Issa Lewis

Bio: Issa M. Lewis is the author of Infinite Collisions (Finishing Line Press, 2017). A runner-up in the 2017 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize and winner of the 2013 Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, her poems have appeared in journals such as Jabberwock, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, Pearl, and Naugatuck River Review. She was honored to serve as the Mackinac Island Artist-in-Residence in 2019 in association with the Mackinac State Historic Parks Association and the Mackinac Island Arts Council. She lives in west Michigan with her family, where she teaches writing at Davenport University.

ALL OF THESE PIECES OF MIND IN A BOTTLE

Adderall, 5mg. Buspirone, 5mg. Quetiapine XR, 25mg.

I serve them a piece at a time. A measure I’m not even sure I believe in, but the mind without
is without peace. Young son of mine,
these bottles in my hand, these tiny pieces
in blue and white and other colors, my mind measures
what they do. Makes notes to mention next appointment.
Are there rocky, jagged places in your thoughts
that cut like thumbnails, or is there ease to be found
in these scattered pieces, these bottles.

I’m looking for you, son, for peace behind your eyes.
I’m not sure what that looks like yet,

but I imagine the smoothness of water uninterrupted by thrown stones.

DUNE RUNNING

The sand is hot with years beateninto it. Feet sink in and burnin the undulating dune-scaperising up out of the great lake,a distant blue-gray second layer of sky.Leaping is release, wind coolingand lifting the body over land.Dune running: the processby which one catapultsinto the sky, taking flightand falling forward so quicklyfeet can hardly keep up with the torso—ungainly, egret-like trajectory, tryingto tuck the legs underneath—
heady, out-of-control momentto touch both sand and sky,be a piece of everything.

Aphrodite Drowns

The sweet rocking was peace for awhileafter you fell such a long way;gathering your skin together like a luxurious silk robe,you waited for land to nudge your toes.
 But nothing came.
The fullness of the ocean grew restless.Such expanse, such hubris to thinkyou could survive unscathed, that it would spare you—
 you, without so much as a raft or a stitch of clothing.
You questioned the faces you sawmolded in the frothy waves, but they only whispered backbefore dissolving: shhhh-shhhhhhhh
Blue-green waters filtered light, less and lessthe deeper you slipped. The last to glitter were strands of sunset-colored hair, blending inwith the late-day sun and swirling into delicate curlicues. Down it went, like trails of elegant question marks.

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