On the Side of Paradise Road
Gunilla Kester
I remember suddenly how she took my hand
“I’m not afraid anymore”! I was fast:
“If you really think I’m going to let you go
so easily, you’re wrong! I’m talking to you
for the rest of my life.” “Is that a threat?”
“You better believe it.” Outside the window,
a tall chimney where doves congregate
for a little warmth and company, clouds
and smoke dancing high up in the clear air.
“And you better keep writing your sweet
poems, or . . .” “What? Is that threat or gift?”
trying to hide my face, I look straight at her.
“I must look terrible,” she says with her
usual grace, and I shake my head quickly:
“You’ll always be beautiful to me.”
By the side of Paradise Road, I smile
as I remember this our last talk.
How good we were at piling lies over truth
trying to protect each other to the bitter end.
I haven’t written much; poetry needs solitude,
but when you lose a friend you love so much,
you feel like you’re never alone. Wherever
you go and wherever you stay, somebody
is there, close, next to you. How many?
And for how long must I count my losses?
The friend who died and the I who loved
gone forever together with their trust in words,
me left crowded and afraid in this world
on the side of a street called Paradise Road.
Swedish-born Gunilla Theander Kester is an award-winning poet and the author of If I Were More Like Myself (The Writer’s Den, 2015). Her two poetry chapbooks: Mysteries I-XXIII (2011) and Time of Sand and Teeth (2009) were published by Finishing Line Press. She was co-editor with Gary Earl Ross of The Still Empty Chair: More Writings Inspired by Flight 3407 (2011) and The Empty Chair: Love and Loss in the Wake of Flight 3407 (2010). Dr. Kester has published many poems in Swedish anthologies and magazines, including Bonniers Litterära Magasin. Her work has or will be published in On the Seawall, Cider Press, The American Journal of Poetry, Pendemics, and Atlanta Review. She lives near Buffalo, NY where she teaches classical guitar.
My Dad’s Not Dead, He Just Doesn’t Want to Come to My Party
Ginger Ayla
After I fall asleep, someone tells me he’s not dead.
Blame me for thinking so, but I saw his embalmed body, brushed a piece of lint
from his beard, listened to my Aunt Cindy wailing from across the country.
Celebrated his life in lieu of a funeral.
Death was once a state of distance, but he resists this.
Every night, there he is. Forlorn, mute.
Glitching only a little.
He’s not dead, he’s a guest now, get him a plate and tie. If we’re lucky maybe he’ll take that guitar down to the riverside—but we’re not lucky.
Just as I get on my ballgown to say my vows, he’s disappeared.
Killed his beer and gotten out of here.
Lunch untouched. Mistaken for dead a drag on his appetite.
No, it’s not that he’s gone, as in dead.
Of course not.
Parties are draining foreveryone. Questions about your health, when you’ll fade back in.
Revert to talking again.
Still after hundreds of my weddings he’s missed, I can’t fault him.
Think, the shock of it.
Up comes your life in a cough, a ping, only you’re not yet nothing.
Vivarium still green, veins still pumping.
When he died we gave his ashes to Grandma, to Wyoming, to Ely. Xylographed a slat with his
name. Years in and he remains stone-like, perfunctory.
Zigzagging, nightly, through the oblivious crowd, away from me.
Ginger Ayla (she/her) is a writer and poet living in Southern Colorado whose work has appeared or is forthcoming in Grist Journal, The Boiler, PRISM International, Phoebe, and elsewhere, and has been nominated for the Best New Poets Anthology. Currently a full-time freelance editor, she’s fueled by coffee, nature, and reality TV.
AFTER ATTENDING OUR LAST-EVER CHURCH SERVICE, I WALK WITH GERALD AROUND THE WACO SUSPENSION BRIDGE
ari b. cofer
nose to snout with the brass cattle
sculptures that contour the river’s mouth
i understand how big we must become to protect
something beautiful. beyond their ten-foot horns i see
your face, eyes as still as the brown, bitter Brazos
and i am scared to jump in. i tend to drown
in connection. i wish you knew how to
swim. your love’s riptide whips me
into your arms. you are in my breath.
look at the water, you say, but i don’t, because i am afraid
i might lose sight of you. look at the water, you repeat
and instead, i hold your hand. nothing the earth makes
could move me as much as the chestquake of your voice.
you squeeze my cheekbones and force my eyes
to kiss the river. i understand why jesus wanted baptism
if it meant being loved by a man
who loved him.
ari b. cofer is a Black and queer author who holds BA in Professional Writing from Baylor University and an MFA from Randolph College. They have published two poetry collections through Central Avenue Publishing, paper girl and the knives that made her (Jan 2022), which was featured on Buzzfeed books in 2022, and unfold: poetry and prose (2023). Originally from Texas, ari, their husband, and their two pets live in the Pacific Northwest. ari’s work has curated an engaged audience across social media platforms and has been featured on sites such as Buzzfeed and TheMighty. Her writing focuses on mental health advocacy, her experiences as a queer, Black woman, and love.
Ars Poetica With Ice Cream & Kidnapping
Mike Bove
Rising even then, the temperature
was at least still comfortable in my suburban youth
when I watched a crimson Lincoln streak to the end
of the road & spin in front of my sidewalk-bicycled
self, eyes locked on the rear window where a boy
my age pressed both palms to the glass & screamed,
his mouth cave-hollow, sealed & sweltering
inside the car where a jaw-clenched man in a white
Stetson wrenched the wheel & gashed the edge
of the neighbor’s lawn, blew a stop sign
& evaporated.
In 1986 the average summer high
was 68.5, but today it’s 89, hotter in full sun,
hotter still in a car as I drive the kids to the corner
for soft-serve. I told my parents about the frenzied
man & the screaming boy. Their marriage already
burning, they were unable to hear, unable to see
the tire-gouge near where I’d dropped my bike
in terror to run inside. Decades after their split,
I asked each if they remembered what I said I’d seen.
No, they told me, no they didn’t & maybe, I thought,
neither did I.
With extreme heat the brain lags
under cognitive dysfunction, memory loss
& hallucination. That day in ’86 was relatively cool,
yet my parents implied I’d been confused & later
I wondered if I’d pulled a subliminal switcheroo,
conjured the car from displaced ghosts of childhood
inferno, my parents’ despair bursting from cracked
windows at dusk, dad racing to close the blinds
before the neighbors glimpsed mom’s booze-
flared fits.
At the corner we get mediums that melt
as they’re handed & my kids lift them to lap the drip.
If they ever told me they’d witnessed a child engulfed
I’d listen, but would I believe? If they want to know
how to write poems, they don’t ask & if they did
I wouldn’t know what to say except it’s impossible
not to begin with a vaporous memory, a Freudian fever-
dream & a mirrored self trapped in a speeding car
toward a rending end, heat surging, each line
a paradox, desperately dichotomous & hottest
at the heart: a splitting impulse to douse yet rouse
the flick-finger flames beneath a scalding scream.
Mike Bove is the author of four books of poetry, most recently EYE (Spuyten Duyvil, 2023). His poems have appeared in Rattle, Southern Humanities Review, Tar River Poetry, Rust & Moth, and many others. He served as a 2024 Writer-in-Residence at Acadia National Park and is Editor of Hole in the Head Review, a biannual online poetry journal. Mike lives with his family in Portland, Maine where he was born and raised. www.mikebove.com, Instagram: @portlandbove