Issue #34.5 Raymond A. Mazurek, Gunilla T. Kester, Alexander Ross
A Poem by Raymond A. Mazurek
Cancer
I.
The first time I saw so much blood in my semen, bright red, I knew this time was different.
Do you mind that I am so direct? Wondering if it is the dreaded word. Cancer. There, I have said it, casting the spell.
II.
Annoyed, waiting for word from the doctor, but I have waited since I was six years old listening to the nuns at Holy Trinity School lecture about death.
The sun glistens on snowy fields and it is enough.
III.
Results show a small seed, innocent, programmed within me whispering death.
But not yet.
I have known of it since a small child wondered, and school teachers robed in black threatened terror.
Old women who lived alone to share the common fate that will flower.
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As a young man, Raymond A. Mazurek wrote a lot of poetry, but he stopped in graduate school. He resumed writing poetry in the last two years. His poems have appeared in The Blue Collar Review, Writers Resist, The San Antonio Review and The Eunoia Review. Much of his writing explores his working-class background, growing up in Lawrence, Massachusetts. His first chapbook, "Lawrence, 1912" and Other Poems, is to be published in 2027 by Pretzel City Press. He has also published many academic essays and has taught at several colleges and universities, including Penn State.
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A Poem by Gunilla T. Kester
Where Now, Aeolus, is Your Ox-Skin Pouch?
Filled with insatiable winds ravenously ready to keep us away from home and hearth? Woke up to the rumble of an earthquake, rare in these northern lands
—may it be for the best. I figured you’d finally opened your brown paper bag and driven your car into my house, shaking its foundations like a misplaced Poseidon at Thebes. Your daughter too was blinded —may it be for the best.
Until I remembered the plain wood of your coffin swept in winter light, black birds swirling outside tall windows, your widow still as a statue, tracing a new alphabet —may it be for the best.
Once, I wrote you a letter, to let you know me. Thinking I was the missing piece, I sent it to you innocently, feeling it was for the best, but you returned, deflated trident in hand, furious.
An old-fashioned cast iron radiator, forced full with hot water, never welcomed such a soft and young body into such a harsh embrace. It was never the best —a ripped sheet
what did it make you see, before you hit? And hit! We are Signs of Water, drowning, like a felucca or a runabout after winter, leaking, not yet plugged and tarred —may it be for the best.
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Swedish-born Gunilla Theander Kester is an award-winning poet and the author of If I Were More Like Myself (The Writer's Den, 2015). Her two poetry chapbooks: Mysteries I-XXIII (2011) and Time of Sand and Teeth (2009) were published by Finishing Line Press. She was co-editor with Gary Earl Ross of The Still Empty Chair: More Writings Inspired by Flight 3407 (2011) and The Empty Chair: Love and Loss in the Wake of Flight 3407 (2010). She has published in various literary magazines including The American Journal of Poetry, Citron Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Paterson Literary Review, and The Potomac Review. She writes a monthly essay on poetry and war for Consequence Forum. She lives near Buffalo, NY, where she teaches classical guitar. Her new book of poetry, Hold Me Still, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag.
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A Poem by Alexander Ross
The Floating Arch
In the photo, we stand in stark relief, hands clasped in black on cerulean blue and circumscribed by stone. The chapel’s rubble at our backs looks less the wreckage of centuries past than something yet unfinished.
In the last remaining strip of shade, quite possibly in the world, your chin is slightly turned toward me. Mine, toward you. And, as above, so beneath, there is stillness. Each and every rock entrusted to the rest. A window to a window to us.
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Alexander Ross is an American poet. He can be found on both Substack and X @YeomanPoet.
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