Two Poems by Katelyn Roth

At the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

When I take her daughter
onto my hip in the Egypt room, 
my cousin says babies are the best 
tour guides if we will only follow
their eyes to the dizzying
spread of ceiling tiles, thin,
needle-sharp arms of lights
straining to us, the nearby slope of
some woman’s neck, the warmth
in her pale hands. And in the 
gift shop, a tiny water wheel
turns and turns and turns. Her baby rejects
my two offered fingers in favor of her own
palm. She is everything she needs.

Mass Shooting

i go to Lucille
Clifton again, to 
“the times.” on my bed
in a chiffon dress, soft
to the floor, i eat
chocolate-covered
pomegranate.
the body 
can feel good things
too. we can make
a home here.
ear buds without music
muffle even the
silence. i am
so full and so hungry.
i eat in the bath.
i almost text
my ex. i am 
lonelier
than i can ever remember
feeling.
i collage. i want
to finish, push, 
make something. so I 
make myself 
stop. feelings
just have
to be felt.
it is hard to remain human
but we are, and 
i am.

Assistant Editor Katelyn Roth has a master’s in poetry from Pittsburg State University in Kansas. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press, in Apeiron Review, and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives in Columbus, Ohio where she is an MFA candidate at Ohio State University.

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A Poem by Katelyn Roth

I drive to the city

to a park, which are different
in the city (city park), and sit
in sun that only looks warm
(because sometimes
things only look warm), and the guy
in the offroader next to me
gets a beer from his trunk
after a while and we sit
side-by-side in our cars, not acknowledging
each other, him drinking his beer
in a ballcap, me nursing a new album
on the radio, and the couple in the long grass 
just ahead
is kicking a soccer ball
and trying cartwheels. I feel
as if there is nothing
I could more reasonably be doing
than watching the thin cat hunched
on the treacherous side of the railing 
of a balcony across the street. 
(I can’t know this,
but at home, my dog is yowling
at every pass of the neighbors
overhead. Who isn’t yowling
at things passing just overhead?)
You will ask which songs on this
new album were my favorite—always 
the saddest ones. I wish I could connect
over easy, simple, human things, like the beer,
like the ballcap, like a soccer ball
and the sharp coolness of the grass
under-palm as I circle myself over it,
but the saddest songs are my favorites,
it must be agony and nothing else, and his beer
must be a sad beer, and his cap must be
to hide his tired eyes, and the couple must be
on their last attempt to reconcile, and
the cartwheels must be a frenzied swipe
at what is always just overhead.

Assistant Editor Katelyn Roth has a master’s in poetry from Pittsburg State University in Kansas. Her work has previously appeared online at Silver Birch Press, in Apeiron Review, and at Heartland: Poems of Love, Resistance, and Solidarity. Currently, she lives in Columbus, Ohio where she is an MFA candidate at Ohio State University.

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.

One Day at a Time by Patricia Miller

Today, I wear my orange dress.
Not apricot or fuzzy peach, but Chevy
engine orange, ski hat orange
Nike shoe orange. Look-at-me-Orange.
 
Today, I feel you beside me,
The chattering squirrel your voice,
your hand the baby beagle’s paw.
Today, I wear an orange dress
 
I smile at strangers on the street.
Skip when no one is looking.
Not happy about, simply happy,
watch robins eat worms. Happy.
 
You laugh at me. You laugh with me,
we are in love. Goo-goo-eyed-first love
Steadfast I’m-here-with-you-love. 
Old married you're-still-the-one-love.
 
Today, I wear my orange dress

Patricia Miller began writing poetry to find perspective during a difficult transition. Poetry is now her go-to-way when seeking to understand the incomprehensible. She graduated from University of Saint Mary (Saint Mary College), Leavenworth and resides in Mission Kansas. She was recently published in Months to Years.

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.

Discovering a New Painter by Michael Lasater

His work is what a shout might look like, 
        	shattered
into a thousand syllables. 
 
He is intense, our artist –
everything is urgent. 
 
Brush strokes explode in bold italics –
        	colors rush downstage,
boisterous characters
                    	piling up
                                	at the proscenium’s edge.
 
You can’t catch your breath.
 
Walk away. 
 
        	Anywhere in the room
he follows, taps you on the shoulder –
still something on his mind – still
        	                 	   something to say.

Hutchinson native Michael Lasater is Professor of New Media at Indiana University South Bend.  He has published in Kansas Time + Place, Heartland!, Cathexis Northwest Press, and The Heartland Review, where he is the winner of the 2019 Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize.  See his work in art at www.michaellasater.net.

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.

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.

Yesterday in Therapy by Kayla McCollough

I.
Yesterday the cool wet kiss
of the cool wet rain was a surprising
comfort. The months had been filled
with too much sun. Sitting in front
of my therapist, I said, “I feel great.”
I smiled like I meant it. I think 
I meant it. She said, “You should be
proud. Look at all you’ve accomplished.”

Such unbelievably positive feedback—
I cried. My therapist asked, “What
are you feeling?” Isn’t that
always the therapist question?
What was I feeling? Something
like happiness, something
like relief. I didn’t know
that foreign choking, but the tears
I knew—a similar hot to all the other
times I cried because I felt ugly
or worthless or lost. No—something
like happiness. Something. 

II.
Today, I try to soak out the heavy dread,
and I don’t care that the tub is cold
and the bubbles have flattened. 
The wine I sip is too dry and stale, heavy
on my tongue, bitter. I don’t care
that my muscles protest the cold water. 
They clench and tremble, skin paling blue.
I am too heavy to move. 
The candle is falling dim. The dark
is creeping in. I can’t feel my heart.
It is not my heart.

Yesterday’s heart was squeezed by a miracle
of self-love. I want that heart, that healthy
beating heart. But now I don’t care
that I haven’t reached for the shampoo.
Ten cold minutes and I can’t even think
of the razor. Not that I would—I wish I could.
I wish I could do something but sit heavy
in this pitiless water. I wish I could vomit 
this sick stomach. I wish this wine was turpentine. 
I could see something then—see something come
from me: some action. Not these damn words, this suffocating
silence. I wish that blood and that laugh was my laugh.
I wish that heart in yesterday was sometimes my heart.

Kayla McCollough graduated from PSU in May 2020 with an MA in English. She often writes introspective poems that explore emotions and the daily struggles with anxiety. Sometimes these poems turn into songs. In her spare time, Kayla cares for plants and creates macrame and embroidery projects. When it’s warm, she’s outside soaking up the sun and enjoying birds or other creatures.

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.

My Red-Bellied Woodpecker by Kayla McCollough

She lives in my dorsal cavity, flitting
between vertebrae and brain. In humid
air, her strong wings beat past blood
and bone and thoughts. She packs

my brain wrinkles with small treasures:
glossy photos and her favorite colors, 
emerald and honey yellow. Sometimes
she perches on the spongy walls and sings

a small guttural song, kwirr kwirr churr—
her favorite—but when she’s lonely,
a throaty, crying cough, cha cha cha.
She feeds on termite words, sad

berries, and hard nutshells, jams them
into any crook and crack crack cracks them
back into manageable pieces. 

Kayla McCollough graduated from PSU in May 2020 with an MA in English. She often writes introspective poems that explore emotions and the daily struggles with anxiety. Sometimes these poems turn into songs. In her spare time, Kayla cares for plants and creates macrame and embroidery projects. When it’s warm, she’s outside soaking up the sun and enjoying birds or other creatures. 

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.

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.

Influence: Monday by Merridawn Duckler

Now in the spirit of that
which is not my spirit
I call the snow.
 
To build up a new landscape, old on top of old.
 
The contours show
levels in sediment
at each melted touch.
 
Light disguises one mountain under another.
 
Frozen air falls in small, bright pieces
on the dark and mossy deck.
We watch what falls, not what lands.
 
By the time we awakened,
it had been here for a long while,
History is silent
and has already arrived.

Merridawn Duckler is a writer from Oregon, author of INTERSTATE (dancing girl press) and IDIOM (Washburn Prize, Harbor Review.) New work in Seneca Review, Women’s Review of Books, Interim, Posit. Fellowships/awards: Yaddo, Southampton Poetry Conference, Poets on the Coast. She’s an editor at Narrative and at the philosophy journal Evental Aesthetics.  

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.