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 beaten
into it. Feet sink in and burn
in the undulating dune-scape
rising up out of the great lake,
a distant blue-gray second layer of sky.
Leaping is release, wind cooling
and lifting the body over land.
Dune running: the process
by which one catapults
into the sky, taking flight
and falling forward so quickly
feet can hardly keep up with the torso—
ungainly, egret-like trajectory, trying
to tuck the legs underneath—

heady, out-of-control moment
to touch both sand and sky,
be a piece of everything.

Aphrodite Drowns

The sweet rocking was peace for awhile
after 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 think
you 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 saw
molded in the frothy waves, but they only whispered back
before dissolving:
shhhh-shhhhhhhh

Blue-green waters filtered light, less and less
the deeper you slipped. The last to glitter
were strands of sunset-colored hair, blending in
with the late-day sun and swirling into delicate curlicues.
Down it went,
like trails of elegant question marks.

Subscribe

Copyright © 2020-2021 The Banyan Review, LLC