Issue #29.5 A Triple Issue: Sharisa Aidukaitis, Jon Provens, Mykyta Ryzhykh
A Poem by Sharisa Aidukaitis
balm
I saw someone today who looked like you; at the store right next to the chocolate keto clusters you would have mocked but gleefully tried anyway; and the onslaught of nostalgia, seeing the not-you-human with your haircut and stately profile walk past in strangerly disinterest, swept away the levees generally so well cemented that I’ve forgotten them; and the saline essence of humanity leaked onto my cheeks there by the goldfish crackers and I instinctively felt in my pocket for the empty tube of lip balm I can’t throw away because you mailed it to me before the pneumonia
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Sharisa Aidukaitis is a writer and college educator in upstate New York. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Penstricken, Waffle Fried, Moss Piglet, and Drifting Sands Haibun.
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A Poem by Jon Provens
Discovering the Restoration Notice on My Childhood Church’s Door
No one is a prophet in their own land, but here I am, reminded of the tooth I found in my hands, lost to communion, not when I bit the wafer, but later, in my kitchen, stuck in the bread of a sandwich that was meant for a guest. I’ve walked the 4-block stretch from the market to the Papa John’s marked with the bullet hole from the stray shot that did not kill the man who had nothing to do with the robbery. Louise said we only see things once and the rest is memory, which is probably why I won’t realize this one’s a second hole from when nine years later the bits of plastic in the folds of everyone’s brains led some to rob the same place again until I get home. One always returns home where the jacarandas grow, home where vans and masked men proffer you someplace else to go. How strange to arrive anywhere. Somehow, I always find myself lost, dusting unfamiliar stones for footprints gone awry. There is no guide. Unsearched for and unrecognized, I’ve forgotten who I will become. I’m hardly sensible. It’s been eleven years of mortal sin and festered sores before I finally cross the street toward my Church’s doors. When I reach out they’re closed.
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Jon Provens is an Argentine-American writer and educator currently based in Southern California.
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A Poem by Mykyta Ryzhykh
Water
What does a running river choose? To running away forever dissolve. How to kill the blood inside the meat mechanism? No one knows except the screaming stone. Empty birds fly in like paper and bring on their wings the air of the coming minutes; this is life. I walk and breathe like a fish or a flower. And the garden around me continues to move too. And the uprooted garden also continues to move. Glass reflects glass. The pigeon eats the pigeon. The first corpses grow from under the snow. Houses are falling apart like adverbs. However, the river inside me continues to dissolve death because the flow of liquid is the real alchemical time. The hands are like scarabs of the minutes on the clock, strained. My river crumbles like a desert.
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Mykyta Ryzhykh, an author from Ukraine, now lives in Tromsø, Norway. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2023 and 2024. He’s published in many literary magazines іn Ukrainian and English: Tipton Poetry Journal, Stone Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, Shot Glass Journal, QLRS, The Crank, Chronogram, The Antonym, Monterey Poetry Review, Five Fleas Itchy Poetry and many others.
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