Issue #32.5 A Triple Issue: Kristy Money, John Grey, John Brantingham
Two Poems by Kristy Money
solar eclipse
moon over sun wind carries the vows their rings hidden behind rain celestial marriage
no polygamy in heaven for them or for me anymore I left that plane long ago
everyone hushes hill country caliche folding inside itself
Rosie's Baby Naming and Blessing Ceremony
I dared disobey twelve apostles
and a prophet
to hold you in my arms
with the wrong genitals.
My uterus carried you but birth’s the end of the line if you’re a Mormon mother.
After that we must watch while in church men do the
holding
withholding
exaltation
unless we submit
I’d rather hold
you
________________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Kristy Money is a writer, university lecturer, and neuropsychologist in private practice. Her writing and interviews are published in The New York Times, Guardian, Salt Lake Tribune, Atlanta-Journal Constitution, and Exponent II, and forthcoming in Past Ten, Little Old Lady, Blood and Honey, and Eunoia Review. Her book, Overthinkers Guide to Orgasm, is currently on submission to publishers by agent Paige Sisley of CookeMcDermid. Find podcast interviews and more writing at kristymoney.com, on Instagram @drkristymoney, and on Bluesky @ofjacob.bsky.social. Kristy loves to write about the intersection of science, art, and spirituality.
________________________________________________________________________________________
A Poem by John Grey
Home from Brazil
I should have known the contrast would be too fierce. The winter I once knew has been replaced by something stranger, an alien landscape, dark in its ascendancy. Every window frames my reflection in frost. And the air, sharp, insistent, lashes at the tan I earned under a more forgiving sun, with a threat to fade it all away into transparency.
January bites down hard. Only the stereo has my back, sending out a warm-blooded samba that taps at my ankles, coaxing movement, reminding me of heat. My eyes insist on cold, but my ears, traitorous, tender, summon the ghost of a linen shirt lifting in a tropical breeze, and the soft, sure breath of a woman drawing a butterfly’s path from my ear to the nape of my neck.
I tell myself I need to relearn this climate, let it seep into my sleep, find a way to see past its indifference. Otherwise, my old routine will feel like exile. I must be stubborn, resist recent memories. I stack logs in the fireplaces. I smother the bed with blankets. I pretend that sufferance is a kind of wisdom.
But then there is Brazil. My head won’t let go even as my body shivers. A pandeiro cracks the air, a cavaco thrums, and a scatter of impossible birds takes flight behind my ribs. There’s no commanding yourself in moments like that. You dance, whether your body moves or not.
And that world. There’s no separation between man and what is out there. You’re either inside its pulse or watching from far away.
Right now, I’m watching.
________________________________________________________________________________________
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, River And South and The Alembic. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, White Wall Review and Flights.
________________________________________________________________________________________
A Poem by John Brantingham
________________________________________________________________________________________
The late John Brantingham was a New York State Council on the Arts Grant Recipient for 2024, and he was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work was published in hundreds of magazines and The Best Small Fictions 2016 and 2022. He wrote twenty-three books of poetry, nonfiction, and fiction. https://www.johnbrantingham.com/
________________________________________________________________________________________