Issue Forty-Four - Summer 2024

Where the Voices Took Her

By Richard Widerkehr

Where the air people
build their flowery cities; where llamas
don’t have nasty habits but stare
out of their dark eyes;
where Shangri-La falls away in snowfields
and she slides down the white slopes,
and the planet’s radioactive waste
can’t seep through the snow;
where ghost dancers
resurrect the dreaming herds
whose white clouds block the sun;
where everyone’s ears are ringing with a hum
like a TV’s turned down low;
where lovers get married on mountaintops,
wearing T-shirts, shorts, sunglasses,
and long, dark preacher coats–
they drink champagne and climb a sheer rock face
as the sun comes out and the hidden lakes
lie scraped of all their pain.

Someday I’ll cross her frozen fields,
climbing gear dangling from my neck.
I’ll squeeze the needled
sunlight in my fist and walk through
her stampeding clouds, her avalanche of sighs.
Come back, come back.

First published in Crab Creek Review, then in Her Story of Fire (Egress Studio Press), and then reprinted in Night Journey (Shanti Arts Press).

Copyright 2024 Widerkehr

Richard Widerkehr ’s fourth book of poems, Night Journey, was published by Shanti Art Press, which will also bring out his next one, Missing The Owl, in the fall of 2024. Main Street Rag brought out his previous book, At The Grace Cafe; Moonpath Press published In The Presence of Absence, and Plain View Press brought out The Way Home. He has three chapbooks and one novel, Sedimental Journey, published by Tarragon Books. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and many others. He won two Hopwood first prizes for poetry at the University of Michigan, three prizes in The Bridge’s annual contests, and first prize for a short story at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference. He has been a poetry reader at SHARK REEF Literary Magazine for 12 years.

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