Intro to Catoptromancy
by: Patty Seyburn

The smoked-glass mirror broke when workmen tried to remove it from the
wall. 2-D smorgasboard: trapezium and kites, a near-perfect nonagon,
irregular rhomboid and scalene triangles, scabbardshards and onechipped
shuffleboard court. 28 yearsbad luck, souls trapped in odd shapes, reflections
distorted. They did not bury the pieces, pulverize them, or place them in a
riverflowing south. They rested them against the naked wall: unintentional
funhouse, the floordoused in shatter. Someone said: we should have called a
glazier. Someone said: oldglass is fragile. Someone said: I can see part of
myself. Backing had disintegrated. Threemen bled.

 

Greetings from Jamaica
or A Postcard to an Almost-Husband
by: Kate Anderson

Let me take you to my island​, you said, your ​mi amor ​salt-thick
and desperate for home. This island is not yours. Tonight, I
listened to the frogs beneath my window, a cacophony of
memories; they are not koqui. But, I am there or here or we are
somewhere together and I can smell your mother’s ​sofrito​ and see
your brown arm next to mine and I cannot recognize it. The hair
turns golden in your sun, silky strings I pull from summer corn and
watch blow away in the breeze. Your eyes turned darker in our
love. I cannot find your fingers anymore. ​Si​. ​Siempre​. To
questions I could never ask. To questions I have never asked.
This island air suffocates me with your memory. I am here, years
beyond us. Go home. Please. ​Si. Si.

 

–

 

Patty Seyburn has published five collections of poems, most recently: Threshold Delivery (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Perfecta (What Books Press, 2014). She grew up in Detroit and teaches at California State University, Long Beach.

 

Kate Anderson is currently a high school creative writing teacher in Hagerstown, Maryland. She holds an MA in Writing with a Poetry Concentration from Johns Hopkins University. She resides in Williamsport, Maryland with her husband and two children.