• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

MAYDAY

  • Culture
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
  • Nonfiction
    • Contests
  • Translation
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • About
    • Submit
      • Contests
      • Contest Winners
      • MAYDAY:Black
    • Open Positions
    • Masthead
    • Contributors

Wonders
by Katherine Riegel

July 1, 2018 Contributed By: Katherine Riegel

The Mississippi River ran backwards more than once. A real
flight simulator—one pilots train in—

 

makes you feel like you’re flying,
even though it’s only a screen in front and six hydraulic legs

 

simulating motion. A hummingbird hawk-moth’s wings
beat eighty-five times per second. One summer night in 1975,

 

you believed—absolutely, without any question—in ghosts. Human beings
crave certainty over uncertainty, even if it’s only the certainty of suffering.

 

Trees talk to each other,
and not just in books. A kid who was tortured in some ordinary Midwest town

 

lifts her hand and feeds an old horse his hay.
Even when lies run through the streets like molasses,

 

the good work goes on. We don’t always forget
to be amazed.

 

 

Return to table of contents for Issue 13 Summer 2018.

 

You May Also Enjoy Reading...

  • Helpless
    by Katherine Riegel

    What matters? The last of a species died lonely today and still the stars spun, like everything spins, helpless. They say we should not attribute human feelings to nonhumans   but isn’t helplessness universal? The…

  • Driving Through Alabama
    by Katherine Riegel

    Spring has dropped purples and yellows like someone with so much abundance they’re careless of loss. Hot pink azalea bushes crouch round across lawns and I dream they wander, peaceful as cows but wiser. I’m…

  • Contributor Bios for Issue 13 Summer 2018

    Issue 13 Summer 2018 HANIF ABDURRAQIB is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published…

  • As If
    by Alice B. Fogel

    When I realized I’d drifted deep into those riveted, river-resistant lily pads big as masks, I was reminded of how when you’re trapped   in insistence that it doesn’t matter that surely means it does.…

Filed Under: Poetry Posted On: July 1, 2018

Further Reading

Spring Time Dream
by Barry Silesky

It’s getting worse than I thought it would, as I fade into the old man with the cane and bedroom slippers. This one is stuck in the history he can’t let go, while trying to clear the streets in the city he’s still lost in. I’ve spent my life imagining the next city or the […]

Between Green and Winter Fade
by Laura A. Powers

Barren wheat-fields are quite exquisite in winter— just one clear night the wind slants the snow to smooth blue—another morning rises.   Clipped long to disused skis, I carve rickety tracks, like fontanelles, over and across subnivean layers where lower-animals—a  mouse, a vole— can only survive and not deliciously live such a winter as this. […]

Journalism by Circe Maia
(Translated from Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval)

The detailed description of the symptoms of the death by starvation of the captives in Maze Prison. The report of the surprising recovery, after an accident, of a worker or boy or young woman. The financial commentary: the rise and fall of bonds and shares. Picturesque and humorous stories. Recipes for beauty and the kitchen. […]

Primary Sidebar

Recently Published

  • Roost Profusion
    by Karen George
  • Stigmata
    by Gabriella Graceffo
  • Speaks the Dark Lobe
    by L. I. Henley
  • Resonance
    by Ginny Bitting
  • The Butterfly Cemetery by Franca Mancinelli translated from the Italian by John Taylor,
    reviewed by Caroline Maldonado

Trending

  • Eight Contemporary Female Irish Artists to Fall In Love With Immediately
    by Aya Kusch
  • Resonance
    by Ginny Bitting
  • Transcriptions
    by Kathleen Jones
  • I Know Who Orville Peck Is
    by Robin Gow
  • Caterpillar by Dragana Mokan
    translated from the Serbian by John K. Cox
  • Painting to Empower: An Interview with Artist Harmonia Rosales
    by Aya Kusch
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Footer

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Business


Reprint Rights
Privacy Policy
Archive

Engage


Open Positions
Donate
Contact Us

Copyright © 2023 · New American Press

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.