Truth
Hila Ratzabi - { I Don’t Care if Your Memoir is True, and Other Thoughts on Truth and Fiction }
Jessica Gross - { 2 Train, End to End }
Michael Henson - { Maggie Boylan }
Alissa Heyman - { I Married a Skull } { Shortly After the Wedding }{ The Silent Treatment }
Lynne Procope - { Doing It for Love } { The Poet Addresses Saartjie Baartman; The So Called Venus Hottentot. }
Tim Raymond - { Small }
Jaime Warburton - { This Is Not a Poem About a Dream } { - Red Moon Last Night }
Untruth
Shelly Oria - { Integrity }
Sheila Thorne - { Betrayal }
Jennifer Duffield White - { Blue-Sky Treason }
We Don't Know and They
Won't Tell Us
Tamiko Beyer - { We Don’t Know and They Won’t Tell Us ~ Poetry in the Space of Possibility }
Adam Auerbach - { Illustrations }
Simon Perchik - { Five Untitled Poems }
Lynne Procope - { The Mortal Danger of Redheads }
Hila Ratzabi - { I Have to Show My Appreciation to You for Rescuing Me from This Setting }
| Integrity by Shelly Oria |
You left a garbled truth on my voice mail.
I bought you a t-shirt.
That was the beginning. Thanks for trusting me, I said with my arm stretched forward.
You said the organic pears were too raw, but that particular one too soft.
I could see your point.
When I made you a cappuccino, I used oat milk.
You tipped me.
I laughed. You laughed.
One night I licked all of you until I knew that had you been ice cream, there would be nothing left.
Caramel Cone, you said, was your favorite flavor. You could eat it in the snow.
There was something that didn't happen, and when you asked me about it I told you as much.
You questioned my honesty. Are you being honest, you said.
I explained that integrity should mean something else, it should mean the ability to integrate. This was something my brother told me once, so I knew I was right.
You said I quoted my brother too often.
I poured two spoons of maple instead of one.
I texted a question to eight people, and no one responded.
You're being impersonal, you said. Mass messages are hurtful.
The question involved you, but you didn't know that.
That night, we had raspberry dark chocolate for dinner. The ORAC on this thing is insane, you said in a high-pitched voice. It's like doing a tasty detox.
The ORAC scale determines which foods are rich in antioxidants. Most people don't care about that, but we do.
One friend texted back the next day. Personally, I never got it, the message said.
I've decided that we will never break up, I wrote back, but thanks anyway.
