My Body Is a Commons by Cameron Morse

A third welt now appearing 
whitely in my tender 
forearm—commonplace, 
 
what place could be 
more common than this?
In a welter of limbs, 
 
my blood is lifted 
into flight. In a welter
of arms, the mosquito 
 
recruits a donor. She turns 
the iron and protein into eggs
and lays them on the face 
 
of the water. Unwell, 
or unwelcome, I mill about 
in shadow. I mail my Valentines 
 
to nobody. Leave my bloody 
tracks in the snow, a trail 
of swatted mosquitoes. 

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 latest is The Thing Is (Briar Creek Press, 2021).

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.

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Nothing Is Final by Cameron Morse

Not even the body,
porthole we
peek through,
portal. My body is
a frame. I am framed
 
for my own murder.
Was I a suicide?
Was me like that, too?
Were you? All the things
we learned from
 
exposed in the sultry
stillness. Midsummer,
a squirrel twirls our green
apples in its dainty
claws, gnaws and drops
 
our apples with a thud:
Everything we taught
was wrong, pole-vaulted. 
Skunked, skyward,
skull. The list goes on.
 
The body stays
to be fed on
by what it loves, the ants
and the mold we’re
molded by.

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 latest is The Thing Is (Briar Creek Press, 2021).

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.

The Coincidence by Cameron Morse

Just an instant
of unobstructed sunset
grabs the surprise
 
downfall by the shoulders,
silvering rain
with the dregs of day
 
light before
a cloud occludes
the wound I am wound by,
 
wound up and released
from the kitchen
just in time
 
to catch a glimpse of this
coincidence.
A glimpse is all I get.
 
The rain angles away
from the sliding door
I'm backed by, reflected in,
 
though no one sees this.
No one sees me
out here
 
in my ratty pajamas.

Cameron Morse is Senior Reviews editor at Harbor Review and the author of six collections of poetry. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His latest is Far Other (Woodley Press, 2020). He holds and MFA from the University of Kansas City—Missouri and lives in Independence, Missouri, with his wife Lili and two children. For more information, check out his Facebook page or website.  

Guest Editor James Benger is the author of two fiction ebooks, and three chapbooks, two full-lengths, and coauthor of four split books of poetry. He is on the Board of Directors of The Writers Place and the Riverfront Readings Committee, and is the founder of the 365 Poems In 365 Days online workshop, and is Editor In Chief of the subsequent anthology series. He lives in Kansas City with his wife and children.

Kiddie Pool Baptismal — by Cameron Morse

My feet dunked, I float
my Crocs, nurse

the spilt in my head
with trips to the spigot.

Heal me, sweet
mother, if you think

I’m worth it. Bless
the inventor

of water and one more
way to withstand

the summer.
Jungle cat rugs

of heat piled plush
on my chest,

I pluck off my T-shirt
and squeeze

rainbows out of a spray-bottle.
Theo empties cups

over my kneecaps, raising
the dark waterline

of soaked denim.
The more I resist the pastoral,

the greater
my urge to pastor.

 

This poem first appeared in The Gravity of the Thing.

 

Cameron Morse lives with his wife Lili and son Theodore in Blue Springs, Missouri. His first collection, Fall Risk, won Glass Lyre Press’s 2018 Best Book Award. His second, Father Me Again, is available from Spartan Press. Chapbook Coming Home with Cancer is forthcoming in Blue Lyra Press’s Delphi Poetry Series.

April Editor Roy Beckemeyer‘s latest book is Mouth Brimming Over (2019, Blue Cedar Press).