Contributor: Sally Dunn

- -
I miss you.
I remember the long talks
we used to have
back when I was young.

You were in your prime then.
Are you still well?

Do you remember me?

Is there another girl
who has taken my place?

Does she put her hand
on your tough skin
and feel life
flow up from the earth
through your body –
through her body –
up through your limbs
and out into the vast sky

as I once did?

There are no trees
I can talk to here.
I own a woods,
but none of the trees
will speak to me.

Perhaps they have enough
of their own kind around them
and do not need to speak to me,
or perhaps they resent
that I think I own them,
or perhaps I’m too old,
or they are too young –
for it is a young wood.

There is one old oak
that stands on the edge
of the wood.
But he is silent.
He wraps his strength
around him
and will not speak
to me.

Maybe, someday,
when I’m alone
in the wood
I will come upon a tree
who will greet me,
and we will talk,
and, perhaps,
share secrets.


- - -
Sally Dunn’s poetry has appeared in 2River View, Rio Grande Review, The Perch and Straylight Literary Magazine. Her poetry won honorable mention in the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest. She lives on Cape Cod.

Contributor: Sally Dunn

- -
I live, but I don’t know why.
I look for reasons and
find ashes and chores.
I once thought life itself was
reason enough,
but always that life contained
him.

He took my reasons
with his life.

I eat, though all
food tastes of chalk.
I sleep so time will pass.
I sort his things.
Throw out some.
Save some.
Plan to sell some.

Life reduced to
piles and boxes.

Why live at all?

Still, my breath comes in and out.
The days dawn and set.
Tears come in
silent burning streams
or in choking sobs,
or they come
not at all.


- - -
Sally Dunn’s poetry has appeared in 2River View, Rio Grande Review, The Perch and Straylight Literary Magazine. Her poetry won honorable mention in the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest. She lives on Cape Cod.

Contributor: Sally Dunn

- -
Early evening,
bundled up,
Venus bright,
cold stinging my nostrils,
Orion kissing
the western horizon.


- - -
Sally Dunn’s poetry has appeared in 2River View, Rio Grande Review, The Perch and Straylight Literary Magazine. Her poetry won honorable mention in the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest. She lives on Cape Cod.

Contributor: Sally Dunn

- -
Last night I saw
a flickering star
– a binary,
or a pulsating variable?
If a binary, what type?
A book or the Internet
could answer.

But why ask?
Why know?

I used to care about
knowing things –
this variety of tree,
that species of bird,
that exact type of seaweed.

I no longer
want to know
these neighbors
of mine.

So I swim with
nameless seaweed,
watch nameless birds
flit about nameless trees
all under billions of
nameless stars –

and try to forget
I ever had
a name.


- - -
Sally Dunn’s poetry has appeared in 2River View, Rio Grande Review, The Perch and Straylight Literary Magazine. Her poetry won honorable mention in the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest. She lives on Cape Cod.

Contributor: Sally Dunn

- -
Filled with anguish,
I scream and
lash out at the universe.

I reach up into
the night sky and
claw down the fabric
of the firmament.

I roar into that
which is beyond.
Then cry when
no answer comes.

My legs crumble beneath me.
I dig my fingers into the dirt.
The earth ignores my pain.

With one hand gripping the earth
and the other clutching the heavens,
I howl into the void.

Stark silence answers me.

Until, finally, I hear
the distant yip of
a coyote.


- - -
Sally Dunn’s poetry has appeared in 2River View, Rio Grande Review, The Perch and Straylight Literary Magazine. Her poetry won honorable mention in the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest. She lives on Cape Cod.