Issue #33.11 Donald Illich, Paige Stephens, Sharon Hoffmann
A Poem by Donald Illich
See
I couldn’t see it, however hard I tried. A lake blocked it from view or a forest with wild animals. Even the clouds rushed down to block what I wanted to witness. When I did see it, I knew it’d be beautiful. Something worth not just a postcard but a letter to a poet I valued, or a lover who waited for my words. I thought at one time it’d be heaven on earth with its own Fountain of Youth, its planned village of lovers. Or that it wouldn’t be very different from what I see in my life on an everyday basis, suburban strip malls and parking lots, shreds of grass cracking underneath. What I didn’t know is I would be struck blind before I could reach my destination. I’d be on top of a hill, the sun the last thing glowing in my mind. I’d hear everyone applauding, feel a heaviness in the air from the crowd. Please let me know what you see, I’d ask. But everyone ignored me. They were too busy catching photos of it on smartphones, or talking about it in vague superlatives that provided no answers. I raised my hands toward it, felt heat circulating around my body. If I took one more step, I’d be inside it. If I gathered myself to touch what could be touched.
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Donald Illich‘s work appears in such journals as Iowa Review, LIT, Nimrod, Passages North, The Southern Review, Rattle, Fourteen Hills, The Louisville Review, Cimarron Review, Map Literary, Spork, Cream City Review, and Sixth Finch. His work has been anthologized in A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry and City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry. His full-length manuscript, Chance Bodies, was published in 2018 by The Word Works. He lives in Maryland.
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A Poem by Paige Stephens
One Hundred Pieces
He bought a hundred-piece puzzle, opened the box, took one piece from a hundred different hundred-piece puzzles, put a single one back into the box from each of them, sealed it, handed it to me, and told me if I loved him, I could put it together.
The picture would come out right.
And I believed him.
I believed, completely, that it was possible.
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Paige Stephens is a writer and middle school teacher from South Mississippi. She writes flash fiction and poetry with Southern bones—voice-driven work that leans tender, sharp, and occasionally sideways.
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A Poem by Sharon Hoffmann
Directing My Sisters to the Valley
At the fruit stand where I stopped, a black-haired boy sliced fruit into quarters and held it out to me. It was free. Even the sign said so. But I stepped back, shaking my head, my hands behind me. You know how we were raised – to say no, to take nothing. But something said take it and taste it. And the ruby reds and navels that I would have bought – more expensive, what the tourists want – were not as good as the pale gold fruit, the mottled, thin-skinned oranges for juice. I chose what I wanted. The boy began to cut another for me, to eat as I go. I had more than I needed already, and how to deal with the juice on my fingers, my chin? Still, I didn't say no. When you get here, take what's offered. Take more.
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Sharon Hoffmann is a 76-year-old writer based in Atlantic Beach, Florida. Publications include The Hooghly Review, New York Quarterly, Beloit Poetry Journal, Alice Walker: Critical Perspectives (Harvard University Press), Sho Poetry Journal, and others. Awards include fellowships from Atlantic Center for the Arts and Florida’s Division of Cultural Affairs, three Pushcart nominations, and a nomination for Best Spiritual Literature.
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