The Literary Magazine of the Osterhout Free Library
Past
Paula Rittenhouse
You act like you’re so special,
So unlovable,
Because you have secrets,
Because you have a “past,”
As if I’m also supposed to find it shocking
That you have a favorite food
Or that you have feelings
Or that maybe,
Just maybe,
You let your lungs inflate and deflate
Over and over again. Continue reading “Paula Rittenhouse, Past”
If
Abby Caplin
If, at the moment
of conception,
the matrix
of your corporeality
got plucked from the shelf
near the stove
of Consciousness,
and “you” were ladled
from the hot iron
rim of a dark-holed
kettle, lucky
if paired with soft
rolls and pats
of gold-foiled
buttery love,
while another “you,” by virtue
of spilling from the same
spoon (also into some horses, several
thousand rabbits, a trillion mosquitoes),
worked in a denim factory
in Bangladesh, your Continue reading “Abby Caplin, Two Poems”
The Cough
Robert Fillman
I am sleeping in the bedroom
down the hall for another night—
having spent the last two away
from my wife, in a narrow bed,
feet dangling over the edge,
unsure how to fold my long arms
as I bump against the rear wall
of the coldest room in the house.
All night, I hear my son coughing Continue reading “Robert Fillman, Three Poems”
Lydia
Kate E. Lore
Lydia stands, dangerously close, next to the rapidly moving parts of the machine. It is so loud in her ear she can feel it in her skull. Her hair is gently shaking from the vibrations. Her eardrums hurt. They throb to the sound. Her eyes jiggle in their sockets. So she closes them.
The machine is at the center of the factory. It’s hidden behind the lines of smaller machines, and large storage bins, and a conveyer belt that cuts the room in half. Pallets are driven past. They are held up in the air, ten feet up off the ground, by a guy driving a forklift. On the ground, yellow lines are drawn in geometric shapes, splitting the entire warehouse into smaller pieces that fit perfectly together like a puzzle. These lines are here to keep the workers from leaving Continue reading “Kate E. Lore, Lydia”
Delta
Dawn Leas
I am a mosaic of Emerald Isle,
Italian leather and gypsy song.
I am swirls of magic,
Stories my grandmother told in Slovak,
a foreign language she lived in,
but never taught us.
I am salt. I am water.
Flowing blue to green,
dancing calm to chaos in a white foam dress.
I did not root in mountain mud
like an evergreen, but in sand,
like a pitch pine or orchid
moving with fire and breeze
in the barrens of New Jersey.
I am the woman
stepping off the known trail Continue reading “Dawn Leas, Three Poems”
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