Issue 3.3
Fall 2023
J. I. Kleinberg
Reflection
The poems are always about discovering something I didn't know about the world or about myself. I don't usually understand what I'm looking for or whether I've found it until the words have slept together for a while, and sometimes not even then.
To become a weapon
In this conflict, I am a stone unthrown.
No hand raises me. I am not roused
to strike, but settle deeper into mud,
into meadow, my hard back curved
away from pain. I am still and ancient
and fragile as flesh. Wishing for light,
sometimes I say I am made of moon,
of cave-caught prisms, small animals
of joy. I might sit in a pool in the rain
and pretend the water is not my tears.
But I taste iron, recall the sulfured scratch
where once a match was struck: char, ash,
bone. How easy to blame the fire, ignore
the spark of stone on stone. To wield,
to avenge, to rise, to fall. Every stone
learns that truth is the heaviest element.
J.I. Kleinberg is an artist, poet, and freelance writer. Her poetry has appeared in December, One, Diagram, Pedestal, Psaltery & Lyre, Sheila-Na-Gig, and many other print and online journals worldwide. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and online at chocolateisaverb.wordpress.com.
J.I.'s Book Recommendations
Joanna Thomas - [ache] [blur] [cut]: sonnets (Open Country)
Neil Aitken - The Lost Country of Sight (Anhinga)
John Koenig - The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows (Simon & Schuster)
Joe Wilkins - When We Were Birds (University of Arkansas)
Joyelle McSweeney - Toxicon and Arachne (Nightboat)
Saeed Jones - Alive at the End of the World (Coffee House)