Sixfold Poetry Winter 2023

Sixfold Poetry Winter 2023

by Sixfold

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2023 Sixfold and The Authors

www.sixfold.org

Sixfold is a completely writer-voted journal. The writers who upload their manuscripts vote to select the prize-winning manuscripts and the short stories and poetry published in each issue. All participating writers’ equally weighted votes act as the editor, instead of the usual editorial decision-making organization of one or a few judges, editors, or select editorial board.

Each issue is free to read online and downloadable as PDF and e-book. Paperback book available at production cost including shipping.

Susan Wilkinson

https://www.instagram.com/susan.wilkinson.photography/

License Notes

Copyright 2023 Sixfold and The Authors. This issue may be reproduced, copied, and distributed for noncommercial purposes, provided both Sixfold and the Author of any excerpt of this issue are acknowledged. Thank you for your support.

Sixfold

[email protected]

www.sixfold.org

Sixfold Poetry Winter 2023

Selena Spier | Red From The West & other poems

Pamela Wax | Talk Therapy & other poems

Ana Reisens | Honey Water & other poems

Mark Yakich | Necessary Hope & other poems

Bridget Kriner | A Few Lies & a Truth & other poems

Keegan Shepherd | Silver Queen & other poems

Alaina Goodrich | Sacred Conflagration & other poems

George Longenecker | Those Who Hunger & other poems

Hailey Young | Ball Room & other poems

Sébastien Luc Butler | Aubade & other poems

Savannah Grant | Ever Since (v.2) & other poems

grace (logan) | Dynamic & other poems

Samantha Imperi | A Poem for the Ghosted & other poems

Corinne Walsh | Limerence & other poems

Kayla Heinze | Stop checking the score & other poems

Richard Baldo | Chasing Through to Dawn & other poems

Alex Eve | A moment & other poems

Robert Michael Oliver | Prison Hounds & other poems

Contributor Notes

Selena Spier

Raspberry

Nothing comes to life until you name it.

Just as it took saying light to make it.

What’s left over drifts

through the mind’s sieve

and sinks to the bottom.

Coats the tongue like an afterthought,

but can’t survive on its own outside the body.

Bright world, there you are—

thumbing through magazines, waiting for me

in the lobby. The bone-white pills

I cradled in my palm. The drive home silent.

In the new snow, fingertips shining

with sugar and grease, the heating pad

pressed to my abdomen. Bright,

bright world. How the knot of fear unraveled

at the sight of what had left me: blood.

Just blood.

And a pale clump of cells,

no bigger than a raspberry.

Playing Dice with the Universe

You won’t find me in your matrices.

You should know that—haven’t you searched

for a woman in her body, and found

neither woman nor body? I will not yield,

I will not take the shape of your container.

There are two variations of knowledge:

you cling to the one that is stored in the body,

is prone to the body’s distortions.

I sing the body dialectic.

I am kinetic, I am chemical—

I am the die and the hand that casts it,

the faces, the dots and the sum

of the numbers they signify.

I am your black luck and resurrection,

god-headed chance,

the act of measurement.

Red from the West

A halo circumscribed the place

where the little beast

sank its teeth in. We waited days,

a week. No symptoms, no fever.

None of our terrors bore fruit

in the end. Flickering shapes

on the brain scan turned out to be

tricks of the light. Candles left untended

guttered out. We left the oven on all morning once,

came home at noon to a hot house.

And the years began to repeat themselves.

And everything reminded us of something else.

So summer shrinks from the surface

of the skin—the air goes brittle—

the wide fields overtaken by milkweed

and goldenrod.

Still Life

The doorway to that bedroom coincided

with the outer edge of time. It was always

as you’d left it: crowded shelves

and