflecting light.
Sky: atmosphere runs through hurricanes and windless nights;
Spark: energy creating.
 
Earth:  unfathomed particles fall, attract, force, push.
 
It is not only because we think.
It is not only because your atoms smash into mine.
We are also matter and energy that is a black hole:
 
question marks at the beginning and end,
a place before language that needs marking.
Maybe god is a placeholder, a __________
 
Remove the verb of being,
remove existence: dipping below the surface.
Without is,              	what?
 
Without golden light, without sapphire ocean,
without star strewn sky, how is poetry?
But something sparks from nothing.             
Some new universe begins to be.

Undistinguished Miraculous

Our star is middle-aged and yellow.
The Milky Way galaxy, spiral and midsized,
sits in the middle of the Local Group 

in the edge of the Virgo Supercluster, 
not the center of our universe, not special
or even interesting, by astronomical standards. 

Even if you are famous today,
what of the next thousand years? 
The next million?

The body turned creator pushes 
new life out into the universe. 
That baby is just as miraculous as every other baby, 
 
two hundred fifty-five born every minute, 
three hundred fifty-three thousand born every day. 
Our ordinariness is our bond. 

We were created, 
moving against entropy,
and we have only a flash of time

to make 
a life 
a light. 

Katherine D. Perry is a Professor of English at Perimeter College of Georgia State University. Her poetry is published in many journals, and her first volume, Long Alabama Summer, was released in December 2017. She also co-founded the GSU Prison Education Project, which teaches courses in prisons.

This selection was selected by editors Laura Lee Washburn and Morgan O.H. McCune.

Three Poems by Cameron Morse

Hellraiser

 Scrawny infant squawking daughter
unswaddled for the car seat
in a more winter than spring rain,
welcome to the world, hellraiser.
March is bipolar in Missouri. Welcome
to this corner of the world. Here is
my thumb. You cannot seem to locate
your own. Let’s do something about those
maniacally flapping hands, those 
dagger-length fingernails. What a nuisance
it is to be born. Regurgitated on dry land.
Exposed to the elements. Let’s adjust
the thermostat. Sandwich the breast.
Get some meat on those bones.  

I Live in the Woods

It's the woods. These streets strung above I-70 are no neighborhood: They have no name. The trees out here in the dark are older than toothpick houses. Denser in their darkness than any porch light. Early morning resounds with cricket orchestration, the long intermittent hiss of a cicada. Backtrack to the blubbery soon-to-be extinct spectral motors of the interstate. This is the age of insects, Gould says, so I start a bug collection. I scoop the iridescent dead from our kiddie pool with a Walmart pill bottle: a Japanese beetle. I have to explain to Theo the exoskeleton of the cicada latched onto the A-frame of his swing set is just a shell, it's not alive, and pick it off myself. I find a dead cicada for display and seal it in the orange tube. Peel the label that says Keppra that says Bactrim that says Methylprednisolone that leaves a sticky little residue. 

Tree, House

The reach for love is the branch 
in my apple tree that is barely touching the eaves. 
There is a thin and fragile part 
of my heart that is always barely touching.
 
An apple tree opening endlessly 
unto the house brings its chimneys 
into the shady auspice of leaves
but let the roots rub up against a cracked 
foundation and they chafe. Mostly 

I just settle into the earth and sprout more
cracks, more spider veins for the rain 
to bleed through, I seep into the soil 
the sound sleep of the soil packed around my cracks. 

Cameron Morse is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and the author of eight collections of poetry. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His collection of unrhymed sonnets, Sonnetizer, is forthcoming from Kelsay Books.

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 chapbook prize is named in her honor. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.

One Poem by Jen Karetnick

(To) Life
        	 A beautiful outlaw sonnet for Congregation Beth Israel
 
 
and its exigencies. Funny how quickly they
zoom away, the background of an overcast day,
when faced with injustice, bigotry, the discrete death
that’s out of sync with the media’s superior fresh
 
take of the week. A quartet of Jews held hostage
at Shabbat by the usual zealot doesn’t even warrant a spot
on the news or front page. Extraneous people,
we only count when we plummet as apples
 
to lay split open on the ground, seeds like avant-garde jewels
to steal. In this not-quite tragedy, no one rushes the shul.
While the world rationalizes, the rabbi logjams
the gunman, throws a chair, and exits like Abraham,
 
cognizant of his hack ninja-training qualifications. Following, no probing analysis.
No axioms. And naturally, no Instagram accounts with hashtags going viral, abuzz.

Jen Karetnick‘s fourth full-length book is The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, September 2020), a CIPA EVVY winner, an Eric Hoffer Poetry Category Finalist, and a Kops Fetherling Honorable Mention. She is also the author of Hunger Until It’s Pain (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming spring 2023). Co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, she has had work recently or forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Cutthroat, DIAGRAM, Jet Fuel Review, Notre Dame Review, The Penn Review, Terrain.org, and elsewhere.

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 chapbook prize is named in her honor. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.

Two Poems by Megan Munger

Ars Poetica: Resuscitation 
“Not everything that is faced can be changed,
 but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin     
 
 
I. 
 
The door is iron, old, too heavy. We
have chicken for dinner, rip flesh from bone.
I am asked if I want a Coke. I decline,
get one anyway. Somewhere there
is strawberry cheesecake.
We don’t work on his English essay.
 
Afterward, Dad comes to get me. Dad
takes me home from this
friend’s house. I’m fifteen. 
I let the night sky engulf me.
I know I’m afraid of touch.
I don’t tell Dad I’ve been raped. I’m not sure.
 
II. 
 
I’m obsessed with writers’ names  	Frost Plath Sexton
Whitman Eliot Woolf
 
                  	I haven’t read them yet
 
Frost Plath Sexton Whitman Eliot Woolf
Their names rescue me, on repeat in my head
Frost Plath Sexton Whitman Eliot Woolf
while he tears me.
 	Frost Plath Sexton Whitman Eliot Woolf
 
I burn. He unbuttons my jeans,
his knuckles too hard, too hot against my belly.
A nauseous knot forms when air,
then his hand, hits my hipbone. I shut my eyes,
hold my breath, shake my head side to side,
protest. This fire is a fight I cannot win.
 
It will all be over soon.
It will all be over
 
soon. He moves me. I open my eyes enough
to see the blossomed tree through the window,
 
too early in February. I watch
the wind blow the leaves outside,
hear him tell me, Everything is okay. You want this.
Everything is okay.
You want this. You want this.
 
Blood bubbles out of me in the bathroom—
no,
 	I didn’t want this.
I run hot water on my hands.
I don’t want any of this.
 
At the top of the staircase, I compose myself. I call Dad,
careful. I wait in the dark square space. I count
the fifteen descending steps until Dad arrives.
I don’t tell him. I don’t tell.

Fishing
 
The rising silver sun simplifies time
as I watch a widowed wave hike
across a middle-of-nowhere pond.
The fishing line sways in the slow
breeze. I hold my blue Shakespeare rod
in front, antenna-like. The orange bobber
floats out as far as my arm can throw. 
 
I stand in wait, and sometimes crouch
when my legs tire. I wish for the chair I left
back at the truck. The bobber goes down quick,
close to the bank. I reel with adrenaline, then
pull up to jam a hook through fish flesh. I
catch and release largemouth bass and perch,
I baited with minnows. Fishing, I wake up slow
 
with chirping crickets. The bullfrog’s echo
bounces off the trees, teaches my voice
how shouts into stillness will ripple.

Megan Munger is a Kansas poet. She received her M.A. and B.S.Ed. in English from Pittsburg State University, and she currently resides in Junction City, KS, where she teaches English at Junction City High School. This is amongst her first national publications.

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 chapbook prize is named in her honor. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.

One Poem by Lannie Stabile

 Just Emailed an Estate Lawyer Regarding My Mother’s Will Using the Subject Line “I Really Don’t Know What to Title This” 

Subject: Deceased Mother

Probate for Deceased Mother

I Need a Probate Lawyer

Help, My Mother Is Dead

I am the estranged and grieving daughter writing on behalf of my manic-depressive mother, who spent 62 years slowly piecing herself out died this past Wednesday evening, alone. She named me executor of her will, and I’m hoping you and I can discuss rates, process, and my abandonment of her expectations. To be honest, I am at a loss on how to proceed with all this guilt the things she left behind: Great-grandchildren, a son, and a daughter who will never again see the crinkle of kind, misguided blue eyes. I understand her assets may be placed in probate to feed the satisfy creditors. After all, my mother had a lot of heart debt. 

As I am currently on overdrive to ignore the pain bereavement for the next five days, meeting this week would be excruciating preferable. Please reply with your availability, and I will shower, brush my hair, and force myself do my best to meet it. 

I appreciate any and all help you can provide during this difficult and confusing torture time.

Lannie Stabile (she/her) is the author of Good Morning to Everyone Except Men Who Name Their Dogs Zeus, out with Cephalopress. She is also a back-to-back finalist for the Glass Chapbook Series and back-to-back semifinalist for the Button Poetry Contest. Find her on Twitter @LannieStabile.

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 chapbook prize is named in her honor. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.

One Poem by Nathalie Kuroiwa-Lewis

The Chicxulub Event
 
When walking the way
your feet splashing in the water
think of fires blowing everywhere
and how the first dinosaurs fell in rivers of orange
crashing in the waves.
 
Consider then the maniraptoran:
dreaming of the ground,
shaking,
crouching
in a tight ball,
feeling the wind
ripple against her feathers,
 
as she managed to survive all that heat and radiation
coming down.
 
A trick of the gene,
a flash in the mind
 
of something
 
possible.

Nathalie Kuroiwa-Lewis is a Professor of English at Saint Martin’s University, a private, Benedictine liberal arts university located in the Pacific Northwest.  Her poems have been published in periodicals such as The Madrona Project, The Wild Word, and The Tiger Moth Review, among others. She currently lives in Olympia, Washington.

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 chapbook prize is named in her honor. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.

Three Poems by P. Christine

Hope #2 (out of order)

If it is going to end - this is how I dream it - not with a bang - nor a whimper - it ends in long drawn out fears of neighbors - infiltrators - hate-mongers - they win - this is how I dream it - a dog lacks the timidness of a cockroach running from the light - the roach is the devil - the small, scary unacceptable presence - it permanently lurks - poison fills the air to destroy it - it survives - forever - breaches walls of fortresses - the diner of a campground - school cafeterias - evil is everywhere hope denies - and I watch - thinking this is how it ends - a build-up to a finale no one sees coming - hope denies it - but I am hopeless.

I Am Striving
 
I am striving to glimpse the greatest sunset.
I am striving to comprehend time.
Why it is backwards -
Why there is so much hurt to remember,
Happiness to forget.

I am striving to understand a world
Countlessly more complicated than
Numeric formulations unraveling universal laws.
I am striving to overcome challenges.
I am striving to be considered
Alongside all society’s throw-aways.
 
I am striving to avoid murderous
AR-15’s pointing toward my home,
My neighborhood, my community.
I am striving to find an honest politician.
I am striving to avoid unbearable heat
Which kills summer // begs winter’s return.
 
I am striving to stay afloat
In a world of inflation and fixed incomes.
I am striving to make a difference
Speaking to the deaf, writing to the blind.
I am striving to walk forward
Within backward cities and suburbs.
 
I am striving to avoid my plastered saint
With a belly of piety and pretense.
I am striving for sanity
In a mediated world.
I am striving for honesty,
Hiding words not fit for truth.
 
I am striving to be kind to my neighbors
As their dog pees on my lawn.
I am striving to understand
Forces of nature versus forces of humans.
I am striving to be blessed
In a world forsaken.

I am striving for
What I cannot remember -
What I cannot forget.
What I cannot find -
What I cannot lose.

The Pendulum

Society is tilting,
As my mother’s world tilted,
As her brain deflated
Devoured by cancer.
The slightest movement and she tilted.

The earth tilts every 41,000 years.
Wobbles back and forth,
A bit to one side,
Until it tilts back -
Blue marble rolling to and fro. 

Society tilts.
Eggs burn too hot in the pan.
Jerks like earthquakes,
Cracks in solid concrete.

Jupiter eats planets -
Apparently lots of them
As if Jupiter is alive and earth malnourished.

Perhaps it is true -
We cannot balance the pendulum of peace,
Of harmony,
Of consideration,
Of love,
Of respect.

Lost on humanity
Now and forever.

Pendulums swing -
Doors open and close.
Wait patiently for new guests
Who have swallowed their words -
Waiting for the earth to tilt,
A door to open,
A sway to jerk,
Welcoming them in.

One good, the other evil.
The bells toll,
Cracked and sour,
For those in power did not consider
The righteousness of those clashing the bells.

P.Christine is a handi-capable, lesbian poet. Born in California, she currently resides in the suburbs of Chicago. Her poetry evokes emotions about loss, philosophy and social justice. She has been published in rez Magazine and The Fib Review. She is the recipient of two Sparta Open Mic awards.

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 chapbook prize is named in her honor. She expects her next collection, The Book of Stolen Images (Meadowlark) to be out in a few months.