Issue #26.5 A Triple Issue: Natalie Marino, Paul Ilechko, and Jon Riccio
A Poem by Natalie Marino
Taking Shape
After the superbloom a cloudburst of butterflies and bees
arrives for the mariposa lilies.
Death Valley mercies no one.
Red air fattens with ash, the sky spares no currency. After noon
the temperature swells to over one hundred twenty degrees.
Dry as a shoe, Death Valley mirages water and harbors dreams.
RVs take the shape of a canoe as their aluminum halos angel the sun,
triumphant as an apricot.
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Natalie Marino is a poet and practicing physician. Her work appears in Heavy Feather Review, Pleiades, Rust & Moth, Salt Hill, wildness and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook Under Memories of Stars (Finishing Line Press, 2023). She lives in California. You can find her online at nataliemarino.com or on Instagram @natalie_marino.
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A Poem by Paul Ilechko
Guilt, and So On
It’s painfully obvious that I carry a fair amount of guilt inside of me which I have no desire to discuss at this time instead I will focus on the passage of time which leads by a process of elimination into the fear of aging I’ll talk about what it meant when you came to me and what it meant when you stayed which was in fact the bigger deal because I have so few reasons to feel worthy but the days keep on passing some days being better than others but no matter how they are rated (on a more or less arbitrary scale) you are still here when the day ends so I go to the supermarket to buy food and I cook a fabulous meal that says hey thanks for everything and I wonder about that fact that it never once snowed this winter there is already so much crap piled up and shoved into a darkened back room the door double locked and we are both learning how to live quietly while time continues to pass on by.
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Paul Ilechko is a British American poet and occasional songwriter who lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in many journals, including The Bennington Review, The Night Heron Barks, Atlanta Review, Permafrost, and Pirene’s Fountain. His first book is scheduled for 2025 publication by Gnashing Teeth Publishing.
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A Poem by Jon Riccio
Middle Age
What mortified me about 1983: carrying a Welcome Back, Kotter lunchbox. Collector’s item, Dad thought. Travolta diploma. Picture day at restaurant school a matter of baguettes indoctrinating mission creep.
Dear Hocus with low BPA: pocus tanked. Celebratory cholesterol, the greeting card you
browse. Where have the Sinéad O’Connor albums gone? All the bulldozed yester-cancels stuffed into crabmeat or dialing Silent Witness and it’s Martinů’s Nonet placating (412)’s muttonchop capacity.
I wear my austerer tam-o’-shanter, ask the pastry chef, What’s your favorite occasion tiramisu?
They still make carpet cleaners that foam like whipped cream. My physics learning, that Einstein-sticking-his-tongue-out postcard too.
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Jon Riccio teaches literature and creative writing at Western Michigan University and the University of West Alabama. He is the founding editor of Interpretations, a journal dedicated to undergraduate literary criticism.
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