Special FeatureJoanna ValenteMaximilian Heinegg, poetry, special feature

Maximilian Heinegg: Believe Our Ashes

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteMaximilian Heinegg, poetry, special feature
Maximilian Heinegg: Believe Our Ashes
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Cathedral

 

Florence, the blasted speakers I skimped on

distorted & I heard waves

instead of where    you cannot breathe, the ocean

a lover who never wanted to hear any prayer   

save its own.

 

As I drive in, your echo but an octave lower, I’m pulled

the way I imagine faith could be

followed, the way my love beckons

me into water where she’s assured, & I come to

 

believe our ashes will stay, here where she tells me

to pour them, if I have to hold their strange exhalation,

& again, this light will come through the stained

glass of the waves, our time together, the cathedral  

 

written in images so the faithful could read

when death was the secret everyone kept   

telling, my finger taps the hymnal to hear

            the impossible, never let me go.

Maximilian Heinegg's poems have appeared in Columbia Poetry Review, December Magazine, The Cortland Review, Crab Creek Review, and The American Journal of Poetry, among others. As a singer-songwriter, his records can be heard at www.maxheinegg.com   He lives and teaches English in Medford, MA.

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteDevon Wootten, special feature, poetry

Devon Wootten: Worst. Threesome. Ever.

Devon Wootten is a faculty member at Whitman College. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fence, LIT, Aufgabe, Colorado Review, Drunken Boat, Octopus, the tiny, Backward City Review, 26 – A Journal of Poetry and Poetics, and The California Journal of Poetics. A former resident of Yaddo and Anderson ranch, he is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Montana and ABD in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of Iowa. He lives with his wife among the wheat fields of southeast Washington. He curates wikipoesis.com. He's at devonwootten.com.

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteDevon Wootten, special feature, poetry
Devon Wootten: Worst. Threesome. Ever.
Special FeatureJoanna ValenteGary Charles Wilkens, special feature, poetry

Gary Charles Wilkens: Edit the Sad Parts

Gary Charles Wilkens’ first book, The Red Light Was My Mind, won the 2006 Texas Review Breakthrough Poetry Prize. His manuscript Fayetteville was a Finalist in the 2014 Moon City Review Poetry Contest. His poems have appeared more than 70 journals and anthologies, including The Texas Review, Moon City Review, Passages North, the Adirondack Review, James Dickey Review, Melancholy Hyperbole, and Midwest Quarterly. His fiction has appeared in Drunk Monkeys, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and Pale Ghosts Magazine. His day job is Associate Professor of English at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia.

Special FeatureJoanna ValenteGary Charles Wilkens, special feature, poetry
Gary Charles Wilkens: Edit the Sad Parts
Special FeatureJoanna ValenteBen Nardolilli, poetry, special feature

Ben Nardolilli: Lonely Radio Playing

Ben Nardolilli currently lives in New York City. His work has appeared in Perigee Magazine, Red Fez, Danse Macabre, The 22 Magazine, Quail Bell Magazine, Elimae, fwriction, Inwood Indiana, Pear Noir, The Minetta Review, and Yes Poetry. He blogs at mirrorsponge.blogspot.com and is looking to publish a novel. 


Special FeatureJoanna ValenteBen Nardolilli, poetry, special feature
Ben Nardolilli: Lonely Radio Playing