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 }
| The Silent Treatment by Alissa Heyman |
The honeymoon’s over.
It’s one month after our wedding
and he’s not speaking.
He thinks he doesn’t have to—
his skull says it all.
“What color should we paint the kitchen?” I ask.
“Should we get a flat-screen TV?”
My skull keeps his mandible shut.
His eye sockets remain eye sockets,
his calcium content doesn’t change,
his eyebrows remain absent.
I tell him, “If you don’t talk to me,
I’m leaving you. I need someone who emotes.”
I keep him on the night table by my bed,
but I think I should move him to another room
or maybe even let him go.
Perhaps bury him in the backyard
like a beloved pet, but that would be too cruel.
Have the monthly peroxide treatments—
which keep him clean as a newborn skull—
damaged his senses, dulled his thoughts?
Was the boiling water and bleach just too much?
A little disputation would be nice:
“I think red would do for the kitchen.
A girl needs a little blood in her marriage, after all,”
while he argues for white, “clearly the finest color.”
But how can you argue with someone
whose jawbone remains locked?
