FOUR WAY REVIEW

An Electronic Literary Journal

Category: Poetry

  • LAMENT FOR SOME OTHER SAIGON by Sarah Audsley

    My father taught me feet are something to care for, cradle. He never talks about anything else. I remind people my Dad’s age too much of hot, sticky, high green foliage flapping in their faces, or steam rising up from the rice paddies the platoons waded through all morning, crossing in the open, barrels loaded,…

  • TO MY CHILD BEFORE SHE ARRIVES by Brian Simoneau

    There is a man you will learn             to call uncle. He will teach you the answer to many questions             is land bridge. There will be truth in what he says. He will call you             something other than your name no matter what your name is.             No matter what your name is…

  • THREE POEMS by Jessica Hincapie

    ON THE ONE HAND, IN THE OTHER Sometimes when you are born from an abundance of love you, yourself, do not know the proper ways in which to love. Your house guests are always at odds with your house ghosts. The stairwell constantly littered with tin cans and lynched cats. Obvious death threats, but from…

  • THREE POEMS by Alyssa Beckitt

    ME TOO I’ve crawled in the deep grooves of man’s thumbprint – My crescent roll smile peaking up over their canyon begging to be devoured. Be nice Mama said, be welcoming – His hand up my skirt, he wore me like a secret trophy behind the glass case of his pupils. I scrape my remains…

  • LAUGHTER IS CLOSE by David Rivard

    Laughter is close, even if it’s just the schadenfreude of middle-school girls, their juicy, eye-rolling, malicious glee flying down the street (like a tiny pink slug in a pigeon’s beak), hotting up the air—why pretend you can’t hear? Laughter, the only eternity that’s real. Laughter and its toothy lift off, even when toxic. “Save me”…

  • AMERICAN LOVE SONG: OMAHA NEBRASKA by Brionne Janae

    ~for Will Brown because you were beautiful and black with lips like pin cushions and just as soft   because you were made to be pierced to be torn apart to be a mooring for desire and how else could I touch you   could I unwrap your figure   pull the meat from parchment   how else could…

  • TWO POEMS by Kerrin McCadden

    HOMING The sky is at the feeder again. I mean the indigo bunting with no bearings for home. A man pulls into the driveway after work—crunching stones, hallooing up the stairs— wanting to know about my day. All the days are wranglers, I say. I am not able to cite my sources, but I make…

  • TWO POEMS by Kyle Dargan

    TWO POEMS by Kyle Dargan

    BEAUTY Miss Iraq, the first               crowned                         in forty years of foreign meddling, means it when she wishes for world peace—                                                 her cousins’ deaths both tallied               by sectarian violence in her war-quilted, war-torn nation.                                                 She is aware the pageantry—       pinup smiles and stiff, cupped hands (their rotational gesture) —will not beckon peace.   Salvation             may have…

  • CASTRATO by Annie Kim

    CASTRATO by Annie Kim

    I want to be a boy, you tell the man who analyzes you. Free of desire. He nods, light flashing off his thin gold spectacles.                                                                                                 No one called the singing boys                                                                                                 castrati to their face. So evirato,                                                                                                 meaning one unmanned,                                                                                                 musico: one making music. Boys aren’t free of desire, of course—                                                                                                 Though not by ordinary…

  • VIOLINS: VIOLENCE by Annie Kim

                                             Vitula. Viol. Violino.                                                                               Violare. Violentus. Violentia.                                                                               Origin and History of Violence, reads the header.                                                                               You’ve visited this page 3 times.* * * Last night you dreamed again about your father— You had him by the wrists: above your head, the way you’d catch a snake, one hand beneath his flickering tongue,                               fighting hard to not…

  • JELLYFISH by Shenandoah Sowash

    JELLYFISH by Shenandoah Sowash

    All afternoon we’ve been coring apples with the conviction of inmates. A train sings somewhere close, steps off the tracks & lands in my palm. The apples spill like people out of taxis – red-faced & round. My hand is too small to hold you. Or the train. We’re fragile as jellyfish, as little boys…

  • HERE, THE SPARROWS WERE, ALL ALONG by Chelsea Dingman

    HERE, THE SPARROWS WERE, ALL ALONG by Chelsea Dingman

                                                                                Every minute or so, a hallelujah dies in someone’s mouth. Every minute or so, a gunshot.               A ceasefire. A tire shreds                             on the highway, & pieces flit like sparrows across the sky. Silly me. I thought                                                                             we were here to live.               The garden’s hallelujahs: tulips & rhododendrons, alive in the ground. We expect so much…