Selected Poems

FEMALE IMPERSONATOR
(for Sean Penn)
Karl Tierney

FUCK YOU
Hilary Melton

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ISSUE NUMBER FIVE

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ISSUE NUMBER SIX

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ISSUE NUMBER SEVEN

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ISSUE NUMBER EIGHT

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ISSUE NUMBER NINE

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ISSUE NUMBER TEN

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ISSUE NUMBER ELEVEN

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ISSUE NUMBER TWELVE

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ISSUE NUMBER THIRTEEN

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STARFISH

If a starfish
Loses an arm
It grows another

Places a shell gently
At the bottom of a hole in the sand
Close to the surf

The sand is wet
And filled with life
Filled back over with sand

This morning I noticed you
Across the boardwalk
Briskly walking

My father died
I saw him everywhere for months
Now only once in a while

Uncle Leo
I spotted just the other day at the market
Fingering a can of tuna

Last time I saw him alive
It was Malka’s funeral
Uncle Leo looks like a chipmunk, you whispered

We held our giggles—
A couple of school kids
Watching the bigkids doing it

Under the boardwalk
In the parking lot
Back of the market

Uncle Leo looks like a chipmunk

But it is just the cancer
Changed him
Filled his cheeks with mushrooms

Crushed gray hat
Frayed sweater
Unraveling since the day Aunt Sylvia died the summer before

Late afternoons
A doe came softly into the meadow to feed
Wary we held our breath

After the service
We name the doe Aunt Sylvia

That afternoon Aunt Sylvia does not come to the meadow
Nor the next
The doe never returns

We broke camp and drove
To the sea
The way you were walking
You were running
From everywhere
We have ever been together

A shell placed gently
At the bottom of a hole in the sand
Close to the surf

Arm and arm
We stroll the boards
All the while you are somebody else
Briskly walking
Without me

The shell will grow
Into a clam again
Time to cross the sand

Allen Brafman