Corey Bryan
Corey Bryan is a student at Georgia State University. He lives with his clowder of cats (the best to ever do it) and girlfriend in Atlanta, GA. He is currently writing daily poetry prompts with a friend of his at poetryispretentious.com. He is published at the Empyrean Lit Magazine and Curious Corvid Publishing and has 6 poems forthcoming at A Door is a Jar, Deep South Mag, and the Seventh Quarry Press.
The following work is Copyright © 2023, and owned by Corey Bryan and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
haiku 76
art peaked when
ads for cigarettes
were hand painted
Elizabeth Edelglass
Elizabeth Edelglass is a fiction writer and book reviewer who finds herself writing poetry in response to today’s world—personal, national, and global. Her fiction has won the Reynolds Price Fiction Prize, the William Saroyan Centennial Prize, the Lilith short story contest, and the Lawrence Foundation Prize from Michigan Quarterly Review. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Fish Prize and won third prize in the 2021 Voices Israel Reuben Rose Competition.
The following work is Copyright © 2023, and owned by Elizabeth Edelglass and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.
A Life, in Body Parts
Ankles
of the tall, tall ladies your mother left you with
when she walked away from nursery school.
Knees
scarred roller skating downhill from the dead end
towards home, one second after you felt like flying.
Hips
of your best friend sashaying past you to the back
of the schoolbus to sit with the boy who’d started to shave.
Lobes
(of ears and other parts) tasted by your first
(and only) someone, splayed on a narrow dorm bed
Ears
pressed to the dorm phone as your father says he’s sold
your mother’s diamond earrings, but sssshhhh… don’t tell her.
Lips
too scared to sip red wine under the wedding canopy,
then savoring its sweetness when the rabbi says kiss.
Belly
on the delivery table, number one son safe in doctor’s
hands, you wondering why you’re not flat as before.
Breast
attached to insatiable baby, as your husband announces
you’re moving cross-country, far from home.
Butts
one, two, three… in the bathtub,
slippery in your soapy hands.
Eyes
reading your husband’s e-mail, which he left open,
with her name, for you to see.
Fingers
touching his across number three son
in a hospital bed.
Tops of Heads
seen from a chair as uncles and cousins lift you in the air
at one, two, three tall children’s weddings, your
Hand
holding one end of a white linen napkin
while his hand holds the other.
