Issue #27.10 A Triple Issue: Isabel Chenot, Colleen S. Harris, and
Patrick G. Roland
A Poem by Isabel Chenot
transfiguration
The wind that bent the sky up there was clear and bright. The spattered grass was writing someone’s name.
On every letter, elasticities of light writhed: field-tatter spiraled and became
a shining feather – molted from fire, hulled of its heaviness and its un-flame.
Turn now. Remember Sinai still igniting. Our flicked ash trembles and God’s breath flares gold
and grass is kindled like a dry wing.
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Isabel Chenot has loved, memorised, and practised poetry all her remembered life. Some of her poems are collected in The Joseph Tree, available from Wiseblood Books.
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A Poem by Colleen S. Harris
The Tattooed Patient Fears Needles
Two nurses laugh when I tell them I do not like needles, brows creased as they consider black scrolls climbing
my arms, panthers lounging lazy across my collarbones, letters skipping across my knuckles, roses in my hairline,
holding me together as much as sinew and bone. They hunt elusive veins, situate receiving tubes as I explain
that a tattoo machine (not a gun) looks less a needle than unwieldy calligraphy pen, more a poet’s tool
than torture device (unless you are the cramped artist holding the buzzing machine). Their vials remain empty,
my veins stingy, avoidant. They call a third, more skilled, to come coax a basilic IV into the pillow of my arm,
ministrations leaving me bruised like rotten fruit, my body’s biological defenses blown to pieces. I tell them
medical needles take, but the tattoo needle gives, sings as it stings, transforms this sorry meat into art.
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Colleen S. Harris earned her MFA in Writing from Spalding University. A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her poetry collections include The Light Becomes Us (Main Street Rag, forthcoming 2025), Babylon Songs (First Bite Press, forthcoming), These Terrible Sacraments (Bellowing Ark, 2010; Doubleback, 2019), The Kentucky Vein (Punkin House, 2011), God in My Throat: The Lilith Poems (Bellowing Ark, 2009), and chapbooks That Reckless Sound and Some Assembly Required (Pork Belly Press, 2014). After growing up on Long Island and then making her home in New York, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and California, she now lives in Texas and works as a university library dean.
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A Poem by Patrick G. Roland
The B Tree
Along a gravel road
near my family’s farm,
a crooked locust tree stood guard.
Its gnarled limbs shot out in every direction,
a ragged old man who had stopped
caring for his appearance.
Midway up its pockmarked trunk,
a knotted bulge jutted out, unapologetic.
A careless saw blade? A battle scar from disease?
Dad called it the B tree.
I assumed it was for the bulge,
a misshapen hive
that never held bees.
I never asked.
Years later, when the farm became mine,
a surveyor drove a yellow spike
deep into the old tree.
I protested, but he only shrugged.
“This is your boundary,” he said.
Where my family began,
broke off,
and began again.
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Patrick G. Roland is a writer and educator living with cystic fibrosis. He explores life’s experiences through poetry and storytelling, seeking to inspire others in the classroom and through writing. He lives near Pittsburgh with his wife, who is his thoughtful critic, and their two children, who are his muse.
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