Poetry


Malaria, Egon H. E. Lass

Cindy Childres

Summer School

Today I caught a plagiarist in summer school
and wondered if failing him was worth the effort,
while you, my archaeologist friend,
watched a bright green lizard
turn brown on a bamboo trunk
as he chased fruit flies
and saw spider-wasp ensured her lineage
in the paralyzed arachnid.
My brother gave a presentation about airline costs
and rising oil prices to a roomful of GE executives
using a power point program
and citing how it is everyone’s fault
and yet no one’s.

My Grandmother never thought she’d live
to be 80, so she spent the last 30 years
preparing to die;
she bought groceries by the week.
Her 80th birthday in July was the biggest hurdle;
Will I live to see it?
She thought mailing invitations in May
while the pancreatic stent thwarted her cancer.

The lizard–subsisting on flies he cheats to catch–
will die by winter, poor plagiarist,
and in April the spider-wasps will hatch
ready to stew another brood.
To my brother, this means that god is a capitalist,
but you see what’s hidden between the seasons.
How the trees are alive when leafless,
how civilization stirs 100 feet under the dirt,
while I breathe limbo like my Grandmother–
never certain of the season
or its meaning.

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More poetry from Issue 11

Poetry from Epicenter 11

Past Contributors

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Poetry Selections from Past Issues

Daniel John:  Midden

Josh Cook: I See Rissa in Doodles and Fingernails

Jonathan Ponder:  Villanelle for the San Bernardino Valley

Randy Boone:  Seven Various Powders from a Distant Asian Land

Jonathan Barrett:  Bones, Singing Gods, and the Felt Meadows

John Marvin:  An Electric Galleria of Earthly Delights

Stephen Pyle:  On the duties of being carbon

Brad Maxfield:  Easter In Guayaquil

Randy Koch: Metamorphosis

C. Rohrbacher:  Dreamers Are Gluttons

Sean Lause:  Lynndie England is the daughter we always wanted

P. J. Stanskas:  A Scientific Analysis of the Jerry Springer Phenomenon in Popular Television Culture

David Musgrove:  Fucking Death Without a Condom

Alba Cruz-Hacker:  Dissident Verses

Maureen A. Sherbondy:  Froth

Kenneth DiMaggio:  Poem #1 From The Book Of The Fearless Age Of The American Automobile

Emily Scudder:  Cremations

Virgil Suarez:  Doña Inez Remembers the Ravages of  Hurricane Flora

Barbara Duffey:  On the Occasion of My Sister’s Fall from Her Horse

Kevin Roddy:  La Desaparecida

James Grinwis:  Greenland Frost Camel

Abraham Burickson: Paper House for a Better Thief

William Doreski:  The Gnostics Were Right

Roibeard Ui-Neill:  Spurious Pursuits

Alexander Chertok:  Snowfall, Route 81, December

Elizabeth Hopp:  Gaza

E. R. Carlin:  Back County Queen

Chris Crittenden:  Desert

Mary Copeland:  Peaches

Jonathan Sismesmal:  The Insect’s Valuable Touch

Michael Gregg Michaud:  How to Be a Gay Literary Icon

Penny Perry:  Polliwogs

Jonathan Ponder:  Time Flowering Among Rocks

Lyn Stefenhagens:  The Contortionist

Neil Gabriel Kozlowicz:  Working Produce

Bob Carlton:  Creation: Yet Another Version

Nicole Lynskey:  Regrets

Nancy Berg:  Cocooning

Randy Boone:  T-Shirt

Michael McManus:  Born Again

Todd Raboy:  Revolution

Richard Autio:  untitled

Askold Skalaski:  Busting and Booming in Bratislava

Danielle Meitle:  The Third Garden

Max Berkovitz:  A Chicago Day, Long Ago

Charles D. Moskus:  Night Drive

Tom Edison:  Pragmatic Magic

A. Razor:  San Bernardino

Anne Babson:  California

Doug Shy:  Upon Don Agustin's Leaving Durango, Mexico 1894

P.J. Stanskas:  Advice to a Friend on the Edge of Divorce

Jessica Fox:  Going Down on the English Language

Lori Davis:  How to Relax While Making Love

Shoshauna Shy:  An -, without; + orexis, appetite

Jessica Maich:  Stars as Slipper

B.Z. Niditch:  Missing Person

Rachel Squires Bloom:  Exercise Bike

Jonathan Levant:  What Was That Cover Letter For?

Robert Schuler:  Sufi Music

Andrew Bode-Lang:  Our Hard-Scrabble Life on The Land

Naomi Ruth Lowinsky:  At the Center for Breast Imaging

Nancy A. Henry:  Men I’ve Dated in Random Order