Tipton Poetry Journal – Summer 2021 As though the stars were out shopping for bloodworms by the pond And they saw me shivering, faithless and hungry. Eventually he dreamed of his mother’s suicide. She rose up to him like a brook trout, Nosed the surface of his consciousness Before falling back and drifting downstream. He followed her, thinking himself a rainbow after a rain. Then she flowed into a drainage ditch And plunged down deeper Than he could see or hear. His last thought Was of her rising like a great swan on fire, Speeding into the sunset, Calling back to him “it’s all true, it’s all true.” Edward Bynum is a practicing psychologist in Massachusetts with several book publications in psychology and poetry . This is a poem about a doctor in session, listening to his own inner thoughts as his patients speak. He is married and the father of 2 adult sons and a practitioner of yoga.
STEM Students and Moby Dick M.A.Istvan Jr. Just as vaccines, wherein dwell frail forms of the disease, train immune systems to face the full-bodied thing, literary experiences, wherein we grow invested in diverse fates, train empathy systems to hold in mind that there is a what-it-is-like-to-be the other. M. A. Istvan Jr., poet and philosopher, teaches at Austin Community College and is the current editor of Safe Space Press. Visit pw.org/directory/writers/m_a_istvan_jr_phd
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