Issue 4.2
Summer 2024
Donna Isaac
Reflection
Dream imagery, feelings, glimpses of the natural world, fear, and lack of control—all are present in the tercets of "Tightrope." Both physical and mental paralysis haunt the lines. Fairy tales of my youth are present in the wolf and the gingerbread man, menacing like the healing, yet harmful, medicine I am given.
Tightrope: After Chemo
yellow mums
like tarnished spoons
dip the moon
deep down numb
the veins and feet
knee-deep drifts the way
beastly flit of brush wolf
frozen mudprints skulk
stars tarry, some fly
uncurling leaves broken gingerbread men
glued into river silt
pathway into dropoff flounder
for-ever feels halfway
gulp of surface air
brambles, holes to catch
stumble rock the way
vanishing point this lane
caverns of the red mind
Poet Donna Isaac is a teaching artist/organizer of community literary events through the League of MN Poets. She has a B.A. (James Madison University); an M.A. (University of Minnesota); and an M.F.A. (Hamline University.) A new book of poems by Finishing Line Press, In the Tilling, is forthcoming in 2025. donnaisaacpoet.com
Donna's Book Recommendations
A Rather Haunted Life: Ruth Franklin
Collected Poems: Louis Jenkins
Little River of Amazements: Mary Kay Rummel
Let Me Tell You What I Mean: Joan Didion
Lord of the Butterflies: Andrea Gibson