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Midlife Valentine

You will not believe me when I tell you there are years
you will want nothing more than sleep and to be kissed
senseless by the quiet.

There were other years you thought you needed beauty
the way the girls in fairy tales need magic rings, or locks
of hair, or golden coins. A talking bird, a shoe.

You will not believe me when I tell you it’s the wanting
that you’ll miss the most, once your lap is full of everything
you thought you’d go without.

Those years you made a compass of desire, the way
you make a paper heart by folding it in half,
and cutting what is left of it away.

This selection comes from Madonna, Complex, available from Cascade Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.

Jen Stewart Fueston is the author of Madonna, Complex (Cascade Books 2020), Latch (River Glass Books 2019) and Visitations (Finishing Line Press 2015). Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in AGNI, Thrush, Western Humanities Review, Spoon River Poetry Review and elsewhere. A native of Colorado, she has taught writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as internationally in Hungary, Turkey and Lithuania.   Nilsa Rivera Castro writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe and the Non-Fiction Editor of Doubleback Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Selkie Literary Magazine, and Writing Class Radio. She’s currently an MFA Nonfiction candidate at Vermont College of Fine Art and lives in Riverview, Florida.

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Ascension

All that summer I was climbing stairs. On the steep
hill from tram stop, I often took them two at once.

Other nights I wavered down the steps and wound
my way around the alleys to my heat-thick room.

One night he trailed me up those five full flights. We woke
to Sunday morning. Alone I scaled the curving streets,

past music shops and lahmacun, to church. I sat in one hard
pew and tried to pray. I took the bread and wine. I watched

the cross, that ladder strung between my heart and yours. I did
not want to climb it, wished you’d just come down. Quit dying

for these sins I could not manage to regret. Wished your pathway just
not quite so narrow, wished I could carry him across it on my own.

This selection comes from Madonna, Complex, available from Cascade Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.

Jen Stewart Fueston is the author of Madonna, Complex (Cascade Books 2020), Latch (River Glass Books 2019) and Visitations (Finishing Line Press 2015). Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in AGNI, Thrush, Western Humanities Review, Spoon River Poetry Review and elsewhere. A native of Colorado, she has taught writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as internationally in Hungary, Turkey and Lithuania.   Nilsa Rivera Castro writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe and the Non-Fiction Editor of Doubleback Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Selkie Literary Magazine, and Writing Class Radio. She’s currently an MFA Nonfiction candidate at Vermont College of Fine Art and lives in Riverview, Florida.

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Bosporus Strait

The day as ripe
as apricots,
as sweet.

Tongue reaches out
to savor the soft
invite of air.

Body turns and
turns on
unmarred sheets.

In the seam
between us waterways—
continents—bleed.

This selection comes from Madonna, Complex, available from Cascade Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.

Jen Stewart Fueston is the author of Madonna, Complex (Cascade Books 2020), Latch (River Glass Books 2019) and Visitations (Finishing Line Press 2015). Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in AGNI, Thrush, Western Humanities Review, Spoon River Poetry Review and elsewhere. A native of Colorado, she has taught writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as internationally in Hungary, Turkey and Lithuania.   Nilsa Rivera Castro writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe and the Non-Fiction Editor of Doubleback Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Selkie Literary Magazine, and Writing Class Radio. She’s currently an MFA Nonfiction candidate at Vermont College of Fine Art and lives in Riverview, Florida.

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Renunciation

Could Mary have refused,
when it was offered her,
left her fingers
open around the gift,
releasing the weight of it
from the palm of her hand?

Could she simply have turned
when the angel startled her,
and gone about folding the clothes,
sweeping dust from corners,
baking the daily bread?

Could she have brushed it aside,
arm upraised not in fear
but release?
A wave of good-bye,
a hand blocking merely the glare
of the morning sun,
not the radiance of angels
in her kitchen.

This selection comes from Madonna, Complex, available from Cascade Books. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Nilsa Rivera.

Jen Stewart Fueston is the author of Madonna, Complex (Cascade Books 2020), Latch (River Glass Books 2019) and Visitations (Finishing Line Press 2015). Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in AGNI, Thrush, Western Humanities Review, Spoon River Poetry Review and elsewhere. A native of Colorado, she has taught writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as internationally in Hungary, Turkey and Lithuania.   Nilsa Rivera Castro writes about gender and diversity issues. She’s also the Managing Editor of The Wardrobe and the Non-Fiction Editor of Doubleback Review. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Huffington Post, 50 GS Magazine, Six Hens Literary Journal, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Selkie Literary Magazine, and Writing Class Radio. She’s currently an MFA Nonfiction candidate at Vermont College of Fine Art and lives in Riverview, Florida.